Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1210105 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Scotland on Sunday, February 13, 2005
'An involving, astonishing book of travels... Joanna Kavenna's sense of place is exceptional'

Martin Ince, New Scientist
'Her story sheds light on our growing knowledge of Earth and our persistent wish for something strange just beyond the horizon.'

Timothy Garton Ash in the Sunday Times, 24th April
'Joanna Kavenna's The Ice Museum... is an evocative account of crossing frontiers - geographical, cultural, political and personal.'

Customer Reviews

A new star is born!
As the new century gets into its stride there can be no doubt that we are seeing the emergence of a new generation of travel writers. With 'The Ice Museum' Kavenna has joined WilliamFiennes, Louisa Waugh and the other of the new wave writers.

Like so much travel writing, 'The Ice Museum' is more of a journey about an idea than just a place - very much in the tradition of Chatwin or Thubron.

Kavenna is fascinated by the mythical nation of Thule, first described by the Greek Explorer Pytheas. Thule was a northern land, where the sun never sat and where sailing one day to the north took you to where the sea was frozen. The author is tired of living in London, feels the need to escape and decides to follow her fascination of the north and the legend of Thule.

Kavenna journeys to the many places that have been identified as Thule, the North of Scotland and the Shetlands, Nansen the explorer's Norway, perhaps more predictably Iceland and Greenland but also to Estonia and to Berlin where the founder of the early 20th century Thule society claimed to have been the first Nazi, Thule representing the purity of the Aryan race.

We meet some fascinating characters. We follow the lives of some of the great Arctic explorers, meet staff who remember the Nazis in Berlin, the first President of independent Estonia who used Thule as a metaphor for a Soviet Free Estonia. We meet those who inhabit some of the most northern settlements and learn about their constant struggle to survive. And we visit the US airbase on Thule in Greenland and also some of the Inuits who were moved into further, inhospitable lands, to make way for the airmen.

The book ends Svelbard, reflecting on the work of scientists who are monitoring the destruction of this pure habitat from pollution flowing from the developed south and who are also looking for signs of climate change.

This is fascinating stuff and Kavenna treat her subject - and her subjects - with great sensitivity and care.

On the book jacket Thubron described this as a "truly original debut', and he is is right.

I can't wait for her next work.

Into great silence
This is an excellent book which starts from a specific premise - the search for the elusive land of Thule, first described by Pytheas and the mythical most northerly land in the world - and ends up exploring general (inter-related) themes of the revolution of air travel, man's increased knowledge of the world and global warming.

Kavenna writes engagingly and combines her scholarly treatment of the development of the myth of Thule with a novelist's sense of place and plot. Aspects of the book reminded me of Peter Hoeg's "Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow", not so much for the snow and ice or even the location of Greenland's Thule Air Base but for the sense of atmosphere when Kavenna meets an eccentric scientist in Hampstead which is very reminiscent of Miss Smilla's encounter with Andreas Fine Licht.

If I have one criticism it is that, at times, it seems as if Kavenna has stretched a concept beyond its natural limits in order to write a full-length book. At least two of the countries visited could not have been Thule because Pytheas could not have reached them in four days from Britain. The chapter on Estonia, however well written, is, as Kavenna is only too aware, a dead-end and other chapters focusing on the Nazi fetish for an Aryan northern identity have little if anything to do with the location of the land itself. However, these chapters are best justified, I think, as an explanation of the pollution of myth for political purpose. The book concludes under the shadow of a threat greater than that facing the world in the 1930sh, namely how man's ambivalent relationship with the world has led to the prospect of irreversible damage. While not making light of this threat, Kavenna's description of the beautiful icy wilderness provides ample inspiration to save it.

The Ice Museum
This book is absolutely fantastic. I could not stop reading it. The descriptions of the various places visited are highly atmospheric and compelling. I was utterly transported by the lyrical writing and immediately wanted to visit all the places mentioned. There's also great warmth and humour in the author's observations about people and places. I am going to but this book for all my friends and family and I cannot recommend it highly enough - BUY IT!