Extreme North

A Cultural History

Extreme North
Bernd Brunner, Jefferson Chase
RRP:
NZ$ 52.99
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NZ$ 45.04
Hardback
h236 x 160mm - 256pg
15 Mar 2022 US
International import eta 10-30 days
9780393881004
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People have perennially projected their fantasies onto the North as a frozen no-man' s-land full of marauding Vikings or as the unspoiled landscape of a purer, more elemental form of life. Bernd Brunner recovers the encounters of adventurers with its dramatic vistas, fierce weather, exotic treasures, and indigenous peoples-and with the literary sagas that seemed to offer an alternate ("whiter" and "superior") cultural origin story to those of decadent Greece/Rome and the moralistic "Semitic" Bible. The Left has idealized Scandinavian social democracy. The Right borrows from a long history of crackpot theories of Northern origins. Nordic phenotypes characterized eugenics, which in turn influenced America' s limits on immigration. The North, Brunner argues, was as much invented as discovered. A valuable contribution to intellectual history, full of vivid documentation, Extreme North is an enlightening journey through a place that is real, but also, in fascinating and very disturbing ways, imaginary.
Beautifully written and deeply evocative, this is history that is in equal parts whimsical and disturbing. Bernd Brunner shows how scientific curiosity and the pursuit of adventure collided with malign theories of racial superiority, attributed to a myth of northern descent. . . . Extreme North could not be more timely. --Sunil Amrith, author of Unruly Waters In Extreme North, Bernd Brunner gives us a spry, fascinating tour through centuries of lore about the globe' s colder latitudes. From Greek myths of Hyperborea to Enlightenment scientists to the Nazi adoration of Norse symbols, he brings alive the power of the north to inspire European ideas about everything from race and social organization to geography and history. Bristling with captivating details and characters, Brunner pushes us to wonder what the north is, and why it has so long fascinated people living to the south. --Bathsheba Demuth, author of Floating Coast Extreme North is an icily bewitching panorama of the dreams and fears, the fascination and the danger of the snowy limits of civilization. In these fantasies and travel accounts, ancient legends, and wild projections, we become spectators of the age-old dance between life and landscape of Nordic climes on the one hand, and human longing on the other. --Philipp Blom, author of Nature' s Mutiny
Bernd Brunner is an historian, lecturer, and author of many acclaimed books whose work has also appeared in Lapham' s Quarterly, the Paris Review, and Aeon, among other outlets. He splits his time between Istanbul and Berlin. Jefferson Chase is the translator of some forty books from German to English, including works by Thomas Mann, Volker Ullrich, and Wolfgang Schivelbusch. He lives in Berlin.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9780393881004
Published: 15 Mar 2022
Published In: United States
Imprint: WW Norton & Co
Publisher: WW Norton & Co
Format: Hardback
Height: 236mm
Width: 160mm
Spine: 25mm
Weight: 432g
Pages: 256

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