“Turning to face north, face the north, we enter our own unconscious. Always, in retrospect, the journey north has the quality of dream.” Margaret Atwood, “True North” In this interdisciplinary collection, sixteen scholars from twelve countries explore the notion of the North as a realm of the supernatural. This region has long been associated with sorcerous inhabitants, mythical tribes, metaphysical forces of good and evil, and a range of supernatural qualities. It was both the sacred abode of the gods and a feared source of menacing invaders and otherworldly beings. Whether from the perspective of traditional Jewish lore or of contemporary black metal music, few motifs in European cultural history show such longevity and broad appeal. Contributors: Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, Angela Byrne, Danielle Marie Cudmore, Stefan Donecker, Brenda S. Gardenour Walter, Silvije Habulinec, Erica Hill, Jay Johnston, Maria Kasyanova, Jan Leichsenring, Shane McCorristine, Jennifer E. Michaels, Ya’acov Sarig, Rudolf Simek, Athanasios Votsis, Brian Walter

German travellers, explorers, missionaries and scholars produced significant new knowledge about the Arctic in Europe and elsewhere from the 17th until the 19th century. However, until now, no English-language study or collective volume has been dedicated to their representations of the Arctic. Possibly due to linguistic barriers, this corpus has not been sufficiently taken into account in transnational and circumpolar approaches to the fast-growing field of Arctic Studies. This volume serves to heighten awareness about the importance of these writings in view of the history of the Far North. The chapters gathered here offer critical readings of manuscripts and publications, including travelogues, natural histories of the Arctic, newspaper articles and scholarly texts based on first-hand observations, as well as works of fiction. The sources are considered in their historical context, as political, religious, social, economic and cultural aspects are discussed in relation to discourses about the Arctic in general. The volume opens with a spirited preface by Professor Jean Malaurie, France’s most distinguished Arctic specialist and author of The Last Kings of Thule (1955).

This book examines British scientific and antiquarian travels in the "North," circa 1790–1830. British perceptions, representations and imaginings of the North are considered part of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century processes of British self-fashioning as a Northern nation, and key in unifying the expanding North Atlantic empire.

Gift-giving played an important role in political, social and religious life in medieval and early modern Europe. This volume explores an under-examined and often-overlooked aspect of this phenomenon: the material nature of the gift. Drawing on examples from both medieval and early modern Europe, the authors from the UK and across Europe explore the craftsmanship involved in the production of gifts and the use of exotic objects and animals, from elephant bones to polar bears and 'living' holy objects, to communicate power, class and allegiance. Gifts were publicly given, displayed and worn and so the book explores the ways in which, as tangible objects, gifts could help to construct religious and social worlds. But the beauty and material richness of the gift could also provoke anxieties. Classical and Christian authorities agreed that, in gift-giving, it was supposed to be the thought that counted and consequently wealth and grandeur raised worries about greed and corruption: was a valuable ring payment for sexual services or a token of love and a promise of marriage? Over three centuries, Gift-Giving and Materiality in Europe, 1300-1600: Gifts as Objects reflects on the possibilities, practicalities and concerns raised by the material character of gifts.

Visitors to the Arctic enter places that have been traditionally imagined as otherworldly. This strangeness fascinated audiences in nineteenth-century Britain when the idea of the heroic explorer voyaging through unmapped zones reached its zenith. The Spectral Arctic re-thinks our understanding of Arctic exploration by paying attention to the importance of dreams and ghosts in the quest for the Northwest Passage. The narratives of Arctic exploration that we are all familiar with today are just the tip of the iceberg: they disguise a great mass of mysterious and dimly lit stories beneath the surface. In contrast to oft-told tales of heroism and disaster, this book reveals the hidden stories of dreaming and haunted explorers, of frozen mummies, of rescue balloons, visits to Inuit shamans, and of the entranced female clairvoyants who travelled to the Arctic in search of John Franklin’s lost expedition. Through new readings of archival documents, exploration narratives, and fictional texts, these spectral stories reflect the complex ways that men and women actually thought about the far North in the past. This revisionist historical account allows us to make sense of current cultural and political concerns in the Canadian Arctic about the location of Franklin’s ships.

A Scientific, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour: John Lee In England, Wales and Ireland, 1806–7, is a critical edition of the travel diaries and sketchbooks of Dr John Lee FRS (né Fiott, 1783–1866), published for the first time. Shortly after graduating from Cambridge University, Lee set out on a seven-month walking tour through England, Wales, and Ireland on 31 July 1806. His itinerary included most of the key sites on the ‘home tour’, such as Llangollen, the Lakes of Killarney, and the Wicklow Mountains, but also less- visited sites such as the Blasket Islands, Co. Kerry. Best known later in life as an astronomer, antiquary, Liberal campaigner for women’s suffrage, and generous philanthropist, Lee’s lifelong interest in mineralogy, antiquities, industry, and popular culture, and his concern for the poor, are evident throughout these early diaries. Most of the content relates to Ireland, where Lee arrived on 29 August 1806 and remained until 6 March 1807. His observations paint a picture of Irish social, cultural, and political life in the aftermath of the 1798 and 1803 rebellions, and the 1801 Act of Union. The memory of 1798 looms large in the diaries, as Lee recorded conversations with witnesses and participants on both sides. These observations are laid against the backdrop of Lee’s assessments of the Irish landscape, evaluated verbally and pictorially within the frameworks of the sublime and picturesque. Lee also paid much attention to the physical remains of Irish history (earthen forts, early-Christian religious sites) and to the endurance of Gaelic culture (the Irish language, Gaelic games, ‘pattern’ days) that made Ireland exotic to the English visitor. The volume includes an annotated transcription of Lee’s five diaries and notes from his three sketchbooks, reproductions of some of his sketches, and a critical introduction setting Lee’s diaries within their historical, cultural, and intellectual contexts. It makes Lee’s detailed observations available to researchers for the first time, a valuable resource for Irish social, cultural, and political history, local history, and the histories of travel and antiquarianism.