The Arctic Club

 The Journey Not The Destination

Olly Sanders

This book is about small scale expeditions and first ascents to remote places, where self-reliance and trust are paramount, humour and having a good time with friends at it's core.

A fuller description, sample pages and ordering details can be found here.

Kejser Franz Joseph Fjord

Peter Schmidt-Mikkelsen

This is the second book in the series: "Discovering North-East Greenland". This series is for anyone visiting North-East Greenland. It is also for anyone who does not have the opportunity to get up there, but who nevertheless wanted to get to know the unique North-East Greenland nature and the history of the area in an accessible way.

Publisher: Xsirius Books. Pages: 156 pages. Format: 245 x 290 mm. Hardback with dust jacket. Dual languages: Danish / English. More than 300 photos and illustrations.

Full details and how to order can be found here.

 A Flora of the central fjord region of east Greenland

Geoffrey Halliday with R.W.M. Corner

Trollius Publications, ISBN 9780953971879, March 2019
300 pages, 100 plates, 245 species' maps 

Order Now!! -  from Dr G Halliday, 26 Mowbray Drive, 
Burton-in-Kendal, Carnforth, Lancs. LA6 1NF;
 geoffreyhalliday@btinternet.com; or our Book Order Form 
Price £28 + £3.25 p&p

Download a flyer for the Flora of East Greenland,
an East Greenland Map, 
and the Introduction.

 The Library of Ice

Nancy Campbell

Scribner UK | 336 pages | ISBN 9781471169311 | 2018
£12.99 + £2 p&p (UK) - Discount Price!

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. 

 Published November 2018 - Order Now!!

 A Flora of the central fjord region of east Greenland

Geoffrey Halliday with R.W.M. Corner

Trollius Publications, ISBN 9780953971879, March 2019
300 pages, 100 plates, 245 species' maps 

Order Now!! -  from Dr G Halliday, 26 Mowbray Drive, 
Burton-in-Kendal, Carnforth, Lancs. LA6 1NF;
 geoffreyhalliday@btinternet.com; or our Book Order Form 
Price £28 + £3.25 p&p

Download a flyer for the Flora of East Greenland,
an East Greenland Map, 
and the Introduction.

The Library of Ice
Nancy Campbell

Scribner UK | 336 pages | ISBN 9781471169311 | 2018

£12.99 + £2 p&p (UK) - discount price

‘A wonderful book: 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 Days.

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. 

William Speirs Bruce
FORGOTTEN POLAR HERO
Isobel Williams and John Dudeney

Amberley Publishing (2018), 304 pages, £20 + p&p

'An excellent read' Sir Ranulph Fiennes

This biography of William Speirs Bruce explores the life of a remarkable man, who made discoveries that are recognised today. He led the Scotia expedition to the Antarctic in 1902 which found new land bordering the Weddell Sea (Coats Land), made an unrivalled number of meteorological and oceanographic records and built a meteorological station in the South Orkneys that still operates today.  He charted and surveyed Prince Charles Island and the west and north of Spitsbergen and was a pioneer in prospecting for a viable mineral extraction industry on the archipelago.

A Farewell to Ice - A Report from the Arctic
Peter Wadhams

Penguin, UK (2016), 256 pages. £20 + p&p

'Utterly extraordinary ... the starkest book I've read on the impacts of accelerating climate change for a very long time ... if we're not listening to the likes of Peter Wadhams, then we too are in denial' Jonathon Porritt.
    Most of the scientific establishment predict that the North Pole will be free of ice around the middle of this century. As Peter Wadhams, the world's leading expert on sea ice, demonstrates in this book, even this assessment of the future is optimistic.
    Wadhams has visited the Polar Regions more often than any other living scientist - 50 times since he was on the first ship to circumnavigate the Americas in 1970 - and has a uniquely authoritative perspective on the changes they have undergone and where those changes will lead. From his observations and the latest scientific research, he describes how dramatically sea ice has diminished over the past three decades, to the point at which, by the time this book is published, the Arctic may be free of ice for the first time in 10,000 years.
    Wadhams shows how sea ice is the 'canary in the mine' of planetary climate change. He describes how it forms and the vital role it plays in reflecting solar heat back into space and providing an 'air conditioning' system for the planet. He shows how a series of rapid feedbacks in the Arctic region are accelerating change there more rapidly than almost all scientists - and political authorities - have previously realised, and the dangers of further acceleration are very real.
    A Farewell to Ice is a report from the frontline of planetary change in the Arctic and Antarctic by a leading authority, presenting incontrovertible scientific data, but always in clear language which the layman can easily understand. It is one of the most important books published in recent years about the existential challenge which human civilization now faces.

