Show simple item record

dc.contributor.authorRyall, Anka
dc.date.accessioned2016-03-04T09:38:24Z
dc.date.available2016-03-04T09:38:24Z
dc.date.issued2015
dc.description.abstractThe development of tourism is a significant aspect of the processes of modernity in the High Arctic. This article discusses the British art historian and mountaineer Sir William Martin Conway's two travelogues, The First Crossing of Spitsbergen (1897) and With Ski and Sledge over Arctic Glaciers (1898), in terms of a pioneering tourist approach to the archipelago of Svalbard. Unlike earlier yachting tourists, Conway described a journey into the uncharted interior of the main island, Spitsbergen. His books are therefore narrated as exploration accounts and following many of the demands of that genre, such as an emphasis on mapping, natural science and being the first. However, they may also be read as guidebooks for other discerning and undaunted British gentleman travellers. Inspired by the art critic John Ruskin’s “science of aspects”, which combined accurate scientific observations and practical knowledge with an imaginative and aesthetic response to the landscape, Conway attempts to give his readers a positive sense of the qualities of the Arctic. At the same time, he promotes Svalbard as an Arctic “Playground of Europe”, where adventurous Alpinists in addition to climbing unknown mountains and glaciers could find fraternal domesticity far away from home around the hearth of the campfire. In this way Conway locates natural beauty, life and recreational opportunities where travellers before him had only described desolation and death.en_US
dc.descriptionPublished version. Source at <a href=http://dx.doi.org/10.7557/13.3424>http://dx.doi.org/10.7557/13.3424</a>.en_US
dc.identifier.citationNordlit 2015(35):29-45en_US
dc.identifier.cristinIDFRIDAID 1310912
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.7557/13.3424
dc.identifier.doi10.7557/13.3424
dc.identifier.issn1503-2086
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10037/8675
dc.identifier.urnURN:NBN:no-uit_munin_8221
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisherSeptentrio Academic Publishingen_US
dc.rights.accessRightsopenAccess
dc.subjectSvalbarden_US
dc.subjectthe Arcticen_US
dc.subjecttourism and travel writingen_US
dc.subjectlandscape aestheticsen_US
dc.subjectSir William Martin Conwayen_US
dc.subjectJohn Ruskinen_US
dc.subjectLord Dufferinen_US
dc.subjectrugged gentilityen_US
dc.subjecthomosocial domesticityen_US
dc.subjectVDP::Humaniora: 000::Kulturvitenskap: 060::Nordisk kulturvitenskap: 061en_US
dc.subjectVDP::Humanities: 000::Cultural science: 060::Nordic cultural science: 061en_US
dc.titleThe Arctic Playground of Europe: Sir Martin Conway's Svalbarden_US
dc.typeJournal articleen_US
dc.typeTidsskriftartikkelen_US
dc.typePeer revieweden_US


File(s) in this item

Thumbnail

This item appears in the following collection(s)

Show simple item record