https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3169-5979
When I agreed to review this book, I must admit that, given the title, I assumed that it would be primarily concerned with various expeditionary attempts to reach this point on the Earth’s surface. However, I was largely wrong, as the book is much broader in scope and undertaking than I appreciated, and in that sense, is a much more interesting and informative “read.” The author is on the Faculty at the University of Cambridge and Head of the History and Public Policy Research at the Scott Polar Research Institute. The purpose of the book can best be summarized in the words of the author in the Preface: “I offer the reader a way to understand why the North Pole truly matters to anyone who knows that our home, Planet Earth, is a globe” (p. 7). The book consists of a preface, seven chapters, references, and a comprehensive index, and it is generously illustrated by numerous color photographs and images, including early maps and diagrams of instruments. One example of an illustration that I found fascinating (p. 14) was a color image whose caption reads “Time-lapse photograph of stars seeming to turn around the Polar Star.”
In Chapter 1, titled “The Upward Gaze,” Bravo investigates the importance of the North Pole Star to both present-day Inuit and the ancient Greeks. For the Inuit, the Pole Star (Nuutuittuq) is nearly directly above them and thus not particularly useful for navigation. It is the stars that rotate around the Polar Star and lie closer to the horizon that are more critical to Inuit winter travel. To the ancient Greeks, the North Pole was essentially beyond reach and uninhabitable. Pytheas (325 BCE) voyaged as far north as Thule, which was estimated to be at about 63°N and thought to have been Iceland, Norway, or the Shetland Isles (p. 37).
Chapter 2 is focused on the development and production of maps in the period between ca. 1400 and 1600 AD. An important point made by Bravo is that the resurgence of the Renaissance astronomers was largely made possible because Arab astronomers had maintained and expanded the insights of the ancient Greeks and (p. 49) “and the invention of ingenious astronomical instruments.” As noted, the “cordiform projection (c. 1500) … focuses the eye on the North Pole” (p. 57), and the chapter continues to illustrate and explore the evolving concepts of the Earth and the place of the North Pole within the sphere of cosmologists, map makers, and geographers.
In Chapter 2, “The Multiplication of the Poles,” the author introduces the early development and use of the lodestone (i.e., naturally occurring magnets), which was fashioned into a small ball-shaped sphere called the terrella. William Gilbert (1544–1603) designed this novel instrument, which had two poles and could be used experimentally to investigate the magnetic behavior of the Earth. Eventually, it was realized, as detailed in the book, that there was a difference in location between the North Pole and the North Magnetic Pole.
When I agreed to review this book, I had assumed it would be about attempts to reach the North Pole but this aspect of the volume only commences with Chapter 4, “Polar Voyaging,” and continues in various forms in Chapters 5 and 6, “Polar Eden” and “Sovereigns of the Pole.” I admit that the title of Chapter 7 was enigmatic---“Mourning Antaeus”---and I had to refresh my jaded memory of Greek mythology to discover that Antaeus was a giant and the son of the sea god Poseidon and the Earth goddess Gaea. Although for many the race for the North Pole is captured by the Peary and Cook saga, the notion of reaching the North Pole was in proposals formulated in the early Sixteenth Century. Early concepts of the region had the “pole surrounded by open sea” (p. 106) and therefore a potential route to China and the East. However, the advent of whaling demonstrated a different and more adverse set of conditions. By 1773, the various expeditions charged with reaching this elusive target were largely based on a dash for the pole in a single season. Incidentally, the North Magnetic Pole was reached in 1831 by James Clark Ross.
The primary goal of a book review, in my opinion, is to let a reader decide whether to buy or borrow a copy for their perusal. In the case of North Pole: Nature and Culture, I think this book will appeal and be of interest to many students of Arctic history and science, and to a broader community of readers who are interested in the philosophical threads that link modern societies to our past imaginations and beliefs.