Extreme North
A Cultural History
by Bernd Brunner
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Pub Date Feb 15 2022 | Archive Date Jan 31 2022
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Description
An entertaining and informative voyage through cultural fantasies of the North, from sea monsters and a mountain-sized magnet to racist mythmaking.
People have perennially projected their fantasies onto the North as a frozen no-man’s-land full of marauding Vikings or as the unspoiled landscape of a purer, more elemental form of life. Bernd Brunner recovers the encounters of adventurers with its dramatic vistas, fierce weather, exotic treasures, and indigenous peoples—and with the literary sagas that seemed to offer an alternate (“whiter” and “superior”) cultural origin story to those of decadent Greece/Rome and the moralistic “Semitic” Bible. The Left has idealized Scandinavian social democracy. The Right borrows from a long history of crackpot theories of Northern origins. Nordic phenotypes characterized eugenics, which in turn influenced America’s limits on immigration.
The North, Brunner argues, was as much invented as discovered. A valuable contribution to intellectual history, full of vivid documentation, Extreme North is an enlightening journey through a place that is real, but also, in fascinating and very disturbing ways, imaginary.
About the Author:
Bernd Brunner is an historian, lecturer, and author of many acclaimed books, whose work has also appeared in Lapham's Quarterly and Aeon. He splits his time between Istanbul and Berlin.
About the Translator: Jefferson Chase is the translator of some forty books from German to English, including works by Thomas Mann, Volker Ullrich, and Wolfgang Schivelbusch. He lives in Berlin.
Advance Praise
"Extreme North is an icily bewitching panorama of the dreams and fears, the fascination and the danger of the snowy limits of civilization. In these fantasies and travel accounts, ancient legends, and wild projections, we become spectators of the age-old dance between life and landscape of Nordic climes on the one hand, and human longing on the other." - Philipp Blom, author of Nature’s Mutiny
"Extreme North takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the ‘North’ as it has been seen from the outside through time – alien or coarse to some, noble and civilized to others, but always different. Brunner draws on an eclectic mixture of sources, from early maps and travel narratives to heavy metal, and his erudite, engaging book is indispensable for understanding the cultural status of the North today." - Jóhanna Katrín Fri?riksdóttir, author of Valkyrie: The Women of the Viking World
"From the Ultima Thule of antiquity to the practices of the north's Indigenous peoples, to stoic, Kierkegaardian faith, and on to the racial fantasies about the north's white peoples, Bernd Brunner's imaginative yet critical exploration of the circumpolar region weaves together the many, often contradictory, images and ideas that have come together in writings and images of the top of the globe. It should be read by the curious, student and scholar alike." - Andrew K. Nestingen, author of Crime and Fantasy in Scandinavia
"Bernd Brunner’s Extreme North is a gripping and highly original history of how encounters with northerly landscapes and peoples have shaped Europe’s perception of itself. Beautifully written and deeply evocative, this is history that is in equal parts whimsical and disturbing. Brunner shows how scientific curiosity and the pursuit of adventure collided with malign theories of racial superiority, attributed to a myth of northern descent. At a moment when our collective future is increasingly bound to the fate of the polar regions, Extreme North could not be more timely." - Sunil Amrith, author of Unruly Waters
"An intrepid researcher and writer, Bernd Brunner takes readers on a journey through time and space and into the minds of countless many who had something profound to say about the northernmost reaches of the globe. The journey is sometimes shocking, always fascinating, and surely worth taking." - Jack Davis, author of The Gulf
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9780393881004 |
| PRICE | $27.95 (USD) |
Featured Reviews
Librarian 853752
I loved this book. It seems Vikings and their tales have dominated a large portion of non-fic literature and pop culture over the last decade and this book addresses the North from an entirely different lens. Brunner examines everything from the etymology of the word "North", the modern interpretations of Northern nations and their politics, and how the history and mythologies of the North have been used by all sides of the political spectrum to argue a right to belonging or dominance.
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