Exploration (New York: Reaktion Books, 2005); Tragedy and Triumph: The Journals of Captain R. F. Scott’s Last Polar Expedition (New York: Konecky Publishers, 1993); The North Pole: A Narrative History, edited by Anthony Brandt (Washington: National Geographic Classics, 2005); Valerian Albanov, In the Land of the White Death, edited by David Roberts, Introduction by Jon Krakauer (New York: Modern Library 2001). Details and quotes from all of these books are often adapted and altered by me. I have also invented some of the quotes attributed to Albanov and others. For information on Percy Shelley’s writings, see the Metropolis/The Ruins at Luna section.
21 “Hear how it glows”: St. Augustine, Confessions.
29 “Waves of light drive violently”: Payer’s description of northern lights is from Julius von Payer, The Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition of 1869 to 1874 (Vienna, 1876), rewritten by me.
34 On this map I’ve found: This map is from Fridtjof Nansen, Farthest North, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1897).
37 I wonder who left this copy: Index from Nansen, Farthest North.
44 “What we call monsters are not so”: Montaigne, Essays.
45 If, as Plato said: Plato, Laws, trans. Benjamin Jowett, Books 7–12.
46 I would call a Difference Engine: The “Difference Engine” was actually invented by Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter.
48 A melancholy discovery was made: Fanny Imlay’s obituary, Oct. 12, 1816. This can be found in Miranda Seymour’s Mary Shelley (New York: Grove Press, 2000).
57 “Cold burns the eyes”: Olaus Magnus (1490–1557), as quoted by Peter Davidson in The Idea of North (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005).
72 “Extreme disturbance possesses our whole mind”: John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690.
77 “I’ve finally reached home”: These are Nansen’s dreams as rewritten by me.
79 “It was fear first in the world made gods”: This is an inexact quote from Ben Jonson’s Sejanus: His Fall, 1603.
79 “O Monster! Mixed of insolence & fear”: From Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad.
85 “a weariness of heart”: This and other northern quotations here were altered by me, from Samuel Smucker and A. M. Miller, Arctic Explorations and Discoveries (New York: Orton, 1857).
92 “From half past nine till half past two”: William Parry, from his Journal of a Voyage to Discover the Northwest Passage, 1821, adapted by me.
95 “I brought with me Spurr’s Geology” and other quotations in this list: From Arctic Explorations and Discoveries, 1857, altered by me.
95 “Loveliest of what I leave behind”: Fragment 1, Praxilla of Sicyon (c. 450 B.C.), translated by Richmond Lattimore, Greek Lyrics (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1949).
95 “I am a flood”: From “Song of Amergin” (ancient Celtic poem), translated by Robert Graves, in Robert Graves, The White Goddess (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966).
96 “To speak is pain but silence too is pain”: From Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus as translated by Edith Hamilton, Three Greek Plays (New York: W. W. Norton, 1958).
100 “A disorder of the nerves”: Information on Albanov’s nervous disorder is from David Roberts’s Epilogue to Albanov’s In the Land of White Death (New York: Modern Library, 2001). The other Albanov quotes on this page were altered or invented by me.
107 “From this comes our Ghost”: Comments on the German word for ghost are adapted from a letter by Charles Clairmont in Marion Kingston Stocking, ed., The Clairmont Correspondence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1995).
111 Yuan Mei wrote of the “impenetrable north”: Yuan Mei was a Qing Dynasty poet and scholar (1716–1797).
115 When the Goddess of Consolation came to Boethius: The description of her robe is from Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, translated, with an introduction and notes, by Joel C. Relihan, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 2001).
115 Ibid., adapted by me.
122 “Lips covered with foam”: The Archilochos fragments here are from Guy Davenport’s Seven Greeks (New York: New Directions, 1995).
146 On Parry’s second Artic voyage: The information is from Parry’s journal, published in 1821.
154 “I walk each day”: The journal entries found in a metal box have been adapted from Richard E. Byrd, Alone (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1938).
164 “I decided I needed strategies”: The quotes are adapted from In the Ghost Country, a memoir by Peter Hillary with John Elder (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007).
173 Socrates, that “self-stinging stingray”: This notion of Socrates is from Gareth B. Matthews, Socratic Perplexity and the Nature of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004).