Disko Bay
Nancy Campbell

Enitharmon Editions, (2015), 64 pp, £8.99 + £1 p&p (UK) - discount price

The poems in Nancy Campbell’s first collection transport the reader to the frozen shores of Greenland. The Arctic has long been a place of encounters, and Disko Bay is a meeting point for whalers and missionaries, scientists and shamans. We hear the stories of those living on the ice edge in former times: hunters, explorers and settlers, and the legendary leader Qujaavaarssuk. These poems relate the struggle for existence in the harsh polar environment, and address tensions between modern life and traditional ways of subsistence. As the environment begins to change, hunters grow hungry and their languages are lost. In the final sequence, Jutland, we reach the northern fringes of Europe, where shifting waterlines bear witness to the disappearing arctic ice.

Shortlisted for the  Michael Murphy Memorial Prize 2017

Latitude North
Charles Moseley

IndieBooks (2016) £20 + p&p Signed by the author

In this captivating work, part travelogue, part history, part memoir of a life-long affair with the northern lands and seas traveller and scholar Charles Moseley describes a haunting world, where the voices of the past are never quiet. From his account of the last days of the Viking settlements in Greenland to his own experiences on the melting glaciers of Spitsbergen, he reminds us how deceptive are human ideas of permanence, and how fragile are the systems of these starkly beautiful lands.

"A love-affair for a region and a realm. Astonishing." Robert Macfarlane 

(Click image for Summary)

 Exploring Greenland
Jim Gregson

Vertebrate Publishing (2012). 160 pages, full colour, hardback 260 x 190 mm. £20, £16 to Arctic Club Members, + p&p.

    In the pages of Exploring Greenland lie narratives of adventure and experiences lived in the impressive landscapes where still exist areas unvisited by humans, where the cycle of seasons has revolved through aeons unobserved. The artist Rockwell Kent, who spent much time in Greenland, wrote “The wilderness is kindled into life by man’s beholding of it; he is its consciousness, his coming is its dawn… the wilderness is what man brings to it, no more”. 
    Maybe you will never go into the Arctic; perhaps you will be so blessed. Jim Gregson writes of this northern world with affection and respect. In Exploring Greenland he shares with the reader his responses to unclimbed mountain peaks, to wide open skies and untracked glaciers.The silences of the icecap and the creatures encountered in hostile habitats add colour and tone to the scene. With luck the echoes will also resound as the pages are turned.

JIM GREGSON has walked and climbed extensively in the mountains of Britain and very widely across the European Alps and Pyrenees, and in Norway as a telemark-style ski mountaineer.

North-East Greenland 1908-60 The Trapper Era
Peter Schmidt Mikkelsen         http://www.xsirius.dk/en

Scott Polar Research Institute (2008). Language: English. Format: 527 pages, hardback 260 x 185 mm, colour. 

    At last we have an English edition of North-East Greenland 1908-60 The Trapper Era. This updated and enlarged translation of the classic Danish edition from 1994 has been published in response to the request of the increasing number of English-speaking scientists, adventurers and tourists visiting North-East Greenland.
    But this is much more than a translation. The book is the overall account of places and people during the pioneer era in the largest national park on Earth: North-East Greenland. It also contains a large amount of new material, recorded by the NANOK-expeditions in 2003-2007 and published here for the first time. It includes an entirely revised catalogue over the more than 350 historical trappers’ huts and houses with GPS-positions as well as new and old photos. A number of newly discovered historical photos are also published here for the first time. In total the book has more than 1,000 photos of places and people, more than twice as many as in the Danish edition.
    The book is based on about 500 different sources: published books as well as private diaries and the author’s interviews and correspondence with hundreds of pioneers and key persons over the last thirty years.
     A Poster of the Huts of NE Greenland showing 342 different buildings (stations, houses, huts, and ruins) is also available.

