I put the dictionary safely away and turned back to the boxes. Boxes of clothes, boxes of cutlery. And what was this? Reams of paper, covered in my own hand-writing. I recognized manuscripts I’d been working on before I left London. (Not a rusty paper clip in sight; I’d been well-trained.) After all this time, they looked like someone else’s work – the indecipherable crossings out, the coffee rings. I closed the box again hurriedly. I would deal with them later.
NOTES
EPIGRAPH
Kevin Crossley-Holland’s translation of Riddle 69 from The Exeter Book of Riddles (London: Enitharmon Press, 2008).
INTRODUCTION
‘And if the sun had not erased the tracks upon the ice . . .’ in the Obituary of Simon Simonsen of Upernavik, called ‘Simon Bear Hunter’, 1924, from Keld Hansen, Nuussuarmiut: Hunting Families on the Big Headland; Demography, Subsistence and Material Culture in Nuussuaq, Upernavik, Northwest Greenland (Meddelelser om Grønland, Man & Society 35, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2008).
‘There’s an Arctic myth that tells . . .’, see ‘The coming of men, a long, long while ago’ from Knud Rasmussen, Eskimo Folk Tales, translated and edited by W. Worster (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1921).
The dictionary referred to is C. Schultz-Lorentzen’s Dictionary of the West Greenland Eskimo Language (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 1927).
‘I must hasten away to warmer countries . . .’ in ‘The Snow Queen’, in Hans Christian Andersen, Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales, translated by ‘Mrs Paull’ (London: Frederick Warne & Co., 1867).
I
‘But we need the books . . .’ Franz Kafka, letter to Oskar Pollak, 27 January 1904, in Franz Kafka: Letters to Friends, Family and Editors, translated by Richard and Clara Winston (Richmond: Oneworld Classics, 2011).
‘For the Lord spake unto Job . . .’ and following texts, in Johannes Kepler, The Six-Cornered Snowflake (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966).
The sealskin map is in the Pitt Rivers Museum, item 1966.19.1, described as ‘Painting, in black, on sealskin’; it can be viewed online http://objects.prm.ox.ac.uk/pages/PRMUID26166.html (accessed 31 May 2018).
‘However natural it may be to assist the perceptive faculty . . .’ quoted in Cartographies of Time by Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).
‘We wish to write briefly of these first days and the beginnings . . .’ quoted in Cartographies of Time (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010).
‘The Noble Author being at Oxford, when the Book was printed at London . . .’ and following, in Robert Boyle’s New Experiments and Observations Touching Cold (London: 1665).
‘You should have inscribed them on your mind instead of on paper . . .’ and following quotations from John Evelyn and William Wotton, in Chapter 6, ‘Robert Boyle’s Loose Notes’ in Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science by Richard Yeo (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
‘A good forger can reproduce the pattern . . .’ John Finney writes about his research in Findings on Ice, edited by Hester Aardse and Astrid van Baalen (Zurich: PARS Foundation/Lars Müller Publishers, 2007). Professor Finney is also author of Water: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); I am indebted to him for his advice while writing this chapter.
‘How are we to understand that during the fine season . . .?’ in Ludwig Kämtz, A Complete Course of Meteorology, with notes by C. Martins and an appendix by L. Lalanne. Translated with notes and additions by C. V. Walker (London: H. Baillière, 1845).
II
‘We had seen God in his splendours . . .’ Ernest Shackleton, South: The Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition (London: William Heinemann, 1919).
‘We left no footprints . . .’ Ursula Le Guin, ‘Sur’, in The Compass Rose: Short Stories (London: Gollancz, 1983).
‘They explored and explored . . .’ Aqqaluk Lynge’s poem is collected in The Veins of the Heart to the Pinnacle of the Mind, translated by Ken Norris and Marianne Stenbæk (Montreal: International Polar Institute, 2008).
‘across half a mile of clear blue ice, swept by the unbroken wind . . .’ and other material by Priestley regarding this winter, in Raymond Priestley, Antarctic Adventure: Scott’s Northern Party (New York, NY: E. P. Dutton, 1915).
‘How about giving Browning a spoonful of brandy?’ Don Webster’s article is in Polar Record – a journal managed by SPRI (‘The interpretation and probable dating of conversations found in Victor Campbell’s field note-book, written while in a snow-cave on Inexpressible Island, Antarctica, during the winter of 1912’, Polar Record 51 (260): 467–74, 2015). Victor Campbell settled in Newfoundland, where his diary is now in the Memorial University Collections.
