In August 2017, photographer Paul Nixlen photographed a polar bear in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. In the photo, the polar bear is hunched over the ice-free land, like an old man who has gone through vicissitudes. Paul observed the polar bear rummaging through a rusty trash can for food, nibbling on an old sled cushion. The culprit in this situation is undoubtedly global warming. As global warming, ice sheets in the Arctic melt earlier and earlier, limiting the time it takes for polar bears to hunt and accumulate fat before coming ashore. A 2015 assessment suggested that polar bear populations could decline by 30 percent by 2050.
Not long ago, China released its first white paper on China's Arctic Policy, in which global warming was highlighted. The white paper notes that rising temperatures in the Arctic over the past 30 years have led to a sustained decline in Arctic summer sea ice. Scientists predict that the Arctic seas will experience seasonal ice-free phenomena in the middle of this century or even earlier. However, on the other hand, the white paper also points out that the melting of Arctic ice and snow may gradually change the conditions for Arctic development and utilization, providing opportunities for countries to commercially use Arctic shipping routes and develop Arctic resources.
So what is so special about the Arctic, which has touched the nerves of countries around the world for hundreds of years? How has the Arctic been "discovered" in human history? How did humanity's understanding of the Arctic increase with commercial trade and exploration? At the height of Arctic exploration, what kind of imagination did popular literature have for the Arctic? From the earliest map of the Arctic in the 16th century to the current white paper on the Arctic, how has human understanding of the Arctic changed, and how has the relationship between humans and nature changed?
<h3>
Cartography, exploration, and imperial expansion: passive virgin lands, sinister cannibalistic lands</h3>
In 1569, the Dutch geographer and cartographer Gerardus McCarto published a world map 202 cm long and 124 cm wide. On this map, the original spherical Earth is unfolded into a rectangular area, with longitude and latitude intersecting vertically at any location. This isometric cylindrical map projection method, also known as the "McAto projection method", can keep the shape and angle of the continental outline unchanged after projection, and is a good guide for sailing. However, the poles were sacrificed in this projection, and the proportions of the poles reached infinity. Therefore, instead of including the infinite poles in the map, Mercator decided to use the poles as the projection center and draw a separate pole map, which was placed in the lower left corner of the world map.
In this polar map, the Arctic region is divided into four parts, distinguished from each other by waterways, which converge in the middle area to form a huge whirlpool. McCarto's depiction of the Arctic stems from two sixteenth-century explorers, Martin Frobisher and James Davis, who both reached what is now northern Canada and both recorded the huge icebergs that encountered there: "Without stopping, it was rushed north, where it was absorbed into the earth's guts." ”
In the 1500s, when McCator was mapping, very few people visited the Arctic, and even fewer left a written record. In 325 BC, a merchant and navigator named Pisias sailed north. According to his account, it is speculated that he reached the British Isles (the "Puletani Islands", or Isles of Pretani in the records), and then continued north to the fabled "Thule". According to him, next to Tulle was "composed of substances that were neither water nor air, or a mixture of the former two", "land and water are suspended, neither able to step nor sail", and "the sun rises again after two or three hours after it sets".
Mercator also references the travels of an anonymous person in the 14th century, which chronicles the visit of an English minor friar to Norway. The book of mysteries provided the center for Mercator's map of the Arctic—a huge rock that stood at the pole, which he named the "Black Cliff."
In the 16th century, when McAto lived, with Marco Polo's travels and the discovery of the New World, the countries of Europe were filled with a yearning for the Orient. But since the southern route was dominated by the maritime empires of Spain and Portugal at the time, Britain and the Netherlands wanted to open up routes to the Far East via Siberia. This inspired a large number of navigators to follow suit and explore the Northeast And Northwest Routes.
