The Arctic in the Middle Ages,

Vaughan, Richard. Journal of Medieval History8 (1982) 313-42.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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An overview of knowledge of the Arctic in the middle ages. Claims that any one of the writers displays woeful ignorance, but collectively they provide a good picture of the medieval Arctic, from cold to frostbite, from skies to polar bears, to unicorn horns. The writers he cites are Saxo Grammaticus who is in “the very first rank of medieval writers about the north” and who wrote about geysers and volcanoes in Iceland, and Finnish use of skies. See his History of the Danes, 2 volumes, 1978-9.

The Private Life of Polar Exploration.

Scott, James Maurice. Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1982.
  • Antarctic Reading: General
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p. 65, re Scott’s Northern Party: Levick used to read aloud in the evening, first a chapter a night of David Copperfield, then the Life of Stevenson, then Simon the Jester [William Locke novel]. That was their library, and thus rationed lasted them about half way through the winter…. On Sunday nights they sang with a religious bias.

Icebound in Antarctica

Lewis, David and Mimi George. London: Secker & Warburg, 1987.
  • 1982-84 Australian Yacht Cruises (aboard Dick Smith Explorer).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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p. 81, on meeting the Russian icebreaker Kapitan Markov: There were sixteen women on their ship, most in their thirties and forties. Some were very good-looking. I noticed. Some were sailors; some laundry workers. We tied to a rope a copy of Voyage to the Ice, the story of my 1977-8 expedition. It was hauled up and we received in return a guide to Leningrad’s Hermitage Museum.

“English Writings about the New World”

Maclaren, I. S. in History of the Book in Canada. Volume 1. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004, p. 33-.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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p. 38: At least by the nineteenth century, most expeditions of exploration considered a well-stocked library an essential component of their cargo. Obviously, those in ships could afford a greater tonnage; just how many men on Franklin’s two land expeditions hauled books and charts over portages and across the tundra remains a nice question. Certainly, when the first expedition was reduced in the fall of 1821 to a straggling line of men marching back from Bathurst Inlet to the hoped-for refuge of Fort Enterprise, a copy of Samuel Hearne’s A Journey from the Prince of Wales’s Fort, in Hudson’s Bay, to the Northern Ocean, the only book then available about the region, remained part of the load. The party of twenty men lost their way more than once. Were they consulting the charter in the inferior but lighter-weight octavo edition of Hearne’s book, issued in Dublin in 1796? It would have made a more logical traveling companion than the larger quarto first edition (London, 1795). Yet the map in the octavo showed Hearne’s return route across the Barrens differently from the first edition’s map. The discrepancy could have confused Franklin, whose men suffered more than one delay, and contributed to the number of deaths. Certainly, the matter of a book’s size bears materially on this dramatic possibility.

The Big Ship: An Autobiography

Larsen, Henry A. Toronto: McClelland & Stuart, 1957.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

On the first commercial vessel to transit the North West Passage.

Dawn in Arctic Alaska.

Jenness, Diamond. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1957.
  • 1913-16 Canadian Arctic Expedition (Led by Stefansson with Captain Bob Bartlett commanding the Karluk).
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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A most engaging book based on Jenness’s journals of his years on Stefansson’s 1913 Canadian/Alaskan Expedition. He luckily avoided the Karluk Disaster by being invited by Stefansson to go ashore to get sledging experience. Although he retains the colonial vocabulary of the civilized and the savages, his anthropological observations are fascinating and his essential respect for the indigenous people compelling.

With the ‘Aurora’ in the Antarctic 1911-1914.

Davis, John King. Introduction by Beau Riffenburgh. Bluntisham, UK: Bluntisham Books, 2007.
  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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First published in 1919. One of three books based on Davis’s journals, this one of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition is primarily about navigation and seamanship, and very little about other human activities or amusements for diversion. The concluding paragraphs of his “L’Avenir” have the most human touch:

The Greatest Show in the Arctic: The American Exploration of Franz Josef Land, 1898-1905.

Capelotti, P. J. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016.
  • 1898-1905 US Expeditions to Franz Josef Land (Wellman, Baldwin and Ziegler).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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A lengthy study of three incompetent American attempts on the North Pole from Franz Josef Land. The first left two Norwegians, hired by the American Wellman, isolated at Fort McKinley advised by second-in command Evelyn Briggs Baldwin, for the winter of 1898-99 on poor rations and little fuel for cooking or heat.

Antarctica’s First Lady.

Ronne, Edith M. (Jackie). Beaumont, TX: Clifton Seaport Museum, 2004.
  • 1946-48 Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Primarily an account of the Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition of 1947-48 in which she accompanied her husband. Based largely on her diaries of that period, she is a staunch defender of Ronne’s leadership, dismissing his critics as merely bitching about his more disciplined Norwegian regimen. The complaints are taken as inevitable and nothing was done to contain them, here or on his later IGY expedition. There is nothing here about reading, even in her chapter on the long winter night where one usually finds some mention of antidotes to boredom. What a contrast to Walton’s book below.