Imagining the Supernatural North ed. by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, Danielle Marie Cudmore, and Stefan Donecker (review)

In the introduction, the editors discuss the strong interest that has existed for some decades in the cardinal directions, among them the North. The subject of the book is, as the title implies, the North and, more specifically, the supernatural North. The editors point out that the definition of the concept is a broad one, and I must agree; the content of the volume is also very broad. To take two examples, one contributor addresses the subject of perceptions of the North in the Bible, while another considers how black metal groups around the year 2000 apply ideas of the supernatural North.

The book is organized chronologically, comprising four parts: ancient roots, from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, the nineteenth century, and contemporary perspectives. Within each section are between three and five articles. One may wonder how the subjects and articles within each section have been selected; many options must have been available.

The question may be asked: is it useful to compile an anthology of this nature? Does it have anything to add to previous writings? Much of the material discussed here has been the subject of many other publications. But the authors have in many cases delved deeper than has been done before and have explored subjects from new perspectives, and this is certainly a welcome contribution. Ya'akov Sarig's article "In Jewish Lore, Not Only Evil Descends from the North," for instance, presents a more detailed discussion of ideas of the North as they appear in the Bible than I have seen elsewhere.

I have given thought to the defined scope of the book: Imagining the Supernatural North. It is true that most or all of the contributions have relevance to that theme. But another theme is just as characteristic of the book – that is, simply the idea of the North and the nature of the North – duality. And that is precisely the subject addressed by most or all of the authors, either incidentally or as their main theme. Hence, the book could equally well have been called Duality of the North or The Good and Evil North. It seems to me that the scope stated by one of the contributors, Erica Hill, would be applicable to the volume as a whole. On page 275, she writes: "Chapters in this volume have examined the ways in which the North has been interpreted, conceived of, symbolized or fetishized," which is exactly the subject of the book.

I feel that it is a flaw in the book that the introduction does not refer to other writings on the subject, thus seeking to respond to previous studies. Many compilations and individual publications on similar themes have been published in the past two decades, and some of these are in fact cited in individual articles. Examples of such publications are Peter Davidson, The Idea of North (2005), Karen Klitgaard Povlsen, ed., Northbound: Travels, Encounters, and Constructions 1700–1830 (2007), Sverrir Jakobsson, Images of the North (2009), Karen Oslund, Iceland Imagined: Nature, Culture, and Storytelling in the North Atlantic (2011), and many, many others.

Imagining the Supernatural North is an important addition to research and discussion of the nature of the North and especially of the High North. The book addresses the origins of ideas of the supernatural North and its qualities, the evolution and various manifestations of such ideas, and how these ideas have became part of the exoticism that "Europe" attributed to these regions. Such ideas remain important today, in spite of the fact that most or all regions of the High North are now modern Westernized societies.

Manifestations of such ideas in the present day are addressed in a number of interesting articles – while skirting the issue of the clearest manifestation of all – on tourism. "Have you ever seen an elf?" is a question often put to Icelanders by foreign visitors. And what does the tourist industry do? It...