This cold heaven : seven seasons in Greenland / Gretel Ehrlich.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ehrlich, Gretel.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ehrlich, Gretel--Travel--Greenland.

Ehrlich, Gretel.

Travel.

Discoveries in geography.

Greenland.

Greenland--Description and travel.

Rasmussen, Knud, 1879-1933--Travel--Greenland.

Rasmussen, Knud.

Rasmussen, Knud, 1879-1933.

Greenland--Discovery and exploration--Danish.

Physical Description:

xv, 377 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Pantheon Books, [2001]

Summary:

For the Last Decade, Gretel Ehrlich has been obsessed by an island, a terrain, a culture, and the men and women who long for and love the complex frailties and treacherous beauty of a world defined by ice.

Greenland, the world's largest island, 840,000 square miles in extent, is covered by the largest continental ice sheet in the world.

Only the rocky fringe of its coast is habitable. There, the Inuit, the Arctic's first explorers, have survived and thrived in the harshest of climates. For the Inuit, an ice-age, ice-adapted people who first traveled from Siberia across the polar North six thousand years ago, weather is consciousness. In a world composed of ice and darkness, water and light, where skins of dog, seal, bear, even hare and eider duck, are sewn into clothes, tents, and sleeping bags as protection, where transport is by dogsled and kayak, the only rein for the uncontrollable force of weather is an unbending self-discipline. The blend of physical endurance and psychological perseverance required for daily existence first drew Ehrlich to this terrain.

Her guide, her inspiration, her companion in spirit was the great Danish-Inuit explorer and ethnographer Knud Rasmussen. Between 1902 and his death in 1933 he launched seven expeditions: to record the unknown history and customs of the nomadic Eskimos; to chronicle the skills, beliefs, and crafts that made life in this climate possible and a matter of grace. For Rasmussen, "all true wisdom is only to be found far from the dwellings of man, in great solitudes." As she followed his trail, Ehrlich was to find the things that can open the mind to what is hidden from others. This Cold Heaven is at once a distillation of her many journeys, a path into a world divided into darkness and light and, finally, an attempt to capture the clarity that blinds us with surprise.

Contents:

Darkness Visible: Uummannaq, Greenland, 1995 3

Elisabeth, 1995 45

The Arctic Station, 1910-1917 49

The Second Thule Expedition Begins, 1917 57

The Homeward Journey, 1917 66

N by E: Illorsuit, July 1996 75

The Fifth Thule Expedition Begins, 1921 120

The Time Between Two Winters, 1922 130

Qaanaaq, 1997 139

The Fifth Thule Expedition, 1923 197

New Ice, 1923-1924 213

Qaanaaq, 1997 221

The Mackenzie Delta, 1924 247

Alaska, 1924 253

The Line That Ties Us: Leaving Qaanaaq, 1998 259

Winter to Spring, 1998 278

Aliberti's Ride, 1998 284

Palo's Wedding, 1998 306

Nanuq: The Polar Bear, 1999 310

Spring to Summer: Qaanaaq, 1999 337

Summer: Qaanaaq, 1999 342

Autumn, 1999 344

Epilogue, January 2001 353.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 359-361) and index.

ISBN:

0679442006

OCLC:

45610031