Extreme North - A Cultural History

People have perennially projected their fantasies onto the North as a frozen no-man's-land full of marauding Vikings or as the unspoiled landscape of a purer, more elemental form of life.

Bernd Brunner recovers the encounters of adventurers with its dramatic vistas, fierce weather, exotic treasures and indigenous peoples-and with the literary sagas that seemed to offer an alternate ("whiter" and "superior") cultural origin story to those of decadent Greece or Rome, and the moralistic "Semitic" Bible. The Left has idealised Scandinavian social democracy. The Right borrows from a long history of crackpot theories of Northern origins. Nordic phenotypes characterised eugenics, which in turn influenced America's limits on immigration.

The North, Brunner argues, was as much invented as discovered. A valuable contribution to intellectual history, full of vivid documentation, Extreme North is an enlightening journey through a place that is real, but also, in fascinating and very disturbing ways, imaginary.

About the author

Bernd Brunner is a historian, lecturer, and author of many acclaimed books. He splits his time between Istanbul and Berlin.Jefferson Chase has translated works by Thomas Mann and Wolfgang Schivelbusch, among others. He lives in Berlin.

Product details

• Authors: Bernd Brunner, Brunner Bernd
• Assisted by: Jefferson Chase (Translation)
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 15.02.2022
• EAN: 9780393881004
• ISBN: 978-0-393-88100-4
• Dimensions: 160 mm x 236 mm x 25 mm
• Weight: 432 g
• Illustrations: 12 illustrations
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; HISTORY / Europe / Germany, European History, Germany, HISTORY / World, HISTORY / Polar Regions, General & world history, Northern Europe, Scandinavia, General and world history, Polar regions, History of other geographical groupings and regions, History of other lands, HISTORY / Europe / Nordic Countries