In the 19th century, with the industrial revolution and the rational movement unfolding, people's thirst for science and knowledge surged. Polar exploration, from the original commercial trade activities to scientific investigations, from the original opening of trade routes to part of the expansion of the empire. Europeans not only wanted to open up geographical territories, but they couldn't wait to incorporate them into their own intellectual map. Not only did they crave physical arrival, but they were also anxious to put all their knowledge of the Arctic into the drawings. As the scholar Christy Collins put it, the explorer's job is to "naturalize" polar spaces by integrating them into the discourse of standard European exploration and discovery, and control of a country depends on the validity of the oath of English there.
The Arctic poses a great challenge to this expansion of empires. The 19th-century American explorer Frederick Schwatka once said that the Arctic was "the most deserted region I've ever seen, I've never seen a house, a tree, and in fact, no trace of animal or plant survival." Here, all Signifiers and signs associated with Europe are invalid, collins argues: "The Arctic rejects European description, measurement, mapping, and even physical entry." This is daunting and hard to admit: allowing the Arctic to continue to maintain this barrenness that cannot be put on the map means acknowledging that there is a huge void in the map of European expansion, a space that European discourse cannot fill. ”
If we look a little deeper, we can see that polar expeditions are also full of gendered expressions. In the eyes of explorers, they regard the visit to the Arctic as a quest for virgin land, which has some gender implications. In Schwartka's mouth, the Arctic is full of temptations: "I long to set foot in that barren land and start my work." Captain Sherard Osborn, commander of the Royal Navy, in his 1859 the Last Voyage of Sir John Franklin, reconstructed Franklin's last polar journey: "The frozen Arctic reveals its wonders slowly and most reluctantly to those who are brave enough to devote themselves to this expedition." The fearsome, foggy, silent kingdom can only be penetrated by the painstaking efforts of two generations of seafarers and travelers. In another place, Aspen describes how Franklin's ship broke through the ice, writing: "People heard a hoarse groan, as if the ice were crying and begging for forgiveness. Immediately after, huge ice cubes were smashed into pieces. ”
As male explorers continued to explore and enter this virgin land, the Arctic was feminized as a passive, waiting place for men to set foot. And when the explorers entered, the Arctic was groaning and begging for forgiveness. This narrative more or less catered to the tastes of nineteenth-century popular literature. After all, at that time, Arctic exploration was popular and became a popular topic in popular culture, and various explorer diaries and nautical diaries filled the market. On the one hand, the ambition of the explorer and the femininized imagination of the Arctic, on the other hand, is the harsh reality before people's eyes - the Arctic exploration is extremely dangerous and most likely to be gone. The disappearance of explorer John Franklin is a case in point.
In 1845, the Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin led two expedition ships to the North Pole, never to return. The incident shocked British society, and the media described the explorer's disappearance as "a deep anxiety throughout the country". This anxiety is not only about the disappearance of individual explorers, but more importantly about the transfer of the mechanisms of power of the conquered and the conquered. People suddenly realized that passive, barren virgin land can also engulf people, and also has a destructive, destructive force.
Interestingly, the disappearance indirectly fueled explorers' understanding of the Arctic. In the more than a decade after 1845, more than 40 rescue teams arrived at the Arctic in search of Franklin's traces, and these search and rescue activities greatly enriched human knowledge about the geography of the Arctic.
The Arctic Imagination in Literature: The Dwelling place of barbarian cannibals, ghosts and ghosts</h3>
In I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination, published in 1997, Francis Spufford talks about how the mysteries associated with the Arctic in the first half of the 19th century entered the public eye of Victorian Britain and became popular, when Great Britainns sang songs related to polar themes and attended polar-themed dinners. This group of people does not spare any book on the market on a polar theme, whether it is a novel or a travel diary. This polar fanaticism in popular culture has greatly promoted the development of literary works with polar themes. The frenzy about the Arctic is not only reflected in the adventure diaries, but also the literary scholars are eager to try to transform their imaginations of the Arctic into literary material. To trace the beginnings of writing on this polar theme, we have to mention the poet Coleridge.
