Arcticness: Power and Voice from the North, edited by Ilan Kelman, London, UCL Press, 2017, 184 pp., £17.99. ISBN: 978-1-78735-014-4.

This compilation of essays was the product of a meeting hosted at the University College of London, although the date of the meeting is unclear. The list of contributors (pp. xv–xix) indicates a mix of backgrounds and includes First Nation individuals, consultants, and academics—the latter mainly from the United Kingdom. As one can imagine, a single definition of “Arcticness” is both elusive and imaginery. As the editor says in Chapter 1: “Humans have a right and a need to create ideas regarding their place, their movements, their livelihoods, their peoples, their environments, and their homes. The challenges and opportunities, as with Arcticness, is whether or not the artificial creation has real and useful meaning.” The essays are varied and range from the standard scientific enquiry (Chapter 4, “Radar Observations of Arctic Ice”; Chapter 7, “Reindeer Herding in a Changing World: A Comparative Analysis”) to more philosophical discussions on the issue of what constitutes “Arcticness, ” poems, and a graphic chapter, “Conversations in the Dark.” As the editor notes (p. 4): “The transitions among the chapters can be as jarring as Arctic weather changes, as mismatched as some northern and southern views and as manifold as the Arctic landscape.” Thus, as one can imagine, reviewing such an eclectic mix of contributions is not easy or straightforward, and each individual reader will need to decide whether a contribution “has real and useful meaning.”