The Arctic is a liminal place for Westerners – unexplored until just a couple of centuries ago, painted with a palette that most Westerners are not familiar with, and with weather that ranges from the otherworldly beauty of the Northern Lights through to storms that will happily kill ignorant non-indigenous people. As the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen’s described it while trapped in the Arctic ice… …It is a dreamland painted in the imagination’s most delicate tints; it is colour etherealised. … Continue reading The Spectral Arctic: A History of Dreams and Ghosts in Polar Exploration