The Library of Ice: Readings from a Cold Climate

by Nancy Campbell

‘A wonderful Nancy Campbell is a fine storyteller with a rare physical intelligence. The extraordinary brilliance of her eye confers the reader a total immersion in the rimy realms she explores. Glaciers, Arctic floe, verglas, frost and snow — I can think of no better or warmer guide to the icy ends of the Earth’ Dan Richards, author of Climbing DaysA vivid and perceptive book combining memoir, scientific and cultural history with a bewitching account of landscape and place, which will appeal to readers of Robert Macfarlane, Roger Deakin and Olivia Laing.  Long captivated by the solid yet impermanent nature of ice, by its stark, rugged beauty, acclaimed poet and writer Nancy Campbell sets out from the world’s northernmost museum – at Upernavik in Greenland – to explore it in all its facets. From the Bodleian Library archives to the traces left by the great polar expeditions, from remote Arctic settlements to the ice houses of Calcutta, she examines the impact of ice on our lives at a time when it is itself under threat from climate change.The Library of Ice is a fascinating and beautifully rendered evocation of the interplay of people and their environment on a fragile planet, and of a writer’s quest to define the value of her work in a disappearing landscape.‘The Library of Ice instantly transported me elsewhere... This luminous book is both beautifully written and astute in its observations, turning the pages of time backwards and revealing, like the archive of the earth’s climate stored in layers of solidified water, the embedded meanings of the world’s icy realms. It is a book as urgently relevant as it is wondrous’ Julian Hoffman, author of The Heart of Small Things ‘An extraordinary work not only for the perspicacity and innate experience of the author who leads the reader carefully across intertwined icy tracks of crystallised geographics, melting myths and frozen exploration histories, but through her own tender diagnostics of what reading ice can show us in these times … Perilous in its scope, exacting in its observation, wild in intellect, The Library of Ice captures the reader’s attention almost as if caught in ice itself’ MacGillivray, author of The Nine of Sorroial Mordantless   ‘This is travel writing to be treasured. A biography of ice, the element that has another life, with hard facts thawed and warmed by a poet's voice. Campbell's writing is companionable, curious, deeply researched and with no bragging about the intrepidity that has taken her between winter-dark Greenland, Polar libaries, Scottish curling rinks, Alpine glaciers and Henry Thoreau's pond at Walden’ Jasper Winn, author of Paddle

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Science, Environment, Essays, Travel, History

241 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2018

Reviews

[Paula Bardell-Hedley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I opted to slip Nancy Campbell's memoir cum scientific and social history of ice into my backpack when taking a cruise from Liverpool to the Norwegian Fjords. Rather absurdly, my journey commenced in mid-July when there was more chance of sighting ice in the chef’s lemon sorbet than through the porthole in my cabin (although, there were smudges of snow visible on the distant mountain tops), however, I felt compelled to read something vaguely Nordic while touring the region.

As it happened, I was immensely pleased with my choice. The Library of Ice: Readings from a Cold Climate follows the author over a seven-year-period as she travels from the world’s northernmost open-air museum at Upernavik in Greenland to Oxford’s Bodleian Library, scooting off at various points to visit a variety of chilly places such as Iceland and Antarctica. Thankfully the freakish heatwave affecting parts of Scandinavia at the time of my trip did not in the least spoil my pleasure in this insightful book. In fact, it absorbed me completely during the long days at sea.

Campbell scrutinizes her subject from the perspective of a writer. In her quest to record the effects of climate change on harsh but stunning environments she is drawn into the lives of the people she meets, developing an intense fascination with their beliefs and traditions. Her enthusiasm is contagious and left me with a hankering to visit some of the locations she so vividly describes.

The Library of Ice is an enchanting though objective account of the author’s icy wanderings, from remote Arctic settlements to dusty archives containing histories of doomed polar expeditions. It’s intriguing, poetic in parts, and the perfect book to accompany one on a voyage to the land of Trolls, Vikings and the midnight sun.

Many thanks to Simon and Schuster UK Fiction for providing an advance review copy of this title.

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

From her home in Oxford, Nancy Campbell spent 7 years travelling to locations across the world in what can only be described as a pilgrimage to discover all she can about ice, its composition, its effect upon our world, its uses, the secrets it hides, and to follow the trails of those who have explored it as well as those who have learned to live and survive on it.

