Let me start this book review with a confession: I am not a historian. And many might think that therefore I might not be the right person to review a book about Arctic history, Arctic exploration, to be precise, and to be more precise, the search(es) for the Northwest Passage(s). This might very well be and I am consequently not able to comment on the historic accuracy of Adriana Craciun's extremely fascinating treatise on the nature of Arctic perception. You may have noticed that I am using the word ‘fascinating’. For this is what this book is, even to a scholar of different disciplines than the author herself.
But whether or not the reader of this book has historic expertise or not I consider rather irrelevant, although, of course, profound knowledge of Arctic exploration is certainly a benefit. What the reader needs to engage in this book is self-criticism and the ability to question her own ways of perceiving the Arctic, its (re)presentation and the way narratives about the Arctic are produced and reproduced. Because what I find most intriguing about this book is Craciun's ability to produce a sophisticated, in essence case-study bound, criticism of the reinforcement of Arctic narratives. She directly and indirectly reminds us time and again that ‘the Arctic’ is a construct of specific times, cultures and political purposes, and that when dealing with the Arctic one should be cautious to avoid John Moss’ claim she cites on page 20: ‘When you enter Arctic narrative, you enter every narrative of the Arctic’ (Moss, Reference Moss1998, p. 105). This provides a true challenge for one's own contemporary thinking, particularly as an Arctic scholar. It makes me personally question the use of images and narratives in my own research that have found their way into my subconscious and which I take for granted without necessarily questioning them. In this regard I found particularly intriguing the analysis in Chapter 1 of the way the relics of Franklin's failed expedition to find the Northwest Passage – which in its singular form is a construct of imagination given the complex geography of the Canadian north – were displayed by those having found them, museums or in the Illustrated London News. After all, the way these relics were displayed and interpreted carried certain messages, which, in light of the absence of any documentary output by the Franklin expedition itself, save one that was found, inevitably constitutes a rather imaginary view on the expedition itself.
The first chapter was, at least for me, the most intriguing and inspiring given its extremely critical view on historical production and ultimately provided significant challenges for my own contemporary thinking. But also Chapters 2 and 3, the former dealing with the hows of report production and the political context in which this is embedded, the latter dealing with the role of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) within exploratory contexts, provided me with so much food for self-criticism that I have hardly found in any other book. It made me question what narratives about the Arctic are ‘normal’ and prevailing in contemporary Arctic discourse and whether or not I have embedded and reproduced them in my own scholarly work. And here lies probably the biggest asset of Craciun's work: it aims to counter narrative-based authorship trends by aiming to unravel ‘a nested set of exploration cultures’ (p. 22). This should make all (Arctic) scholars think! What research cultures are we part of? And can we accept those unchallenged?
With these questions in mind Craciun took me deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the ‘heroic age’ of Arctic exploration, which, let's face it, was not that heroic after all. As the author so eloquently shows, Arctic exploration and particularly the reporting about it was marked by failures, mischief, politics and romanticisation. For instance, why has the Franklin disaster of 1845 remained so prominently in the collective memory while the Knight disaster of 1719 has not? A question ever more relevant today after the discovery of HMS Erebus in 2014 and HMS Terror two years later? Several aspects come together here. For instance, Knight worked for the HBC, which retained a strict policy of secrecy given its commercial nature regarding all its activities. Consequently, documentary output in its largest parts ended up in the depths of the HBC archives, never to be seen again. Contrarily, 19th century exploration showed an almost ‘obsessive emphasis on preservation, collection, and exhibition of materials [. . .] associated with discovery’ (p. 137) that turned Franklin as well as his equally unsuccessful predecessor by several centuries, Martin Frobisher, into polar heroes (Chapters 4 and 5). And we must furthermore understand that this ‘disaster cult’ (p. 32) still to this day serves deeply rooted Canadian interests: that of sovereignty in the Arctic archipelago. The difficulties of this matter have been discussed widely (see for example Griffiths, Huebert & Lackenbauer, Reference Griffiths, Huebert and Lackenbauer2011), but as Craciun shows in the Epilogue, the discovery of HMS Erebus and the cult that has arisen with it do play into the hands of the Canadian government. Although Terror had not been discovered at the time of Craciun's writing, it appears reasonable to assume that the vessel's discovery will be used in a similar manner.
The reader of this review may miss a critical analysis of the historical content of Adriana Craciun's book. But as a non-historian my focus was shifted to the normative role this book plays vis-à-vis its historical accuracy. And even though one might not be utterly interested in polar history I would urge (self-)critical scholars to engage in the literature of this fascinating work. Even though the language Craciun employs is at times slightly overly complex, its thought-provoking, sharp and encouraging content make this book essential for any Arctic scholar. And besides, especially for a non-historian, this book motivates the reader to engage more in the histories of polar exploration.
