Bravo, Michael and Sverker Sorlin (eds), 2002, Narrating the Arctic: A Cultural History of Nordic Scientific Practices, Canton, Science History Publications, ix + 373 pages; figures, maps, and photos; chapter notes and index.

One fine day in March, I found myself browsing a bookstore in Iqaluit (Canada) with a good friend, who told me I had to read Narrating the Arctic: A Cultural History of Nordic Scientific Practices. I admit the attractive hardcover was new and promised to be a stimulating read. The anthology's alluring layout, title, and language hinted of a sort of northern engagement that I had been yearning for. Months after this lasting impression, I was not disappointed. Overall I found the eight authors offered more than an assortment of historical facts on the north. Interspersed with figures and maps, these Nordic scholars proposed an analytical and theoretical post-colonial discourse. The "Arctic Zone" becoming, as Gísli Pálsson (p. 275) noted, a "discursive space." History is spoken and written as narrative and cultural analysis is based on a re-evaluation of master narrative with inclusion of alternative versions of the people and place, time and space. Indigenous cultural perspectives are juxtaposed with "dominating" cultural practices and values of southern scientists. Hybrid views emerge, over time, as cultures blend and knowledge practices change and are shaped by Arctic realities. According to the editors Michael Bravo and Sverker Sorlin (p. 23), "narrative is located in the field in many forms: as an integral part of an indigenous hunting strategy, as a textual form of acknowledging and thereby silencing indigenous voices, and through the interactions of scientific and indigenous agencies." As for science talked about in this book, it is both the physical and social sciences, and more precisely their different methodologies and schools of thought. A significant contribution from these essayists is tracing the evolution of paradigms and debates that emerged in the search to both understand and frame the Arctic into various ways of thinking and talking about the north. Sorlin (p. 96) writes "the physical and biological sciences were for industrial and agricultural wealth, whereas the anthropological and cultural sciences were for the dominance of people. Thus there were two hegemonies; of land and of people." There are few history books written about a specific geography and people that have as much relevance for other parts of the north (and the people living there) than I have found with Narrating the Arctic. This anthology of nine essays is set in three parts. Part one, "Meta-Narratives of Northern Nations," introduces readers to the main players; scientists and nations. Names like Stefansson, Smilla, Rasmussen, and Koch are discussed in detail, sometimes as representatives of the major nations, who were often in competition to study the north into being (in particular for Greenland and Spitsbergen/Svalbard). Part two, "Claims and Controversies in the Field," focuses on much of the cartographic and competing international interests jockeying for ownership of both knowledge and actual geography by Norway, Sweden, Holland, Russia, Finland, etc. Part three, "Technologies of Indigeneity," speaks to the major contests of research practices. We read about shifts from colonizing methods, to improvements through the use of indigenous practices. Eventually much of the fieldwork is displaced with technology and so we see an ebb and flow of being on the land with being somewhat removed (whether in museums or the cockpit of airplanes). What sets this book apart from other older history books is that it speaks of more than the particularistic history of science in the Scandinavian north. It offers broader lessons to the cultural development of science, the ties between religion, knowledge and economics, and the inevitable clash between indigenous and newcomers. How these general historical ideas are played out in the Nordic Arctic is of equal value to understanding how these forces …