The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule | 
| Author: Joanna Kavenna
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $6.79
You Save: $18.16 (73%)
New (5) Used (7) from $3.67
Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 1366787
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.4
ASIN: B000IOEYAK
Publication Date: February 2, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
A legend, a land once seen and then lost forever, Thule was a place beyond the edge of the maps, a mystery for thousands of years. And to the Nazis, Thule was an icy Eden, birthplace of Nordic purity. In this exquisitely written narrative, Joanna Kavenna wanders in search of Thule, to Shetland, Iceland, Norway, Estonia, Greenland, and Svalbard, unearthing the philosophers, poets, and explorers who claimed Thule for themselves, from Richard Francis Burton to Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen. Marked by breathtaking snowscapes, haunting literature, and the cold specter of past tragedies, this is a wondrous blend of travel writing and detective work that is impossible to set down. RVIEW: Thule, real or not, is ripe and beguiling material for a literary and geographic adventurer, and Kavenna is formidable on both fronts. . . . Highly cerebral, erudite, refreshing. (The New York Times Book Review)
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Not and Easy Book to Classify April 19, 2007
This is not an adventure, travelogue or history, but at one time or other it is all three or some combination of the three. In the 4th century BCE Greek explorer Pytheas claimed to found "Thule" (pronounced Two-Lay), a land 'where the sun goes to sleep and the ocean turns viscous'. He did so by sailing northeast from Scotland for six days. From his account, since lost, it was a land of short winter days and long nights, came an entire mythology of a magical, northern realm hidden beyond the edges of civilization.
Kavenna's book is a recollection of anecdotes and brief historical explanation of the search for the Mythical Thule from the time of Pytheas up to the present. She travels to the most logical places such as the Shetland Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Norway, Estonia (don't ask just read) and Svarlbard (aka Spitzbergen). What is strange is that she passes on the Faroe Islands who sit in a perfect spot. Interspersed throughout the book are poems that relate to Thule.
She does a grand detour and ends up in Germany, discussing the origin of the National Socialist (Nazi) under the name of the "Thule Society". They were the first group in post WWI Germany to avow that the ancient Germanic tribes (Aryan) came from "Thule" and that this group was the most 'pure' of all Germans. Some of the founding members of The National Socialist Party (which later merged with the German Workers Party to become the National Socialist German Workers Party, i.e. Nazi Party) were claimed as having been participants in this group.
Mostly, we learn that the 'North' is in trouble and that there is a major affect on the snow- and icescape by global warming. Especially poignant is her description of the way the Greenland Inuit have descended into a life of boredom, welfare, paternalism and alcoholism at the hands of the Danes. Her visit to Iceland is more of a travelogue and seems to miss the affect of alcoholism and drugs on that culture.
The book is really a voyage of discovery for Kavenna, and this is like a diary from which we are invited to read...some of it reminds me of the writings of Jack Kerouac in that it steam-of-thought and run on. It's an interesting read.
Mostly True North September 16, 2006
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I'll admit I was resistant to this book at first - I guess I expected a more scholarly, weighty approach, rather than Kavenna's very personal picaresque - but she won me over quickly with her elegant, lyric prose, her disarming, understated persona, and her expert blending of travel narrative and history of ideas, literature and exploration. She begins by visiting all the places that have been considered possible locations of Thule, the Shetland Islands, Iceland, Norway, Estonia, advancing northward, capturing what she sees as she smoothly explicates what other travelers have said about those places as Thule, and also examining the turbulent history of Arctic exploration at large.
To me, the strongest section of the book is when Kavenna grapples with the most hateful mannifestation of the Thule ideal - its expropriation by the Nazis as pristine mythico-historical homeland where snow white Aryan purity reigned. The Thule Society was one of many esoteric/political organizations that flourished in Europe, and one of the handful that served as an early focus and gathering place for what was to become the Nazi party. This confluence of modernist and fascist elements is as troubling as it is seemingly inevitable, and Kavenna approaches this treacherous territory with the proper measure of fascination and abhorrence.
Although Kavenna is very astute in her explication of the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun's big botch, his championing of the Germans, her brief precis of his work is the one place where I found The Ice Museum demonstrably off the mark:
"He became nostalgic and impatient; he lurched away from the city, writing nothing but rustic romances laced with sentimentality, tales of robust hunting men of few words, clumsy in elegant company, chasing the daughters of the local merchants through the vibrant forests. They lived in huts like mine, they wore big boots, they knew nothing of manners and conventions; they were tormented brutes, aware that society judged them. They were good a whittling wood, and occasionally sheer frustration at their failure to ensnare a local beauty led them to a melodramatic act. One of the rustic hut-dwellers shot himself in the foot one morning because the beautiful daughter of the local businessman wouldn't talk to him."