In 1798, Coleridge published The Ancient Boat Song, which tells the story of a sailor returning from a long voyage to a guest who is about to attend a wedding. In the unfolding of his personal experience, the guest's reaction ranges from initial doubt, then impatience, to final obsession. Coleridge's poem may have been inspired by Captain James Cook's second expedition (1772–1775). On this trip, Captain Cook entered the Antarctic Circle three times to confirm the existence of the fabled Southern Continent. Critics have also pointed out that the poem was written under the influence of navigator and explorer Thomas James, a Welsh sailing captain who was a world-renowned navigator and explorer who worked to discover the "Northwest Waterway" from North America to Asia.
This poem, often regarded as the beginning of English Romantic literature, actually opened the curtain for polar writing. In his poem, Coleridge borrowed the mouth of a sailor to make this depiction of the polar landscape:
Then there was thick fog and ice and snow,
The weather is extremely cold, freezing through the bone marrow;
Like an iceberg drifting by the side of the ship,
Crystal turquoise, color like emerald.
The iceberg shoots out a bleak light,
In the drifting clouds:
There are no people or birds or beasts around—
There was only endless snow and ice.
Here's the ice, here's the snow, it's the snow,
There is ice and snow everywhere;
Ice and snow are roaring, ice and snow are roaring,
Hear a loud rumbling sound when you faint!
Through his depictions of the uninhabited polar regions and the vast expanse of ice and snow frozen through the bone marrow, Coleridge uses poetic language to create a sense of nature's "sublimeness", which gives people an aesthetic experience – from exclamation to fear, from praise to awe. Discovering the beauty of nature in the polar regions is a response to the industrial revolution in full swing and the rationalization movement that swept through everything.
Twenty-00 years ago, in 1818, Britain was hit by a boom in Arctic exploration, the same year Mary Shelley first published the science fiction novel Frankenstein. Mary Shelley couldn't have been ignorant of the Arctic adventure ethos, or she wouldn't have set science fiction in the setting of Arctic exploration. The novel, in the form of correspondence and paraphrasing, tells the story of a scientist named Frankenstein who makes and hunts down monsters. The narrator of the story, Captain Walton, is an avid polar adventure enthusiast who, driven by intense curiosity and desire to conquer nature, embarks on a polar expedition and meets Frankenstein.
From Walton's first letter to his sister Margaret in St. Petersburg, we can see his imaginary Arctic.
"I tried to convince myself that the polar region was deserted and cold, but always in vain. I always have in my mind a beautiful picture that makes me yearn for. Margaret, where the sun, like a giant fireball, always clings to the horizon and travels back and forth, shining with eternal magnificence. There—forgive me, my sister, I still have some trust in the navigators of the past—the frost has melted, and we will sail on a silent sea, and then perhaps drift over a land of beauty and wonder, where all the beauty of the land in which mankind has hitherto lived will be gathered. ”
In Walton's eyes, the Arctic is a fantasy land. Navigators of the past have rendered the Arctic as a glorious and magnificent place, no cold, no freezing, just a red sun that never sets and an eternal light. Walton's curiosity drove him to the Arctic, a land that existed in the public imagination, just as Victor's curiosity drove Frankenstein to create monsters. So Walton would say, "When I look at this land that I have never visited before, and when I personally set foot on this land that may not have been set foot in by humans, my intense curiosity will be greatly satisfied." ”
Similar to the emotions of the polar regions in Coleridge's poems, Walton and Frankenstein experienced emotional ups and downs in the Arctic, which eventually translated into courage and confidence to overcome difficulties and conquer nature. When Walton and his crew are trapped in a glacier, Frankenstein's arrival gives hope to the crew. "He aroused their energy, and when the sailors listened to his words, they felt that the huge iceberg in front of them was just like a mole mound, and would eventually collapse in the face of the strong will of mankind."