Starting in Greenland, she spends months living in a museum in Upernavik, to which it has taken her 3 days to travel, learning about the science of ice - she nearly lost me there! - and the Greenlanders extensive knowledge of it. She seems to have a knack of finding artists’ refuges and grants that allow her to travel and live in places conducive to study and writing - Iceland, the Netherlands, the amazing Jan Michalski Foundation in Switzerland where she lives in an architecturally designed tree house. On our travels with her, we learn about subjects as diverse as the battles fought by Arctic and Antarctic explorers to overcome barriers of ice, about those who record the acoustics of ice and turn it into music, about the technology required to create the perfect curling rink, about perfectly preserved bodies found in glaciers, and about the harvesting of ice on Thoreau’s Walden Pond which made millions for the early 19th century entrepreneur who perfected the technique of preserving it so that it could be shipped to Madras and Bombay to be served at the tables of high ranking officials.

This is a book that twists and turns through its story. Campbell has mined the topic of ice to produce a fascinating, eclectic compendium. She writes very well and clearly loves her subject. Highly recommended.

With thanks to NetGalley and Scribner / Simon & Schuster UK for a review copy.

[8stitches 9lives · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always had a real fascination with ice but due to having several illnesses that require warmth, I have been unable to travel to such cold and remote places mentioned in this compendium. It is absolutely clear from the very beginning that Nancy Campbell loves this topic, her enthusiasm shines throughout the book and is so infectious. Having spent seven years travelling all over the world to discover all she can about ice, a lot of the content is interesting. However, there are instances when it feels quite tedious and Campbell often goes off on a tangent and forgets to return to the original point. It did sometimes also feel as though it was heading into waffling territory, affecting momentum quite heavily.

Part scientific study, part social and cultural history, the author makes some interesting points and discovers many captivating things about the composition of ice, its uses and reveals the secrets of those who have survived in such cold, harsh landscapes for centuries. Her descriptive prose made me want to visit many of the places she mentions, and I hope one day I may be able to do so. She also discusses the issue of climate change which should be a matter we are all invested in finding a solution for. It is here where her intense appreciation for this subject truly makes the pages come alive. This is an impressive an enchanting study which came across as deeply personal, but it does meander and travel at rather a glacial pace overall.

Many thanks to Scribner for an ARC. I was not required to post a review, and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Water is one of the only elements that can exist on our planet in its solid, liquid and gaseous state. At the poles and high points of our world is where the ice, for the time being at least, still exists. It seems like a permanent, immovable substance, which it mostly is, but as the global temperatures climb then this cold heaven becomes more transient. Snow and ice are substances that have captivated Nancy Campbell since childhood and she decided that she wanted to follow in the literary footstep of other great writers and write about ice.

However this is not a travel book in the usual sense, she is as happy wading through the archives in the Bodleian library and looking at art as she is visiting Greenland and Iceland in the far north or reminiscing about the ice dance champions from the 1980s. She sees a shaman dressed in white and wearing antlers who is there to open the curling ceremony and learns in Scotland the correct way to make a rink for the sport.

To understand the ice, you need to think in term of deep time. Ice at the bottom of the glaciers in Antarctica has been there for thousands of years, and Campbell ponders the science of looking back through our planets climate history through cylinders of ice.

I really liked this book, there are contemplative and reflective moments as she seeks out these cold places of our planet, but also moments of warmth as she spends time with the Inuit in Greenland and understands how they have depended upon the ice for generations and the threats that they face. With her writing, there are points of lucid clarity like sparkling clear ice and other moments where the writing is diffused by the history of a moment.

[Melanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is a case of being led to believe a book is a certain thing but it is not quite that. I expected a book like Deakin would write as it was described in the summary, but alas, it was not really like that at all. Yes, it has a meandering nature, yes, it does talk about very interesting things, but overall, it left me just cold, which is odd to say considering this book is all about ice. I am still not 100% sure what her actual point was and part of me is ok with that, not all books need to have a point. I guess that's the downfall of a memoir, I often feel that the parts I would like to know, the author is not ready to share. Got some great bits from it, but overall, not a book that I would recommend to a lover of Deakin et al.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dreamy memoir of various travels to Arctic/northern places. The author has a beautiful writing style and in my opinion a great way of storytelling. She finds beautiful places and interesting people, doing things I have never heard or thought about (for example the ice sound artist). One of my 2021 highlights!

[Emma Sea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just wonderful. A compelling blend of history and personal narrative.

I am thrilled to see Campbell released another book in November 2020 I can now try to track down.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was quite a meandering book, Nancy Campbell would be writing about something and then suddenly move onto to something else, the book seems to behave like an iceberg in that it will go where it wants. The writing is so interesting that I was left wondering if those tangents actually ended and the initial subject was returned too. I honestly can't remember, but it doesn't matter because there is so much here that you don't feel like you've missed out on anything.

