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A review by jo_kershaw
Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World by Andrea Pitzer
3.75
This is an engaging and at times harrowing story of exploration and survival - or failure to survive in the 16th Century High Arctic.
I would have liked a bit more clarity about what's drawn directly from first hand sources, and what's the author's slightly novelistic imagining (she does this well, plausibly and vividly - but it would be nice to know what the basis for it is). Also, the references to the harm of colonialism didn't feel well embedded in the narrative. Clearly there is a strong link between the age of exploration and colonisation - and the Dutch were certainly colonisers elsewhere - but given Barents was looking for a trade route, not to find colonies, the Dutch didn't in fact colonise the High Arctic, and Barents and co ended up spending most of their time trying not to starve to death or get eaten by polar bears, if either felt like it should have been a lot bigger and more in depth, or left out. Similarly, yes, Western sailors and explorers had a terrible impact on the animal and bird population, for no strong reason, but aside from a couple of early and misguided attempts to catch polar bears, they mostly seem to have been killing for food (which as the author rightly noted was all that stopped all of them dying of scurvy), or trying to stop the polar bears eating them.
I would have liked a bit more clarity about what's drawn directly from first hand sources, and what's the author's slightly novelistic imagining (she does this well, plausibly and vividly - but it would be nice to know what the basis for it is). Also, the references to the harm of colonialism didn't feel well embedded in the narrative. Clearly there is a strong link between the age of exploration and colonisation - and the Dutch were certainly colonisers elsewhere - but given Barents was looking for a trade route, not to find colonies, the Dutch didn't in fact colonise the High Arctic, and Barents and co ended up spending most of their time trying not to starve to death or get eaten by polar bears, if either felt like it should have been a lot bigger and more in depth, or left out. Similarly, yes, Western sailors and explorers had a terrible impact on the animal and bird population, for no strong reason, but aside from a couple of early and misguided attempts to catch polar bears, they mostly seem to have been killing for food (which as the author rightly noted was all that stopped all of them dying of scurvy), or trying to stop the polar bears eating them.