Sculpting in Ice

P olar explorers, primarily known for symbolic acts of imperial derring-do, are reliable and safe, nonconfrontational heroes for confusing times. 1 Perhaps, this was all quite clear to Prince Harry of Britain, who joined a February 2011 trek to the North Pole as a member of “Walking with the Wounded,” a group raising money for injured veterans. Once the mythic zones of European heroism, the poles are today more associated with concerns over native rights, oil company drilling and privatization, the destruction of habitats and species, and most of all climate change. So the Prince in bright red survival gear posing (for GQ and other fashion venues) is only the most recent recuperation of myths of British heroic martyrdom—John Franklin’s lost north polar expedition of 1845 and Robert Scott’s 1912 disaster at the South Pole. 2 These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Art · Climate change · Economic history · Fur trade · Geography · Glacier · Ice caps · Mythology · North pole · Physical geography · Classics · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Geology · History · Oceanography