Extreme North: A Cultural History
Bernd Brunner
Feb 2022 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Jonathan Yen
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8 hr 25 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
Scholars and laymen alike have long projected their fantasies onto the great expanse of the global North, whether it be as a frozen no-man's-land, an icy realm of marauding Vikings, or an unspoiled cradle of prehistoric human life. Bernd Brunner reconstructs the encounters of adventurers, colonists, and indigenous communities that led to the creation of a northern "cabinet of wonders" and imbued Scandinavia, Iceland, and the Arctic with a perennial mystique. Like the mythological sagas that inspired everyone from Wagner to Tolkien, Extreme North explores both the dramatic vistas of the Scandinavian fjords and the murky depths of a Western psyche obsessed with Nordic whiteness. In concise but thoroughly researched chapters, Brunner highlights the cultural and political fictions at play from the first "discoveries" of northern landscapes and stories, to the eugenicist elevation of the "Nordic" phenotype (which in turn influenced America's limits on immigration), to the idealization of Scandinavian social democracy as a post-racial utopia. Brunner traces how crackpot Nazi philosophies that tied the "Aryan race" to the upper latitudes have influenced modern pseudoscientific fantasies of racial and cultural superiority the world over.
About the author
Bernd Brunner is an historian, lecturer, and author of many acclaimed books whose work has also appeared in Lapham's Quarterly, the Paris Review, and Aeon, among other outlets. He splits his time between Istanbul and Berlin.
Jonathan Yen was inspired by the Golden Age of Radio, and he's carried that inspiration through to commercial work, voice acting, and stage productions. From vintage Howard Fast science fiction to naturalist Paul Rosolie's true adventures in the Amazon, Jonathan loves to tell a good story.
Jefferson Chase is the translator of some forty books from German to English, including works by Thomas Mann, Volker Ullrich, and Wolfgang Schivelbusch. He lives in Berlin.
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