Scholars and laymen alike have long projected their fantasies onto
the great expanse of the global North, whether it be as a frozen
no-man's-land, an icy realm of marauding Vikings or an unspoiled
cradle of prehistoric human life. Bernd Brunner reconstructs the
encounters of adventurers, colonists and indigenous communities
that led to the creation of a northern "cabinet of wonders" and
imbued Scandinavia, Iceland and the Arctic with a perennial
mystique. Like the mythological sagas that inspired everyone from
Wagner to Tolkien, Extreme North explores both the dramatic vistas
of the Scandinavian fjords and the murky depths of a Western psyche
obsessed with Nordic whiteness. In concise but thoroughly
researched chapters, Brunner highlights the cultural and political
fictions at play from the first "discoveries" of northern
landscapes and stories, to the eugenicist elevation of the "Nordic"
phenotype (which in turn influenced America's limits on
immigration), to the idealisation of Scandinavian social democracy
as a post-racial utopia. Brunner traces how crackpot Nazi
philosophies that tied the "Aryan race" to the upper latitudes have
influenced modern pseudoscientific fantasies of racial and cultural
superiority the world over. The North, Brunner argues, was as much
invented as discovered. Full of glittering details embedded in
vivid storytelling, Extreme North is a fascinating romp through
both actual encounters and popular imaginings, and a disturbing
reminder of the power of fantasy to shape the world we live in.
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