‘My dearest Katie . . .’ and following, in Benjamin Bell, Lieut. John Irving, RN of HMS ‘Terror’, in Sir John Franklin’s last expedition to the Arctic regions; a memorial sketch with letters (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1881).
‘Pray take care of the Pigeons . . .’ in M. J. Ross, Polar Pioneers: John Ross and James Clark Ross (Toronto, ON: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994).
‘At 7 o’clock we released our first balloon . . .’ in Emile Frédéric de Bray, A Frenchman in Search of Franklin: De Bray’s Arctic Journal 1852–1854, translated and edited by William Barr (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1992).
Qivittut tale in a version told by Juliane Mouritzen in The Southernmost Peoples of Greenland: Dialects and Memories/Qavaat: Oqalunneri Eqqaamassaallu, edited by Mâliâraq Vebæk and Birgitte Sonne (Copenhagen: Meddelelser om Grønland, Man & Society 33, The Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland, 2006). The stories were recorded during the 1970s.
‘Dear Son, I wright these few lines . . .’ The letter written by John and Phoebe Diggle is held in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, Object ID AGC/D/12/1–3; as is the last record of Sir John Franklin’s expedition, ‘the standard Admiralty accident form’ (generally known as ‘the message in the cairn’), Object ID HSR/C/9/1.
‘I noticed on his table a copy of Dean Hole’s A Book About Roses . . .’ and following, from William Laird McKinlay, Karluk: The Great Untold Story of Arctic Exploration (New York, NY: St Martin’s Press, 1976).
‘the best part of all books . . .’ William Morris Hunt’s Talks about Art quoted by Kenneth Grahame in ‘Marginalia’, Pagan Papers (London: Elkin Mathews, 1894).
‘Kleinschmidt’s fist . . .’ Otto Rosing and W. D. Preston, ‘Kleinschmidt Centennial II: Samuel Petrus Kleinschmidt’ in International Journal of American Linguistics Vol. 17, No. 2 (April 1951).
‘In a manual for librarians . . .’ For those wishing to know more about Disaster Preparedness, Constance Brooks’s guide, one of seven in a series of Preservation Planning Program (PPP) resource guides, was published by the Association of Research Libraries, Washington, DC, in 1993.
‘Over 26,000 of the library’s volumes . . .’ in Lost Memory: Libraries and Archives Destroyed in the Twentieth Century, prepared for UNESCO on behalf of IFLA by Hans van der Hoeven and on behalf of ICA by Joan van Albada (Paris: UNESCO, 1996).
‘A few decades later, in 2009, the Greenlandic dialects . . .’ see Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, UNESCO, http://www.unesco.org/languages-atlas/ (accessed 31 May 2018).
III
‘Memory does this . . .’ Ms. 863v, in Walter Benjamin’s Archive: images, texts, signs, translated by Esther Leslie and edited by Ursula Marx, Gudrun Schwarz, Michael Schwarz and Erdmut Wizisla (London: Verso, 2015).
‘to discover what journey hiku might take me on . . .’ the definitions of hiku and the following terms, in The Meaning of Ice: People and Sea Ice in Three Arctic Communities, edited by Shari Fox Gearheard, Lene Kielsen Holm, Henry Huntington, Joe Mello Leavitt and Andrew R. Mahoney (Hanover: International Polar Institute Press, 2013).
‘Floe giant: Over 10 km across . . .’ in Sea Ice Nomenclature 2nd edition (Geneva: World Meteorological Organization, 2014).
‘I
became aware of snow and summer . . .’ and ‘In my short lifetime, things have really changed . . .’ from Stories of the Raven – Snowchange 2005 Conference Report, edited by Tero Mustonen (Anchorage, AK: Snowchange, 2005), see http://www.snowchange.org/ (accessed 31 May 2018).
‘A growing number of books . . .’ Kingikmi Sigum Qanuq Ilitaavut – Wales Inupiaq Sea Ice Dictionary, compiled by Winton Weyapuk, Jr and Igor Krupnik (Washington, DC: The Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institute, 2012).
‘September, for hunters in Nunavut . . .’ see The Meaning of Ice (2013) for Joelie Sanguya’s definitions.
‘These surreal scrapbooks are a Great Exhibition in miniature . . .’ The albums of ‘India-Proofs of Wood-Engravings by The Brothers Dalziel’ can be viewed online at the British Museum Collection Database, www.britishmuseum.org/collection. The wood engravings for Albert Markham’s The Great Frozen Sea are contained in an album from 1878, Museum No. 1913,0415.198, Nos. 325–57.
