Arctic Book Club

Book of the Month : October ❄ ISLAND DREAMS by Gavin Francis "Islands are inseparable from stories. From Odysseus’s Ithaca to Prospero’s place of exile, they are way-stations for the imagination" writes @AHABDiggins in @TheEconomist amp.economist.com/books-and-arts…

A nice example of mountain tourism networks: an 1890s postcard of Spiterstulen turisthytte in Jotunheimen, produced by Mittet & Co. (from the Universitetsbiblioteket i Bergen collection)

Today’s lost horizon.

I forgot to mention this beautiful book has a jacket made from plastic recovered from the sea + essays in English and Norwegian from Philip Hoare, Dora Garcia, Frank Nilsen and me + @ArticaSvalbard will send you a copy for the price of the postage if you want one 🐚

@cheapsellotape @ArcticExplorers @arctic_in @ArcticBookClub @_polarbearpunk @Polarbookclub @KevOBrien07 @sarahb_polar @maks_rebisz @Svalbard_Museum @visitsvalbard Agree 100%.

Maps of the routes taken in Svalbard by the 1933 Oxford University Arctic Expedition, from A.R. Glen's Young Men in the Arctic (Faber and Faber, 1935)

Deeply honoured by this intricate review of #TheRavensNest by @LearningEarth in @tweetbytheriver, an echo of how Iceland made me think & feel. Takk!🙏 Lucky too to have shared #kvöldvaka with Amy & her darning, experiencing book in its full orality. caughtbytheriver.net/2022/10/the-ra…

Maria #Czaplicka, scholar and polar explorer, was born in Stara Praga, near Warsaw, on 25 October, 1884. Image: @internetarchive Thanks to @maks_rebisz for bringing this pioneer to my attention!

Not a bad way to start the day, with a visit to the @Fisher_Library to look over some C19 Arctic publications. Look at that map and that marbling from 1818!

TOMORROW #kvöldvaka ('the evening wake'), an Icelandic tradition in autumn & winter, where someone reads aloud to the household while they knit & spin & mend. Come join me 7pm with your knitting needles @StanfordsTravel as I read from #TheRavensNest. stanfords.co.uk/event-the-rave…

‘Tasting Light’ is available October 11th! My short story, ‘the weight of a name’ is a look into what our indigenous culture and community might look like 300 years into the future. I wrote this for the nerdy little Inupiaq girl I was (and still am). #inupiaq #indigenous #author

Lovely review for Owner of the Sea (yes they are still happening!) by Ingibjörg Ágústsdóttir in the Bottle Imp. thebottleimp.org.uk/2022/08/the-ow…

Autumn's here and I'm hitting the road! Looking forward to bringing #kvöldvaka (readings-with-mending) & conversation up and down UK. More info: sarahthomas.net/events/

The sixth essay in our @NiCHE_Canada 'Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North' series is by @mattfarish. Centred around a photograph taken during Operation Franklin (1955), Farish explores the objectives that underpinned this Arctic image and operation. tinyurl.com/3sdhm9xk

'The generous light of a July horizon [steams] with spouts of spray; curved backs breaching and vanishing in a slick of black; birds circling overhead. Humpbacks probably. It is an auspicious start to a book tour.' @journeysinbtwn heads to the Westfjords bit.ly/3KTVBuC

How we understand the #Arctic matters. But: "The polar bear imagery that thrived...in advertising became an unwitting nod to the deep entanglements of capitalism, consumerism, and climate change" writes @ivana_dizdar on @ArcticRelations read it here 👇👇 arctic-relations.info/coca-cola-s-fi…

I wrote about Coca-Cola advertising for Arctic Relations! Thanks to @CharlyGehrke and @HansenMagnusson for enabling my addiction to polar bear imagery.

A section of my new textile panel ‘Baffin Bay’ for Arctic Ventures: Forgotten Stories of #Scottish Whaling opening on Friday @scotfishmuseum as part of #ScotlandsYearOfStories This bit is 40 cm wide, the whole thing is ~80cm wide and ~150cm high

The third essay in our @NiCHE_Canada series 'Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North' is by @sarahmpicks. A superb piece that unpicks the heroic, colonial, chauvinist, and racial narratives of polar exploration through the illustrated periodical 'Puck'. tinyurl.com/muexhjtd

Finally got my hands on a copy of #Ice #Humanities - a book that was co-edited with Professor Sverker Sorlin from @KTHEnvHumsLab and produced by the editorial staff attached @ManchesterUP who were a pleasure to work with. It builds on a wealth of scholarship and experience of ice

Following my placement at @natlibscot, I've written a blogpost about John Francis Campbell's multimedia journals from Sápmi, looking at fishing, whaling and Sámi newspapers: blog.nls.uk/salmon-in-sapm…