Borealia

• Photographer
  Peter Holliday, Finland
• Category
  Arctic / Antarctic

Myths about the Arctic have persisted for centuries. When the Dutch cartographer Willem Barentsz first set sail for the Northeast Passage in the summer of 1594, he believed the Arctic Ocean would be ice-free, since the sun shone for 24 hours a day. To the contrary, his expedition reached as far as Novaya Zemlya, before being forced to turn back due to unfavourable ice conditions. It is histories such as these that raise many challenging questions about how the Far North is imagined in the 21st-century during a moment of profound environmental crisis.