Ring of Ice: True Tales of Adventure, Exploration, and Arctic Life - Softcover

4

17 ratings by Goodreads

9781592281367: Ring of Ice: True Tales of Adventure, Exploration, and Arctic Life

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1592281362 ISBN 13: 9781592281367

Publisher: Lyons Pr, 2004

Well into the nineteenth century, Arctic explorers believed that they needed only to smash their ships through a ring of ice encircling the top of the globe, and from there they could tack easily on soft breezes to the North Pole. Acting on this belief, these adventurers were crushed by ice, wasted by scurvy, and frozen to death on the ice floes.

This European notion of the Arctic as a ring of ice surrounding a void not only lured countless sailors to their deaths, but also had the effect of drowning out the voices and the visions of the native Arctic people. Now this vibrant collection celebrates both the unheard voices of the Arctic peoples and the trail of words left by the Europeans who pushed forward to fill the hole in their knowledge of the world.

Spanning the years from 1741 to the present, RING OF ICE presents many such works, including the story of Captain Tyson and his crew who, marooned by their own shipmates, were forced to float precariously on a tiny iceberg for five months before being rescued. And the tale of Duncan Pryde, a fur trader employed by the Hudson's Bay Company, who finds himself unwittingly caught up in the Inuit tradition of wife exchange.

Juxtaposed with these European tales are stories of survival, skill, and daily life among the Inuit, as told through dozens of native poems and legends, as well as by some of today's best writers, including Finn Lynge and Rachel A. Qitsualik.

RING OF ICE is a comprehensive and altogether unique anthology presenting the colorful history of the monochromatic Arctic landscape.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

From the time of the ancient Greeks until the 19th century, European explorers imagined that beyond the ring of ice that encircled the Arctic lay a warm, calm sea that would take them to the Orient. Instead of this easy Northwest Passage, notes Peter Stark, those explorers found what the Inuit and Eskimo inhabitants of the region knew they would: "ice, ice, and more ice."

In this well-chosen anthology, Stark offers a documentary history of changing views of the Arctic over the last two and a half centuries. His collection begins with the words of Georg Wilhelm Steller (for whom many Arctic animal species are named), who accompanied the star-crossed Danish explorer Vitus Bering across the far northern Pacific. The memoirs of other explorers follow, intermingled with prose and poetry from the indigenous peoples of the region. Most of those explorers, like the unfortunate American surveyor Adolphus Greely and the Italian aviator Umberto Nobile, recount wrong decisions taken in the face of horrendous circumstances, whether howling gales or the madness of companions. Few of their stories end happily, save that their narrators usually survived. The closing pages of Stark's anthology are given over to a new kind of explorer, the literary naturalist, whose greatest exemplar is Barry Lopez (Arctic Dreams).

Students of the history of exploration and the peoples of the Arctic will find Stark's book to be an engaging survey. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author:

PETER STARK has traveled widely in the Arctic on assignment for Outside, Smithsonian, and other magazines, and is the author of Driving to Greenland: Arctic Travel, Northern Sport, and Other Ventures Into the Heart of Winter. He lives in Missoula, Montana with his wife and two children.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.