A Trapper In North East Greenland. Tales Of A Forgotten Way Of Life
Ytreland Ivar, translated by David Matthews

The Steading Workshop (2014), paperback. First Edition. 239pp. £16 + p&p

    David Matthews translated and adapted this book from the Norwegian original. A selection of true stories and events related by the Norwegian author from his time as a trapper in North-East Greenland after the war.
    From 1946 to 1951, as a young man in his early twenties seeking to help pay for his engineering studies and to look for adventure, Norwegian Ivar Ytreland became part of the well-established, well-organized Norwegian and Danish trapping/hunting/fishing community in North-East Greenland. His presence in the north “infected” him with polar fever from which he happily never recovered, influencing him greatly for the rest of his life.
    A Trapper in North-East Greenland: Tales of a forgotten way of life, is Ytreland’s full-bodied description of the history from the very beginnings of these activities to their last years and well beyond, to restoration projects still very active even after his death at age 86 in 2012. His writing is meticulous yet enlightening and engaging, full of details and the minutia of a trapper’s daily schedule which changed with the ebb and flow of his pursued quarry and the two seasons (described as the only two seasons in the vast region): Winter and Summer. Ytreland had to process and preserve his harvest, build or repair almost everything: huts and tents, clothes, skis, sledges and harnesses, ovens, lamps, axes and knives, boats and engines.

One Thousand Days with Sirius - The Greenland Sledge Patrol
Peter Schmidt Mikkelsen, translated by David Matthews

The Steading Workshop (2005), paperback, 222pp. £16 + p&p

A fascinating account of life and work with the Sirius Sledge Patrol in North and Northeast Greenland 1977-1980, the first available in English. A personal story of one man's experiences in applying for membership of the Sirius Dog Sledge Patrol. and his two years service with them in North and Northeast Greenland. A rousing story of adventure, hardship and immense enjoyment and satisfaction.

Peter later founded NANOK to conserve the old Hunters' Huts in NE Greenland using volunteers on annual expeditions. Also read his book: North-East Greenland 1908-60 The Trapper Era.

Lofoten Sea kayak Guide
Written by local paddler Jann Engstad with contributions and editing by Olly Sanders 

Rock and Sea Productions (2016), 296 pages, colour, £24.99 + p&p

The new and comprehensive guide to the magical Lofoten Islands, this is the first major guide to this famous Sea Kayaking destination.

Written by Jann Engstad, a local guide,who has been running and guiding trips in his home area for more than 30 years and Olly Sanders as a contributing editor, who has also kayaked and climbed there more than 10 times.

It's a mix of trips for all abilities and has both day and multi day trips, with lots of information about the islands and contribution pieces from many other coaches and paddlers.

All this combined with stunning photos and maps to inspire you to visit this special place.

W.G. Collingwood’s Letters from Iceland - Travels in Iceland 1897
by W.G. Collingwood and Jón Stefánsson; Edited by Mike and Kate Lea

RG Collingwood Society (2013), 150 pages, softback, full colour.
£18, £15 to Arctic Club members, + p&p

William Gershom Collingwood (1854-1932) was an artist, author, antiquarian, and notable scholar of Norse history, literature and language. For 12 weeks in 1897, he sailed to Iceland and travelled by pony round the saga-sites of Iceland with his friend Jón Stefánsson, an Icelandic scholar. He wrote long, detailed and entertaining letters home to his wife and children in Coniston about his adventures and experiences while making some 300 sketches and watercolours. Collingwood also found time to excavate some of the saga-sites and take photographs with his new portable Kodak camera using early roll film.

This lavishly illustrated book brings together W.G. Collingwood’s letters, manuscripts, paintings, drawings, photographs (many scanned from recently discovered 1897 negatives), and maps of 19th century Iceland. Most of this material is now in the Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal or with the R.G. Collingwood Society in Cardiff University. There are some 200 illustrations, paintings, drawings and
photographs, many in full colour and previously unpublished, including some from Iceland and Denmark. The book contains introductions by two of his granddaughters, Janet Gnosspelius and Teresa Smith, plus additional notes, articles, illustrations and poems. Together, this material provides a fascinating and unique record of the people and the landscape of Iceland and the saga-sites in that era.