“Involuntarily We Listen”: Hearing the Aurora Borealis in Nineteenth-Century Arctic Exploration and Science

• Published in: Canadian Journal of History
• Main Author: McCorristine, Shane
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) 2013
• Subjects: Arctic; Northwest Passage; Northwest passage
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/cjh.48.1.29; https://utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/cjh.48.1.29

In western science the Aurora Borealis has been a fiercely contested site of inquiry with little agreement as to its nature until the twentieth century. This essay surveys the history of auroral science up to the nineteenth century and then complicates the traditional indigenous/western dichotomy regarding supernatural or anomalous experiences by examining occasions when nineteenth-century Arctic explorers, scientists, and fur traders became enchanted by the Aurora Borealis. Drawing mainly on cases from the period of the British quest for the Northwest Passage through the (now Canadian) Arctic (c.1818-59), it demonstrates how scientific uncertainty allowed for occasions when Arctic explorers, scientists, and other travellers could self-consciously become enchanted by aurorae. If we work from the contention that cycles of re-enchantment rather than sudden disenchantment constitute the modernising process, then we can challenge the notion of a stable scientific observer of the Aurora Borealis.