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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the pictorial and textual descriptions of summer in English-language travel narratives about Greenland in the long nineteenth century showing how text and image often contradicted each other.

Paper long abstract:

Numerous accounts of Arctic exploration were published in the long nineteenth century (1789-1914), often including descriptions of summer and seasonality that somehow became lost in large-scale media coverage of Arctic exploration, which tended to focus on more masculine and challenging Arctic environment in winter. Even today, the Arctic Is strongly associated with winter and difficulty. Heidi Hansson shows that the ‘cluster of associations surrounding the popular idea’ of the Arctic ‘includes severe cold, distance from civilisation, dangerous conditions, barrenness and exposure to natural forces’. She goes on to note: ‘winter is the reference point even in works set in summer’ for the ‘(generalized) North’ that is ‘defined through climate and season’ (2009, 61).

This paper examines the pictorial and textual descriptions of summer in Greenland in the long nineteenth century showing how text and image often contradicted each other. While paragraphs could describe verdant valleys on the west coast, published pictures showed fjords choked with icebergs. This paper analyses references to summer in published travel narratives created by ‘explorers’, and also looks at sketches, paintings, and photographs, as well as articles, engravings and lithographs in periodicals, asking if the visual preoccupation with ice and snow can account for the misconception, prevalent today, that Arctic regions are continuously snow-clad.