‘Markham’s is a dreadful story. . .’ Albert Markham, The Great Frozen Sea: A Personal Narrative of the Voyage of the Alert during the Arctic Expedition of 1875–6 (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1878).
‘an oil-stone, a sand-bag or cushion . . .’ and following, in John Jackson and William Andrew Chatto, A Treatise on Wood Engraving, Historical and Practical (London: C. Knight, 1839).
‘a bone that looked like a polar bear . . .’ see, for example, the object in the Canadian Museum of History collections described as ‘Floating or Flying Bear’, a Middle Dorset culture ivory carving from the Igloolik area, https://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/archeo/paleoesq/pegb4eng.shtml (accessed 31 May 2018).
‘When you return to earth, send some ice . . .’ Recorded in Knud Rasmussen, Eskimo Folk Tales, translated and edited by W. Worster (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1921).
‘My playmates were native Greenlanders . . .’ in Knud Rasmussen’s memoir Across Arctic America (New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1927).
‘for permanent under-secretary of state . . .’ Telegram, Thule 3136 145/141 31/5/1953, quoted in Kamilla Christensen and Jeppe Sørensen, ‘The Forced Relocation of the Indigenous People of Uummannaq, or How to Silence a Minority’, Humanity in Action, https://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledgebase/13-the-forced-relocation-of-the-indigenous-people-of-uummannaq-or-how-to-silence-a-minority (accessed 31 May 2018).
Kiviuq’s tale was related by Annie Peterloosie to listeners in Pond Inlet, up the north coast of Baffin Island from Clyde River, Nunavut, in John Houston’s 2007 eponymous film, produced by Kirt Ejesiak for Triad Film.
‘The physical realities of the natural world’ in ‘ “Today is today and tomorrow is tomorrow”: Reflections on Inuit Understanding of Time and Place’ by Nicole Gombay in Proceedings of the 15th Inuit Studies Conference, Orality (Paris: INALCO, 2009).
IV
Carolyn Brown on Merce Cunningham, quoted in Sandra Kemp, ‘But What if the Object Began to Speak? The Aesthetics of Dance’, in Thinking Art: Beyond Traditional Aesthetics, edited by Andrew Benjamin and Peter Osborne (London: ICA, 1991).
‘She gazed with her eyes open very wide . . .’ and following; Noel Streatfeild’s novel White Boots was first published by Collins (London: 1951).
‘after great consideration . . .’ Bror Meyer, Skating with Bror Meyer (New York, NY and Toronto, ON: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1921).
‘He seemed to see, with a cartographer’s eye, that string of swimming pools . . .’ John Cheever, ‘The Swimmer’, in The Stories of John Cheever (New York, NY: Knopf, 1978).
‘The spirit of curling demands . . .’ The Royal Caledonian Curling Club Handbook: Rules of the Game and the Royal Club Competitions, issued by the RCCC in 2014.
‘Mammoth Unsinkable Vessel’ Geoffrey Pyke’s proposal in Max Perutz and the Secret of Life by Georgina Ferry (London: Chatto & Windus, 2007). Pyke’s quotation from the Old Testament is Habakkuk 1:5 (King James Version).
‘Combined Operations requisitioned a large meat store . . .’ Max Perutz writes about his experience working on pykrete in ‘Enemy Alien’, collected in I Wish I’d Made You Angry Earlier: Essays on Science, Scientists and Humanity (Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2003).
‘All of the materials we’ve selected are translucent . . .’ ‘A New Home on Mars: NASA Langley’s Icy Concept for Living on the Red Planet’, published 29 December 2016, https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/a-new-home-on-mars-nasa-langley-s-icy-concept-for-living-on-the-red-planet (accessed 31 May 2018).
‘Chart of the Magnetic Curves of Equal Variation’ in Black’s General Atlas (Edinburgh: A&C Black, 1844).
V
W. H. Auden, ‘Journey to Iceland’, first published in Poetry Vol. 49, No. 4 (January 1937).
‘One should simply say and do as little as possible . . .’ Halldór Laxness, Under the Glacier, translated by Magnus Magnusson (New York, NY: Vintage, 2004).
The definition of ‘iokel’ is from An Icelandic-English Dictionary by Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1874).
‘The streams called Ice-waves . . .’ The story of Gylfi appears in the Prose Edda, in Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur’s translation (New York, NY: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1916).