The book starts off with Nancy giving up her job because she gets offered a place as resident artist in Upernavik, Greenland, she falls in love with the place and that becomes the start of a seven year obsession with ice. The most amazing thing for me is how ice has managed to get itself involved in so many areas of life. Art, books, music, film, science, adventure, history and myth, there is so much of it that I was impressed it was possible to fit it into one book. I did spend a lot of time googling some of the more interesting facts.

If you want to read a comprehensive collection about ice then this is the place for you.

Blog post is here> https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2018...

[Sophy H · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok so I'm not having much luck with winter and ice related books in my latest readings!

This captured my interest and my hopes were high going in. The writing however felt all over the place, veering wildly from one topic to another before repeatedly getting stuck on ice cap melting and global warming (we get it, OK, we friggin get it with the global warming!!)

I quickly lost interest and started skim reading large portions but I couldn't get into it at all. I felt bored in fact.

Disappointing middle ground fare from Campbell that I can't justify giving more than 2 stars to.

[Swati · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not fond of the cold. At all. I live in Dublin, Ireland and it’s a place where your constant companion, even in summer, is a light jacket and not a book. Because you never know when the sun is going to hide behind the clouds and when the breeze is going to start whipping your hair with cold fingers. Yet, I was fascinated when I came across Nancy Campbell’s book on NetGalley. “The Library of Ice” promised to be a “vivid and perceptive book combining memoir, scientific and cultural history with a bewitching account of landscape and place.” How can you not be seduced by that delicious swirl?

Campbell’s icy journey begins when she is offered the position of a resident artist in Upernavik, Greenland. She was given a choice to go during the summer or in winter when “the darkness of the winter to many southerners seems like a terrible and nasty time lying in wait.” But Campbell finds the “idea of the terrible and nasty 24-hour polar night and the midwinter cold appealing,” and decides to go in January.

That’s how Campbell’s exploration of the nature of ice begins. She marvels at the Greenlandic way of life, which is still predominantly pre-modern, dominated by hunting and fishing. She learns how the landscape, particularly the ice and the glaciers, has played a big role in shaping the people’s traditions and life even till today. She learns their legends and myths. And she falls in love.

For the next seven years Campbell goes to museums and libraries, meets with scientists and explorers and learns how ice has been instrumental in building entire societies. She travels on a shoestring budget where she “sofa-surfed for a few nights, or spent the night on a train concourse, or holed up in an airport or bus station toilet cubicle…” And although she “has no desire to go to Antarctica” (I wonder why) she does go to far flung areas in New Zealand, Iceland, and Scotland.

Amidst accounts from her wanderings Campbell weaves in innumerable facts about voyagers and explorers who navigated treacherous ice and made detailed notes of their observations. Quotes from their notes or diaries that she reads from libraries or museums abound. We learn of pristine landscapes along coasts glittering with ice formations, and of ecosystems that are impacted by the changing nature of ice. One of the most interesting narratives for me was the story of Otzi. I also relished reading some of the folklores and spiritual beliefs attached to the places she visits.

Yet, I found myself drifting off in the middle, not unlike a glacier, my brain meandering just like Campbell’s writing. With her sources for the book as varied as figures from science and history and art and music Campbell cannot help but wander in and out of topics and discussions, sometimes abruptly. I found this slightly jarring and found myself losing the thread of thought many times especially when there is a long series of verbatim quotes. Her writing, when it shines through subjectively, is exquisite and poetic. But sadly we don’t get a lot of that.

Having said that, I wouldn’t discourage you to read the book. It’s definitely an entertaining and educational read. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me the ARC for a review!

[VG · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to this book - as someone who adores deserts, and the bleak, often desolate polar deserts most of all, discovering a book that focused on the draw of ice had me ordering it immediately. Unfortunately, this one did not work for me.

As I was reading, I couldn’t quite categorise the genre of this book. Was it memoir? Essays? There were some parts exclusively based around scientific descriptions of ice or extracts from tales of explorers, yet the author is neither scientist nor biographer, and there are many books that provide that information in a more contextualised, detailed way. Other sections recounted the author’s research opportunities, but these were brief and added little to the overall narrative, almost suggesting a lack of agency or intention, and little self-reflection that is a highlight of well-written memoirs. On a few occasions, she is offered the chance to stay in a remote museum/cabin as a form of artist’s retreat, but despite sometimes detailed descriptions of the journey to these places, we hear little to nothing of the actual time spent there, which would seem to me the most potentially interesting part. This lack of direction prevented me from losing myself in the writing, nice though it was - it felt jarring to move from snippet from snippet without a clearer narrative running through.

