The Frozen Ship: The Histories and Tales of Polar Exploration

Moss's book is primarily a literary historical examination of the myth and reality of Antarctica and the Arctic from the point of view of European settlers and explorers, including the history of Norse settlements in Greenland; the expeditions of Parry, Nansen, Franklin and others; and Arctic myth and imagery in literature from the likes of Donne, Mary Shelley and Lewis Carroll. Well-written and interesting in terms of cultural criticism, Moss's work suffers from a number of factual and bibliographic omissions. Part V, on the experience of European women in the Arctic and their interactions with Inuit women, presents new material and a point of view entirely absent from the writings of male explorers. But, when discussing the Norse in Greenland, she relies on ambiguous archaeological data from the 1920's and 1930's, ignoring newer, more conclusive research. University of Alberta research on the Franklin expedition is also ignored, and her discussion of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner fails to note that Coleridge met Samuel Hearne and had knowledge of his experiences in Northern Canada. Further, Moss admits that her own northernmost visits were to Troms\xF8, Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland, all markedly different in landscape and climate from the Siberian Coast, Greenland, and northern Canada; yet she writes as if her perceptions of these relatively benign places is correlative. Though worth reading for the casual historian, readers should bear in mind that the record here is far from complete.