rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    title: Extreme North
    sub title: a cultural history
  title info:
    title: Erfindung des Nordens. English
  name:
    name part: Brunner, Bernd
    name part: 1964-
    role:
      role term: creator
    role:
      role term: author.
  name:
    name part: Chase, Jefferson S.
    role:
      role term: translator.
  type of resource: text
  genre: bibliography
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: nyu
    date issued: 2022
    copyright date: 2022
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  language:
    language term: ger
  physical description:
    form: print
    extent: 246 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.
  abstract: 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 idealization 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.
  table of contents: The Northern unicorn -- Beyond the borders of the known world -- Left of sunrise -- Onerous journeys to lands of the midnight sun -- Northern wonderland -- Tired of the South: the new love affair with the North -- Discovering the Norse myths -- A confidence man and a blind bard -- The scent of the arctic -- When East Was North -- Climate makes the man -- Shot through with gods and demons -- "To the North its end shall be cast" -- The dubious cradle of humanity -- The tactics of indigenous peoples -- A distant Atlantic island -- Victorians and Vikings -- Arctic mania and the discovery of America -- Dramatic cliffs and kaleidoscopic waves -- "For God's sake, don't look down!" -- The Farthest North -- The fin de siècle: great expanses and wind! -- Developing Nordic proclivities further -- The abyss of "racial science" -- "Aryan" brothers in the South -- Scandinavia, anti-Fascist bulwark -- Before the Second World War -- The eternal longing for the cold apocalypse -- The Bible is right after all -- The true North -- Last diamonds -- Acknowledgments -- Selected bibliography -- Index.
  note: Bernd Brunner ; translated by Jefferson Chase.
  note: Translation from the German of: Erfindung des Nordens ©2019.
  note: Translated from the German.
  note: Includes bibliographical references (pages [219]-225) and index.
  subject:
    geographic code: ev-----
  subject:
    topic: National characteristics, Scandinavian
  subject:
    topic: Literature and history
    geographic: Scandinavia
  subject:
    topic: Literature and society
    geographic: Scandinavia
    topic: History
  subject:
    geographic: Scandinavia
    topic: Civilization
  subject:
    topic: HISTORY / Europe / Nordic Countries
  classification: DL30 .B7513 2022
  classification: 948
  identifier: 9780393881004
  identifier: 0393881008
  identifier: 9780393881011
  identifier: 2021055883
  record info:
    record content source: DLC
    record creation date: 211202
    record change date: 20220504172405.8
    record identifier: in00004562061