Books do not need to have a purpose to be enjoyable, but I would like to have seen more of the author’s thoughts, the reasons why she was drawn to this topic. The section about her first time in Greenland was so brief and superficially described that I could not reconcile it with her later comments about not being able to get it out of her head, and many of her actions seemed random and unintentional, driven more by financial necessity than passion. Which again, is absolutely fine, but there was not a sense of the real impact of that, either.

Campbell is clearly a talented writer, but this was too meandering and lacking in substance for me.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

While we busy ourselves with our daily grind and small hassles, sometimes we get reminded of how unforgiving, but at the same time stunningly beautiful and incredibly powerful the forces of nature are. It is on the very first page that we experience, through Campbell, how powerless humans are in the face of the raw forces of nature - Campbell's plane is trying to land in Upernavik, Greenland, during severe weather. Even our immense technological advances cannot tame the arctic winds and snow storms, and the arctic circles remain inhospitable, with only very few braving the extreme cold, one of whom, luckily for the reader, is Nancy Campbell. With exceptional eloquence she takes the reader to the coldest places on earth, as well as world-renowned libraries and museums.
The book grips the reader not only through Campbell's poetic prose, but also through the images her writing conjures. But, Campbell soon discovers, "ice does not always look like ice", taking us along on her journey to discover everything ice, whether it be the setting of her long-cherished Anderson fable in Greenland, Antarctica, the Bodleian Library in London, or the middle of the North Sea, on deck of an overnight ferry.

This book is best enjoyed in the warmer months or when cozy on the sofa with a cuppa.

Thank you to Nancy Campbell, Simon and Schuster UK, Scribner, and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

[Irene · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an odd read that should have felt more disconnected due to the frequent changes in setting and topic, but Campbell managed to neatly thread it all together. From her, we learn about her own writing and that of others, mainly writers from cold, icy places; about ice, understanding it, navigating it, and listening to it, both for safety and for making music (Jonna Jinton has many videos about it). We hear directly from people who live above the Arctic Circle about the consequences of the ice caps melting, and how it's disrupting their lives and the ecosystem as a whole. There's also a fair bit about the exploration age (if you want to know more about this topic, you can pick up Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica's Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night).

I was charmed, entertained and educated by this book. What more can you ask?

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

While The Library of Ice is broad in scope, it's also precise and direct. It never becomes overly long or too sprawling, as a book of this nature could. Over seven years, Campbell travelled around icy regions of the world, beginning in Greenland, and also exploring Iceland, Switzerland and the US, as well as researching the history of Antarctic exploration. She goes to Greenland mainly because she finds an artist's residency there, but becomes fascinated by the icy world and the people who live there. Ice is also undergoing a period of great change: in our lifetimes there may be no more ice, and so this is both an elegy as well as a study. Campbell describes early understandings of ice, from the belief that diamonds came from ice, to the work of Robert Boyle, who experimented on ice at a time when freezers didn't exist and could only work in the depths of winter. She writes about people inspired by ice, such as Danish artists working in Greenland, and nature writers such as Thoreau, or the great novelists of Iceland. This is a carefully researched and beautifully written book, drawing on poetry, novels, scientific research and the diaries and letters of explorers. Though it's short, it took me a week to read because I found myself wanting to research different angles and follow up on things mentioned in the book, helped by the excellent bibliography. Some of the chapters interested me more than others: I found the chapter on curling and figure-skating hard to get through, but could have read five or six more chapters about Greenland -- but overall, this is a very interesting read, and an excellent look at the many different facets of ice and the ways it exists in cultural study as well as science. I'm curious to read Campbell's other books, especially her poetry collection about Greenland.

[MarinaLawliett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aviso que el libro merece mucha más nota de la que aquí una don nadie le está dando.

Me ha encantado leer tantísimo sobre algo que creía conocer y no sabía ni un 0.000001%: el hielo.
El trabajo de la autora es alucinante, y el disfrute, cariño y amor que pone en cada página admirable.
Creo que es el primer libro ensayo qye que leo y estoy muy contenta con mi elección, sobre todo por la inmensa cantidad de temas que trata, que aunque confieso algunos me gustaban más y otros menos, siempre me acababa sorprendiendo con sus historias y aventuras.

[kxtera meddins (maresh) · Rating 4 out of 5]

1/3 science, 1/3 arctic history, 1/3 memoir

[Kevin Tole · Rating 3 out of 5]

When it arrived I thought, "This isn't what I ordered." Far too trim and well presented, looking like an author's imprint, spic and span, expensive appearance when it was a cheap purchase, inside the back cover the photo of a gamine, strong, long necked, short-cropped hair, Scottish-looking young woman wearing something that seems to be a glam substitute for a leather jacket. Plus.... hardly my type of writer; Oxford habituée with all that that implies, non-scientist writing on what I thought would at least be a semi-scientific investigation into the nature of ice. It is not that the artist can never get over being the artist to convey the science of a subject, its generally just that they get carried away with the whole romantic poetry of the thing and waft off into something which becomes solely poesy and Romantic and loses the down-to-earth scientific fact; a bit like supercharged Fritjof Capra (an example of someone flip flopping the other way from straight science to abject mysticism).