It's hard to believe that Kavenna is old enough to have actually read the books and then forgotten so much about them. Anyone who has looked at Pan, the book she references, knows that it was in fact an early work and that its protagonist/narrator Lieutenant Glahn is no child of the land but, obviously an ex-army officer, which indicates social status, an extremely educated and articulate gentleman who chooses to live in a hut out of love of nature and a rejection of human society. And to say he shoots himself in the foot because Edvarda won't talk to him is criminal reductionism. Even August the old wandering protagonist of several of Hamsun's later works, although he does work odd jobs and pine over various beautiful daughters, is not an inarticulate brute, but an drop out from civilization, intent on living a life without ambition. There are a few books like Growth of the Soil which revolve around plain folk without the addition of a neurotic dreamer but they are very few, and Hamsun never loses the complexity of his vision.
I only wish she had at least glanced at Hamsun again before she wrote those words, but the "brute" idea fits so neatly with her arguments about the lure of fascism that she no doubt wanted it to be true. The other sad thing is that so few people are familiar with Hamsun that no editor called her on it before publication and so few people will know that it is utter bunk.
BUT otherwise I enjoyed the book. I worried as I neared the end because, like most picaresques, there's no natural ending that isn't an anti-climax. Unlike William Broad's The Oracle, Kavenna isn't going to "solve the mystery." But she accomplishes closure elegantly, describing her visit to the island of Svalbard, a place nobody thought was Thule, but which is icy and cold enough to be truly Thulean. Here she finds scientists charting the climate changes which have already meant great changes to the arctic regions and may yet be the end of Thule, if not all of mankind.
Throughout Kavenna is able to give a provocative depth to her breezy travel narrative, and I highly recommend it as an entertaining, informative read - perfect for the coming winter.
Interesting August 17, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In the fourth century BC, the Greek merchant and explorer Pytheas (~380-~310 BC) traveled north through the North Sea, and finally ended up at a distant island, which he called Thule. Thule lies far to the north, on the edge of the Arctic ice, where the sun never set during midsummer. Many centuries later, Joanna Kavenna, a native of London, found herself dreaming of an untouched northern landscape, glittering in its perpetual ice. And so, she set out to find Thule...this is the story of her search.
In this interesting book, the author does a good job of combining two different stories into one narrative. First and foremost, it is the story of Ms. Kavenna's visits to the northern lands that could have been Thule - the Shetland Islands, Norway, Iceland, Greenland and Svalbard. Secondly, this is the story of the idea of Thule, from Pytheas's history and its ancient detractors, through the Romantics, the Victorians and even the Nazis.
Overall, I found this to be quite an interesting book. The author is not an archaeologist, so you will not find any startling information on the ancient north. And she is also not an environmentalist, so while the tale of pollution of the north is described, it is far from being an important part of the book. Instead, what you have is the story of Thule, Thule as it was dreamed of in the past, and Thule as it exists today.
 Any interested in true adventure will find her odyssey hard to put down June 21, 2006
To the ancients Thule was considered a lost icy Eden of strange beauty, fueling the imagination of poets, explorers and now writer Joanna Kavenna, whose journey in search of the legendary Thule is documented in THE ICE MUSEUM: IN SEARCH OF THE LOST LAND OF THULE. Kavenna's journey brought her in touch with others under the same spell, from past evidence of prior seekers to contemporaries. Her journey also uncovered a host of frozen relics of the cold war - and it reads with all the 'you are there' drama of a diary and an investigative research piece. Any interested in true adventure will find her odyssey hard to put down.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
kind of cool March 15, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is kind of cool. It's quite a bizarre book, and I wasn't sure when I started. But it's really moving in the end. It starts in Scotland and then moves around the North, traveling up to Iceland, Norway, Spitzbergen and Greneland. The bits about Greenland are just amazing - the author really describes it all so you feel you;re looking at a series of pictures. I thought the story she tells is very tragic indeed, about the wrecking of the north, the way it was destroyed in wars, by nuclear accidents, mass tourism, and now global warming. There aren't enough books about global warming that really take you to the places and show you what we stand to lose. I was left feeling very sad and as if we have left things too late. But at the end she says, don't give up, we have to keep on going, and there are people who are trying, adn there's a history of dreams. Like, we mustn't stop dreaming just because everything is getting so dark and shattered. It's such a good, unusual book. Highly recommended
|
|
|
