The Last Imaginary Place : A Human History of the Arctic World

Sea ice and the midnight sun, flaming aurora and endless winter night--the arctic of traveler's tales and romantic novels is the unattainable dream of a vast and desolate world--the last imaginary place on Earth. Now, in this fascinating volume, renowned archeologist Robert McGhee lifts the veil to reveal the true Arctic. Combining anthropology, history, and personal memoir, this book dispels romanticized notions of the Arctic as a world apart, exotic and isolated, revealing a land far more fascinating than we had imagined. McGhee paints a vivid portrait of the movement of Viking farmers across the North Atlantic islands, and of the long and arduous searches for sea-passages to Asia. We meet the fur-traders who pioneered European expansion across the northern forests of Canada and Siberia, the whalers and ivory-hunters who ravaged northern seas, and patriotic explorers racing to reach the North Pole. Most important, McGhee offers far more coverage of the native peoples of the Arctic, societies that other histories usually neglect. We discover how northerners have learned to exploit a rich "hunter's world" where game is, contrary to our expectations, far easier to find than in more temperate lands. McGhee takes us to a thousand-year-old Tuniit campsite perfectly preserved in the Arctic cold, follows the entrepreneurial Inuit as they cross the Arctic in search of metal, and reveals the dangers that native people face today from industrial pollution and global warming. Flavored by McGhee's personal reflections based on thirty years of work and travel in the region, here is a wide ranging, enlightening look at one of the most culturally rich and fascinating areas of the world. Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgements......Page 7 Prelude: An Arctic Vision......Page 8 1 After the Ice Age......Page 12 2 A Distant Paradise:The Arctic in Ancient Thought......Page 21 3 A Hunter’s World......Page 35 4 In Arctic Siberia......Page 57 5 Vikings and Arctic Farmers:The Norse Atlantic Saga......Page 75 6 Inuit......Page 103 7 Ice and Death on the Northeast Passage......Page 131 8 Martin Frobisher’s Gold Mines......Page 154 9 The Rape of Spitsbergen......Page 174 10 Bay of Tragedy......Page 191 11 Frozen Glory......Page 217 12 The Peoples’ Land......Page 241 13 An Arctic Journey......Page 273 Useful References, Interesting Reading......Page 276 A......Page 288 C......Page 289 D......Page 290 G......Page 291 I......Page 292 M......Page 293 P......Page 294 S......Page 295 W......Page 296 Z......Page 297 I FIRST BECAME AWARE OF THE ARCTIC during the 1950s, when I was a teenager whose world was limited to the well-tended farmlands and tame urban environments of Ontario. Robert Mcghee. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 275-285) And Index.