Had I made up my mind on this one before even starting it? A bad thing to do. Don't do that. Early pages augur favourably - well written, high quality, far better than dried prune, po-faced Robert Macfarlane. A distance from and at the same time an involvement in what she was writing about. Sort of millennial Barry Lopez. Soon we’re tripping over the subjects and areas covered / to cover; a vast array of topics, almost an ephemerata of delights, where talk of a library fire leads onto a discussion on paper conservation, none of it written dully or without interest. Reminds me of Sebald without all that psycho / mytho-geographer bollocks. I love the observation on the paintings of icebergs indicative of a time of high Romanticism wheras now they are merely temporal or even tragic in the light of climate change. And it is Climate Change that hovers over everything, the unnamed spectre of Extinction Foretold. Thank god the text does not seem to be falling over itself into some sort of liberal 'adolescent' whimsy. And I can even forgive her getting it all arse-about-face in her ideas of Continental Drift and Mid-Ocean Ridge Crustal spreading. Nothing that a good proof-reader would not have corrected immediately. I do like her observation of the human and social movement from hunter/gatherer to job economy to Danish welfare state hand out reception. It means we’re not on the tourist run or cold cruise liner trip.

But there is a whole world ready to blunder into and it starts with a dissing of geology. Geological observation does not just underlie our understanding of climate change, it is fundamental to it because it precisely debunks the theories of Creationism, of those stunted fundamental religionists who are also generally the ones to hold that there is no such thing as climate change. These two positions - debunking climate change and Creationism - seem to go hand in hand with these Christian wankers - and they need to be shut down. Geology debunks Creationism and might just take them to the edges of Doubt on climate change. I’ll be spying on ‘em from the top of the hill as they swim to Jesus when the levee breaks .

Ms Campbell sees a common dualism between AWE on the one hand at the phenomena of the natural world, and KNOWLEDGE on the other through the explanations that Science can give us about these natural phenomena. The suggestion is that it is like you can have either one or the other. You can’t have both. As if the knowledge of KNOWLEDGE annihilates the sense of AWE. Of course the AWE is the pocket money of the romantics and poets and the KNOWLEDGE is the property of the Scientists and Realists.
ALL PURE BULLSHIT.... and a remarkably bland and dull exposition. You only have to read a scientist writing about his area of interest to hear the immense depth of AWE expressed by the Science THROUGH Knowledge. Knowledge doesn’t dispense with the Awe. If anything it magnifies it. What IS different is that the Romantic Mystic does NOT want to have explication. He wants to be cosseted in the world of arcane mysticism that gets blown away by knowledge. It is the Mystics that are ANTI-KNOWLEDGE. The writer as Mystic wants to blow away that sense of awe for a mess of , not potage, but WORDS. The mystic does not want his sense of belief and faith shattered by knowledge and understanding.
A second mirror on this if you like, is the position of Tradition and Folklore against Investigation – Ancient Belief against New Knowledge. You know like,..... err..... the shamans like they were really cool right. Errrrrr they were wrong. Full stop. Get real. Come down from Mystery Mountain.

Not only is the book a record of exploration of these ephemerata but it is also a record of the progress of the book itself, of stages along its creation, and of its progression in finding the next grant to inspire its parthenogenesis. It is similar to the path of curatorship in the modern world of the expo – here the curator becomes more important than what is being curated. Its the path to solipsism embraced by most alleged Contemporary Fine Art acolytes and every YBA yea unto every art school graduate in the current climate of over-production. Thats the way it is, folks, in yer Modern Contemporary Yarts. The successful are those merry Pilgrims that can navigate the troubled pathways to the next Grant Application or Residency. G4A? Fuck ‘em!

So......... all in all........... A lot of MEMES!!!!!......... A lot of TROPES!!!!!!!!!...... a lot of contemporary art bollix (written of course because writing is so much easier to essay and judge and rank than say a sculpture). There are no distinctions today anyway... so

Look.....

just get over it, eh, Grandad.

Writer, Artist, Printmaker, Visual Journeyman, Temporal Warrior, Mytho-Geographer, Contemporary Guide, Modern-day Shaman, Media Subversive, Aesthetic Facilitator..... I've heard or seen 'em all. No doubt, as in the Life of Brian, I've followed a few.

