The Frozen Ship

Polar expeditions have spawned a literature with its own history and style. The Frozen Ship is a thorough and thought-provoking examination of the most influential, popular, and intriguing accounts of journeys into the eternal ice, from Viking settlers and Renaissance conquerors to Robert Falcon Scott's meticulous account of his own dying, and from the tales of Nansen, Franklin, Parry, and Shackleton to the journals of little-known explorers, missionaries, and archaeologists from Europe and North America. The Frozen Ship considers the morbid fascination of expeditions that went horribly wrong and the even greater interest attached to those that were rescued at the last minute, and pays particular attention to the strange desire to find and even exhume long-lost travelers. Looking at risks ranging from frostbite and polar bears to starvation and cannibalism, it also reflects on the enduring appeal of romanticized frozen landscapes, the link between national identity and planting flags in the ice, the descriptions of indigenous communities and forgotten stories of women at the poles, as well as purely imaginary approaches to polar travel from Frankenstein to Winnie the Pooh. - Publisher description.