Frankenstein made an impassioned speech on the ship: "Oh, you should be like a man, and you should be a good boy on the top." You must be unswerving, as solid as a rock. The ice is made of water, and one of your hearts is made of blood. Ice can be changed, and as long as you are determined, glaciers cannot bring you to your knees. Let your eyebrows be engraved with the imprint of shame and return home. Be like a hero who has the courage to fight, fight off the enemy, and never flinch in the face of difficulties! In this impassioned statement, we see once again an emphasis on the masculinity of the explorers, with the desire and ambition to conquer nature dominating. Hard glaciers are not worth mentioning in the face of human will and determination.
In 1838, the American writer Edgar Allan Poe wrote his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, which is presented in the form of a travel diary, reminiscing about his polar journey in the tone of a survivor of a polar expedition. In the preface, Pym writes that he had been reluctant to pay the story to him, fearing that readers would doubt the truth of the story. At the urging of editor Edgar Allan Poe, he published it in the form of a fictional story. He then recounts how he boarded a whaling ship, went through shipwrecks, rebellions, cannibals, and finally was rescued by the crew of another ship and continued to sail south, encountering black natives on the way, being trapped, and escaping successfully. On Pym's journey to the South Pole with his crew, the novel comes to an abrupt end.
There are many traces of adventure diaries and novels in Edgar Allan Poe's mutilated novels, such as Benjamin Morel's account of four trips to the South Pacific (1822–1831), Jeremiah Renault's account of pacific and South Pacific expeditions (1836), Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), and Coleridge's Aria of the Ancient Boats (1798). In this novel, in addition to being covered with vast ice and snow, the polar region is also a gathering place for barbarians and cannibals, symbolizing the opposite of civilized society.
Conan Doyle, a writer who loved to read Edgar Allan Poe and later created the famous Sherlock Holmes series, also wrote novels related to the Arctic when he was young. One afternoon in March 1880, Conan Doyle, a young medical student at the University of Edinburgh, decided to terminate his studies and board a whaling ship bound for the North Pole as a surgeon and embark on a six-month voyage to the North Pole. Afterwards, he recalled, it was "the first truly remarkable adventure" of his life. Before boarding the whaling ship Hope, Conan Doyle brought with him several books of poetry, philosophical and literary works, and several blank diaries to record his impressions of the journey he was about to embark on.
In January 1883, Conan Doyle published his first short story in Temple Bar magazine, "The Captain of the North Star." The story goes: "Polaris" captain Nicholas ignored the crew's advice and decided to drop anchor in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. Ships can get stuck in the ice at any time, and the crew is in danger, but time passes day by day. The crew reported seeing ghosts or ghosts for several days, and even the never-superstitious doctor himself (the narrator of the novel) admitted that he had heard a shout in the darkness. One night, the captain left the hull and disappeared into the night, as if he were following an invisible being. The next day, the crew found the captain dead on the ice, but his expression was not painful, with a bright smile and his hands seemed to be about to grasp something. Most likely, he found and embraced the invisible ghost that summoned him. In Conan Doyle's novel, the Arctic is seen as a dwelling place for ghosts and ghosts.
If we compare these above-mentioned literary works full of monsters, ghosts, barbarism and mysticism with the Arctic exploration movement in full swing in the 19th century, we will find a very interesting phenomenon: on the one hand, Arctic exploration continues to enrich people's understanding and cognition of the Arctic, and scientific knowledge about the Arctic is increasing; on the other hand, in the public imagination, the Arctic is still mysterious and full of supernatural phenomena that science cannot explain.
<h3>The North Pole as a Symbol of Sovereignty: A Fragile Ecology Obscured by Political Games</h3>
If the purpose of the navigators in the first half of the 19th century was to explore and explore the Arctic, as well as to collect and expand the geographical knowledge related to the Arctic in the search for Franklin, then in the late 19th century, after the United States also joined the ranks of Arctic exploration, the Arctic changed from a specific geographical region to an abstract exploration target. The Arctic is reduced to an abstract point, a coordinate of latitude and longitude. Competing for the North Pole means both honor and pride as an explorer and is tied to the national narrative — when a country's flag is erected in the snow and ice, it represents the establishment of a national authority at the end of the world, undoubtedly a semiotic symbol of sovereignty. Against this backdrop, the search for the North Pole, supported by countries, is in full swing.