Ach well............... I’ll think of it (maybe but probably highly unlikely) when I’m half way up the Ben on some epic Grade IV and the ice turns to shite....

[Nasim Marie Jafry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gorgeous and seamless blend of travel, memoir, science, literature and art - with ice at its centre. I learned so much. A true library of ice! I also have an emotional connection to this book as the Ilulissat Kunstmuseum in Greenland was my late stepfather’s childhood home in 1930s and 40s.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

The amount of research and interesting stories in this book is insane, I just wish the different section had linked together better and the overall story was a bit more compelling.

[Laura Hoffman Brauman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always try to extend/enhance my travels by reading works evocative of the places I am visiting. Reading works set in or about a particular location make the trip seem longer and helps me to anchor the sights and experiences in my memory. I picked up The Library of Ice before a trip to Iceland but didn’t get to it before that trip. I moved it back up in my TBR before our trip to Alaska. For a person who doesn’t like to be cold, I love traveling to places defined by cold weather and harsh conditions. Nancy Campbell is a poet and an artist with words and The Library of Ice is a combination of memoir, scientific/historic exploration, and artistic interpretation — all of which combines to make a book that is beautifully written and interesting, but also somewhat meandering in it’s approach. Campbell spent time as the artist in residence at Upernavik in Greenland, the world’s northernmost museum. The direction there for the artists in residence was to leave any visual arts created behind and take any written art away. Campbell did both, leaving with a narrative about her experiences and learnings that she then produced in woodblock printing and sent back to the museum. This kind of blend of methods and ways of expressing thought is indicative of the way Campbell approached the topic. So much in here was intriguing - in particular the section on music made utilizing the sounds of the ice (it sent me down a google rabbit hole) - but I don’t know that this would be a read for everyone. It’s definitely a slower read that invites the reader to reflect and engage.

[Monica San Miguel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un viaje en todos los sentidos por el hielo, tanto culturalmente (y hace especial énfasis en el campo de la lingüística), científicamente e históricamente, también como un desafío al enfrentarnos a él. Me gusta especialmente esta distinta percepción:
"Tusaqtuut (noviembre), significa tiempo de noticias, ya que el mar de hielo permite recorrer las grandes distancias que hay entre campamentos y encontrarse unos a otros tras meses de separación y mar abierto, y llevar noticias de los amigos y la familia. En contraste con los exploradores, para quienes la llegada del hielo supone el final del viaje y perder el contacto con los suyos, eso solo es el principio para quienes mejor conocen el Ártico"

Quizás la autora tiene un ritmo un tanto deslavazado pero creo lo enmienda con una narración muy lírica que lo enlaza todo, además que esos retazos temporales y espaciales casi reflejan la naturaleza del propio hielo rompiéndose. En definitiva un libro que combina ciencia y arte porque no hay mejor representación de esa combinación que el hielo, que ha fascinado al ser humano en todos sus aspectos desde los tiempos mas antiguos.

[Grace Machon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed parts of this book and others not quite as much. It was beautifully written, but not glorious. Interesting but not captivating. But who knows if that’s on the book or me. It’s so hard to focus on anything during a pandemic and I feel this a book that is meant to be peaceful and read when you are at ease with the world not feeling the weight of it.
I will definitely read Nancy Campbell again.

[Rachel Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful. A stunning love letter to the Arctic and all cold, wild places. Enthusiastically researched and written with a deep respect for these landscapes, it swings from reading like an academic journal to a collection of poems. It contains fascinating stories of historical explorations to modern efforts to conserve these fragile environments.

Beautiful! Just beautiful.

[Malene · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am relishing this book (only the epilogue to go)- brimming with the author's observations, musings and experiences in all things to do with ice. Literature, music, science, geography, history-this book is a wealth of ice related fascination.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

There have been a lot of popular musings published on the Arctic and Antarctic, as anybody who goes to the Scott Polar Institute's library in Cambridge will know, as they've collected all of them. From historical takes such as Sarah Moss's The Frozen Ship or Francis Spufford's I May Be Some Time, to personal stories of time spent in one of the continents such as Gavin Francis's Empire Antarctica or Sara Wheeler's Terra Incognita, there's no shortage of accessible non-fiction for readers fascinated by the farthest north or farthest south. And within this glut, ice forms a recognisable sub-category, from Stephen Pyne's classic Ice: a journey to Antarctica (1986) to more recent publications such as Veronika Meduna's Secrets of the Ice (2005) and Joanna Kavenna's The Ice Museum (also 2005). What, then, makes Nancy Campbell's The Library of Ice stand out? Because as a dedicated reader of this sub-genre, I can tell you that stand out it does.