‘dynamic rivers of ice’ is the definition of a glacier according to the US Geological Survey Glossary of Glacier Terminology (2004): https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2004/1216/text.html (accessed 31 May 2018).
‘the issue of steam from a cleft. . .’ ‘Journey to Iceland’, as above. The recording was issued on CD as W. H. Auden: The Spoken Word (London: British Library, 2007).
Pliny the Elder on crystals and ice in ‘The Natural Story of Precious Stones’, Book 37, Chapter 9 of Natural History.
‘Lucid gems are made of water . . .’ William Gilbert in De Magnete, translated by Silvanus Phillips Thompson (London: Chiswick Press, 1900).
Paul Vander-Molen and Jack Vander-Molen, Iceland Breakthrough (Sparkford: The Oxford Illustrated Press in association with Channel Four Television Company, 1985).
‘the 6 tonnes of ice lifted from Jökulsárlón . . .’ Olafur Eliasson, Your Waste of Time (2006), http://olafureliasson.net/archive/artwork/WEK100564/your-waste-of-time (accessed 31 May 2018).
‘the expedition was overtaken by a snowstorm . . .’ Hakon Wadell published ‘Some Studies and Observations from the Greatest Glacial Area in Iceland’ in Geografiska Annaler Vol. 2 (1920).
‘Nature’s Bible . . .’ John Muir, Travels in Alaska (Boston, MA: Mariner Books, 1998).
‘Here and there on the sills, ledges and crags . . .’ þórbergur þórðarson, í Suðursveit (uncredited English translation, þórbergssetur, Hali).
‘One should always treat stones with courtesy . . .’ þórbergur þórðarson, The Stones Speak, translated by Julian Meldon D’Arcy (Reykjavik: Mál og menning, 2012).
‘It affected you differently whether you walked west or east. . .’ and ‘if a rock fell . . .’ í Suðursveit (as above).
‘a slim volume illustrated with wood engravings . . .’ Gunnar Gunnarsson, The Good Shepherd, translated by Philip Roughton and illustrated by Masha Simkovitch (Reykjavik: Bjartur, 2016).
Dr Elisha Kent Kane writes of the ‘pleasurable sleepiness of the story books’ in The U.S. Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
‘Arnaldur Indriðason’s crime novels . . .’ see, for example, Reykjavik Nights, translated by Victoria Cribb (London: Vintage, 2015): ‘For years he had been reading up on tales of travellers going astray or surviving ordeals on the country’s high moors and mountain roads.’
‘It is cold at the choir’s back . . .’ The original Icelandic is Kalt er við kórbak, / kúrir þar Jón hrak. / Ýtar snúa austur og vestur, / allir nema Jón hrak, allir nema Jón hrak. Translation quoted in ‘Skriðuklaustur and the Archaeological Excavations in East-Iceland’ by Regína Hrönn Ragnarsdóttir at https://guidetoiceland.is (accessed 31 May 201
8).
‘from the deep places of my sleep. . .’ Gunnar Gunnarsson, Ships in the Sky, translated by Evelyn Charlotte Ramsden (London: Jarrolds Ltd, 1938).
VI
‘We need not destroy the past. . .’ John Cage, ‘Lecture on Nothing’ (1949), collected in Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961).
‘Then Scottish artist Katie Paterson . . .’ Vatnajökull (the sound of) (2007–8), see http://katiepaterson.org/portfolio/vatnajokull-the-sound-of/ (accessed 31 May 2018).
‘Carmen has studied ice at different stages of this cycle . . .’ Carmen Braden has written about her work in ‘Misconceptions of a silent north’ and ‘Ice as instrument: using natural forms of ice for sound production’ in The Global Composition, Conference on Sound, Media and the Environment, edited by Sabine Breitsameter and Claudia Söller-Eckert (Darmstadt: Hochschule Darmstadt, 2012). For more information, see her website: https://blackicesound.com (accessed 31 May 2018).
‘soft foldings of snow . . .’ R. Murray Schafer, Snowforms (Toronto, ON: Arcana Editions, 1986).
‘I call architecture frozen music.’ Attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann, Margaret Fuller, translated by Margaret Fuller (Boston, MA: Hilliard, Gray and Co, 1839).
‘This pond never breaks up so soon . . .’ ‘Spring’, in H. D. Thoreau, Walden: Or Life in the Woods (London: Penguin Illustrated Classics, 1938).
The Library of Ice Page 26