In 1871, Charles Francis Hall of the United States led the Polaris to the poles in an attempt to reach the North Pole, which ended in failure. Five years later, as part of the British Arctic Expedition Program, the Royal Navy attempted to reach the North Pole, where it was not only after commander Albert W. Bush. Led by H. Markham, the fleet reached 83°20'26" in May 1876. In 1895 Norwegian explorers Friedjov Nansen and Theomal Johansen arrived at 86° 14′ north latitude. The Italian explorer Duke Amedeo and Captain Umberto Carni of the Royal Italian Navy arrived at 86°34' on 25 April 1900.
On September 7, 1909, the New York Times published a front-page news titled "After 8 Attempts in 23 Years, Pearley Finally Discovered the Arctic." The American explorer Robert Pilley sent this message in the port of Labrador, claiming that he had reached the North Pole in April 1909. Just a week earlier, however, the New York Herald had also published a front-page news titled "Frederick Cook Discovers the Arctic." Cook was an American explorer who announced his arrival at the North Pole in April 1908, a full year before Pearley. In a statement to The New York Times, Pearley declared: "Cook has never been to the North Pole, he is simply deceiving the masses." The two former friends turned against each other, and the debate about who reached the North Pole between the two has not subsided. And because the measurement tools they carried when they "arrived at the North Pole" were not precise, in fact, we could not judge which of the two of them had reached the real North Pole.
In the twentieth century, with the improvement of the level of science and technology, three paths from land, water and air to the North Pole were called possible. In 1926, the first manned maneuverable airship landed at the North Pole. In 1958, the American nuclear-powered submarine NOTLAS crossed the North Pole for the first time from under the ice. In 1977, the former Soviet icebreaker "Arctic" broke through the ice for the first time to reach the North Pole. In 1978, Japanese explorer Naoji Uemura took a dog sleigh and became the first person in human history to reach the North Pole alone. In 1986, the French doctor Etier reached the North Pole by skiing by hand...
In the decades when the arctic rivalry has become increasingly fierce and even on the brink of conflict, arctic protection has been put on the agenda, but not enough attention. Arctic smoke from industrial emissions from European industrial countries and the former Soviet Union – carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, freon, soot and other chemical pollution , as well as the melting of icebergs due to climate warming – have even become the weight of the global political game around the Arctic.
In Greek mythology, in ancient times, there was a people who lived in the far north, where it was always warm and sunny, and was called the "Paradise of the North" (Hyperborea). Return to Mercator's map of the Arctic, which contains four land parcels separated by rivers. Adherents of the "Promised Land of the North" theory believe that the continent in the Map of the Arctic Circle in McAtoo is not a mistake or a conjecture, but is drawn based on ancient nautical charts, and that this continent is actually located on the back side of the Earth, that is, the interior of the Earth, and that the iceberg in the middle is the opening of the Arctic, from where it can lead to the inner world. This theory was once popular and attracted the attention and investigation of scientists.
Is there a promised land in the North today? Polar bears may be hard to agree with. But if global warming does not brake quickly, and the significance of the Arctic as a political symbol is always higher than the ecological reality, the Greek myth of eternal warmth and sunshine may come true.
Resources:
https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Captain_of_the_%22Pole-Star%22#Plot_summary_.28spoiler.29
http://www.kepu.net.cn/gb/earth/arctic/history/hst309.html
http://mary-shelley.wikia.com/wiki/The_Arctic
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/north-pole-map-mercator
Christy Collis, Vertical Body/Horizontal World: Sir John Franklin and Fictions of Arctic Space
Kathryn Schulz, Literature’s Arctic Obsession.
Arthur Konan Doyle, ‘Dangerous Work: Diary of Arctic Adventure’.
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