Perhaps it's Campbell's eclectic approach to her subject-matter. Rather than focusing on either the Arctic or Antarctic, she seeks out ice wherever she can find it - whether that's a curling rink in Scotland, where she has a fascinating conversation about how the smoothness of the ice is maintained, or glaciers in Switzerland. She hits some familiar notes - the discussion of Antarctic ice cores, and how they preserve the history of the atmosphere because of how the chemical make-up of the ice changes as you drill further down, usually pops up in texts like this - but to be honest, I never get tired of hearing about them.

Meanwhile, Campbell's take is poised elegantly between a personal account of her own travels and a more observational consideration of the natural history of ice. We actually find out very little about Campbell's present life - she alludes to money troubles, and there's one night where she sleeps propped up against the door of an airport toilet that she mentions as if it's nothing out of the ordinary. (Her life seems to be held together by literary grants, which are notoriously capricious - she's currently the UK Canal Laureate for 2018, which I think is fantastic. I'd love to read anything she writes about canals, having had my interest sparked by Alys Fowler's Hidden Nature). On the other hand, Campbell doesn't always remove herself completely from the story - she tells us, for example, about her childhood love of the Noel Streatfeild novel White Boots, about two girls who are learning to ice skate. I re-read this over and over again when I was little, and it was lovely to revisit it, although I have to admit (as I know nothing about ice-skating) being somewhat dismayed that the 'figures' that our poor protagonists painstakingly practice in 1951 were already declining in importance in the sport by that time, and were abolished altogether by 1990.

Finally, Campbell's book simply stands out because it's so much better written than other books on the subject. There's something about the Arctic and Antarctic that seems to tempt writers into some of the worst purple prose, woven into paragraphs that go off on endless tangents (with some honourable exceptions, such as Francis's Empire Antarctica, which is nicely straightforward). Campbell doesn't fall into these traps, spending less time on descriptions of the landscape than she does getting into the nitty-gritty of the things she finds out, whether that's the experience of living in an isolated community in Greenland or researching early texts on snowflakes in the Bodleian. This makes her text dense - I found that I wanted to read it slowly to take in all the information - but it never becomes confusing or too technical. She's giving a talk on this book at the Lit and Phil in Newcastle later in November, and I can't wait to hear what she says.

I received a free proof copy of this book from the publisher for review.

[Harry Buckle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do NOT buy this book...yet. But make a note to definitely read it one day. I say 'not yet' unless you are well informed of the back stories around Polar exploration and life in the frozen North. This book doesn't slide you softly in to that world so much as grind you down glacial fashion with detailed observation and reflection. So with some prior knowledge you will enjoy its admirable qualities more. Brilliantly written- in fact I tuned into this because a series of writers I respect (in The Spectator and other journals) referred not only to the content but the quality and style of Miss Campbell's writing. All of which turned out to be correct...in fact, going back and reviewing the reviews there seems to be more about the style than the substance. The substance in this case being ICE. That's ice in almost all its forms- without getting into the multiple types of ice-and we learn there are very very (very) many-and great detail of the authors work / life /mental condition/ agility/ temperature as she researched in the various ICE locations. These from the Arctic, Iceland Greenland, Scandinavia (various), New England, a curling rink in Scotland, to the skater skills of champions Torville and Dean all via the triumphs and tragedies of Franklin, Scott, Shackleton and various of their crew / men / companions. This review is unbalanced as there is much more in the book about whale blubber and the sounds of icy survival than Bolero and the tinkling of ice in a Bombay glass. Even when the rare chill of the ice in the Gin and Anti Malarial Tonic were courtesy of Fred Tudors sailing ship transport of New England Winter Ice all the months across the seas to sweltering Bombay India where its arrival was both enjoyed and feted. So do mark this book down for -'must one day'. That comment-with sincere apologies - arrogantly on my part assuming you not quite up to speed on the back story. A back story which I have been fortunate to have pieced together over my 73 years, much of it thanks to books on intrepid travel and exploration. Check out William Dalrymple (India and Afghanistan particularly),Eric Newby, John Gimlette (up to date),Bruce Chatwin, Patrick Leigh Fermor (although in reality he a little self centred)... the slightly repetitive observational more than intrepid but brilliant Bill Bryson... and save your eyes, heart, time and mind by avoiding the dreaded condescending Paul Theroux...truly the epitome of the ugly American although I suspect he actually Canadian. Canada and Alaska brings us back to the icy world of the Inuit and their claimed hundreds of words for snow. Turns out that -one of the fascinating facts in The Library of Ice that they - the Inuit do indeed a have a lot of names for snow- but more likely around 35. Ditto types of Ice. 'The Library of Ice'. Heavy going but well worth the journey.

