Kavenna travels to many different places that have been suggested as the mythical Thule that Pytheas says he reached back in fourth century B.C. It's also about what "Thule" as a notion or concept meant or means to different people, and why certain places either did or didn't match those expectations.
For example, the first place Kavenna tries is the Shetland Islands, because the Greeks knew of Britain, and the Shetlands would have been within the six days of sailing Pytheas said he did when he left Scotland and reached Thule. And she discusses what she sees and finds when she travels there, how it makes her feel, but also how it was common for would-be explorers of Victorian England to travel to the Shetlands seeking Thule. Only it seemed too close, too normal, to be such a fanciful place to them. So they set their sights elsewhere, pushing Thule further away.
Sometimes it goes that way. People reach a land they think is strange, but once they've reached it, well, it's just not strange enough is it? But in other cases, it goes the opposite direction. Fridtjof Nansen explored the north polar region, searching for both Thule and a way to the North Pole, but ultimately decided his homeland of Norway was Thule. Kavenna speaks with a former President of Estonia who is convinced that it is Thule, that when Pytheas speaks of the natives taking him to the place where the sun sets, he's referring to an island off the coast where a meteor struck centuries earlier. That the memories of that moment, the explosion, the fire, handed been handed down through the locals, and that's what they showed Pytheas.
And, because the Nazis got it in their heads that Thule was like some Aryan paradise, she has to talk about that for a while. I could have done without that. The only thing I need to know went through Himmler's brain is a bullet.
Kavenna's writing style is very flowery. She's really working hard to try and describe what she's experiencing as she visits all these different northern realms. So a lot of descriptions of the color of the sea and the sky, or the little communities that hang on up there somehow. It feels excessive, maybe because I doubt the words can really do it justice. But I can appreciate the attempt.
Unfortunately, she's also kind of judgmental and a little condescending in how she describes some of the people she talks with. Like one lady who lives in the very northernmost part of Norway, she feels she needs to mention the inside of the woman's house is adorned with 'ugly china.' Why? One, I don't know what qualifies as 'ugly china', so it doesn't really give me a sense of the setting any more than just saying 'china figurines' would have. Two, what the fuck does that have to do with anything? I'm not here for Kavenna to Marie Kondo this woman's home. She lives up on the proverbial welldigger's bum of the world, let her decorate how she wants.
Kavenna admits that she often has the desire to move to new places, and also to flee the city for remote locations. And the way she writes about people does convey the air of her being a tourist. She shows up, admires the scenery, looks down at the locals, and moves on to the next place. Not so different from some of the Victorians she describes complaining because they couldn't take their fancy dinnerware on horseback across Iceland.
'It was a realistic sublime: the glacier was beautiful and spotless; the ice fields of Iceland, looming above the blistered plains and the curdled pools, supplied a sense of ancient space. It was a Thule of silence, a Thule of magnificent mountains and cold glaciers. A deep-time Thule, the indifferent ages revealed in nature, in the vast and implacable ice.'
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