[Leif · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another day, another journalistic venture into the ancient allure of the Arctic.

Here, we have a British writer's residency to thank for what is essentially a random assortment of chapters about circumpolar environmental and cultural issues. You have your chapters about exploration, sports, Icelandic glaciers, and so on. Throughout the whole thing Campbell floats mostly in pseudo-mystery: we learn about her unfulfilling work in the book trade, and about her peripatetic life, and about her financial struggles from time to time as she house sits or bumps around the colder regions of the world, but there is never a central drive to make this a memoir or for her to really share what makes her interested in the world she is intent to read and re-read.

Frustratingly, we also never have much of anything else. Campbell records her experiences reading old scientific treatists about ice, and she records her experiences trying to convince an indifferent Greenlander to update his touristic website, and she records her readings about Arctic exploratory adventures of various kinds, but it all feels very scattered. She records her readings of Arctic writers. By the final pages, she records her readings of her own former notes. Occasionally you get the feeling of deja vu as fragments of all the other similarly superficial journalistic takes on the Arctic blend into each other, which isn't helped by Campell's tendency to merely repeat journeys that others have already taken. Could have called the book Re-readings from a Cold Climate and embraced the well-trodden snow, but that postmodern turn might have put too fine a point on this book's redundancy.

At the end of the book, I was still no clearer in the central question: why was this a book at all? Is this just a way of justifying Campbell's one-time residency in Greenland?

[༺Kiki༻ · Rating 4 out of 5]

You might also enjoy:

✱ A Wilder Time: Notes from a Geologist at the Edge of the Greenland Ice
✱ The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand
✱ The Immeasurable World: Journeys in Desert Places
✱ The Weather Detective
✱ A Field Guide to Getting Lost
✱ Crossing Open Ground
✱ Salt
✱ Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing: Encounters with the Mysteries and Meanings of Language — Tammet also discusses endangered languages

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a thoroughly enjoyable change from my usual technical or operational readings on sea and glacial ice. As an experienced “Ice Navigator” I was interested in reading a more objective and perhaps artistic view of my professional domain. Nancy Campbell did not disappoint. Her lyrical and artistic view delighted and entertained while educating. A beautiful read for the fireside with a whisky at hand.

[Mary Warnement · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw this in the London Review Bookshop in March and wanted to get it then but had already pre-ordered two books--and gotten so many others. I had to wait. This was my bedtime reading this summer, and I don't think I've ever taken 3 months to read a book of less than 300 pages. I didn't take that long to read Anna Karenina or Middle March. I often fell asleep after a page or only a paragraph, which I don't mean to be a criticism of the book. The cover and title compelled me to pick it up. I'm not sure I understand the title, even after reading it, except that it's a phrase Campbell likes and thanks another author for allowing her to use--I don't see the citation at the moment.

In the end, this book is an extended, somewhat random, essay on" two subjects that have obsessed [her], ice and books" (285), but it's an attempt at...what? I don't know but I enjoyed going on the journey with her, and it was a journey. At the end (293), she admits she was on the road for 7 years. She begins the book describing the receipt of an award to be writer in residence in Greenland, where she returns again, I'm not sure how often, to learn and observe. She describes some museums, libraries, and writers' homes there, but the book is more about facts about ice and ice-related events or subjects than about libraries. I enjoy library travel lit (I've just made that genre up but it's out there and I love it). I smiled at her anecdote about the chilled librarians in the new Bodleian--although I think they are complaining about the temperature at the old or maybe just in the courtyard of the new.

She stayed with Dervla Murphy at one point. When I read that she was with a travel writer named Dervla, I knew whom she meant (and her acknowledgments confirmed), but where did I read about Dervla and her daughter traveling by donkey in South America? Ah, now that I write it out, I recall, it was in a Slightly Foxed review. Sitting here in the sunroom on the loveseat where I almost always read Slightly Foxed probably aided that memory recall. Upstairs in my bedroom, a fog shielded it from my easy grasp, though I knew, just knew, it was only slightly beyond reach.

117 Interesting, experience office vastly differs for explorers who are trapped by ice and locals for whom it offers travel and connection with other locals. Campbell's description recalled Eliot to me; she is a poet.

Pages 110-111, Campbell mentions staying at Penn Club "in a slightly scruffy room on top floor." That sounds right (but they're painting and replacing rugs this past year), and by right, I mean it sounds accurate and exactly why I love staying there. Perhaps I've seen her across the communal breakfast table, although her author photo on the back flap doesn't look familiar. If I ever see her, I'll thank her for taking me, anachronistically, on her seven-year odyssey via her thoughtful writings. I look forward to seeing what she creates next.