Landscape and Vision in Gretel Ehrlich’s This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland
Depicting the narrator’s repeated travels to the northwestern coast of Greenland, Gretel Ehrlich’s This Cold Heaven aims to portray the landscapes of Greenland in a way that frees them from the constraints of the visual ideology associated with Western culture’s idea of landscape. This, however, is...
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Septentrio Academic Publishing
2015
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ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:efcbe7ee0c484ed5baae88ac6994ac6f 2023-05-15T15:06:58+02:00 Landscape and Vision in Gretel Ehrlich’s This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland Sigfrid Kjeldaas 2015-04-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.7557/13.3436 https://doaj.org/article/efcbe7ee0c484ed5baae88ac6994ac6f EN NO eng nor Septentrio Academic Publishing https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlit/article/view/3436 https://doaj.org/toc/0809-1668 https://doaj.org/toc/1503-2086 doi:10.7557/13.3436 0809-1668 1503-2086 https://doaj.org/article/efcbe7ee0c484ed5baae88ac6994ac6f Nordlit: Tidsskrift i litteratur og kultur, Iss 35 (2015) Greenland Arctic landscape geography vision the subject embodied affinities Norwegian literature PT8301-9155 article 2015 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.7557/13.3436 2022-12-31T00:01:03Z Depicting the narrator’s repeated travels to the northwestern coast of Greenland, Gretel Ehrlich’s This Cold Heaven aims to portray the landscapes of Greenland in a way that frees them from the constraints of the visual ideology associated with Western culture’s idea of landscape. This, however, is no easy task in a natural environment dominated by wide and grand views that seem to invite the detached observer’s ordering vision. This article shows how Ehrlich’s text uses Inuit narratives and ontologies that share perspectives with feminist theories on space and subjectivity in order to challenge our Western modern culture’s conceptions of vision and landscape. The narrator’s experiences of dogsled travel in landscapes determined by weather, ice and light conditions create novel sensations that display and disrupt the boundaries of the physical environment as well as of Western conception of the subject. In this manner Ehrlich’s travel narrative gradually develops away from a rationalist and objectifying form of geography towards a different and more embodied perception of landscape that acknowledges the relational and dynamic nature of Greenland’s icescapes. This rewriting of landscape implies an understanding of vision as an integral part of a bodily whole, in constant interaction – or even co-constitution – with the environment. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Greenland inuit Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Arctic Greenland Nordlit 35 221 |
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Open Polar |
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Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
op_collection_id |
ftdoajarticles |
language |
English Norwegian |
topic |
Greenland Arctic landscape geography vision the subject embodied affinities Norwegian literature PT8301-9155 |
spellingShingle |
Greenland Arctic landscape geography vision the subject embodied affinities Norwegian literature PT8301-9155 Sigfrid Kjeldaas Landscape and Vision in Gretel Ehrlich’s This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland |
topic_facet |
Greenland Arctic landscape geography vision the subject embodied affinities Norwegian literature PT8301-9155 |
description |
Depicting the narrator’s repeated travels to the northwestern coast of Greenland, Gretel Ehrlich’s This Cold Heaven aims to portray the landscapes of Greenland in a way that frees them from the constraints of the visual ideology associated with Western culture’s idea of landscape. This, however, is no easy task in a natural environment dominated by wide and grand views that seem to invite the detached observer’s ordering vision. This article shows how Ehrlich’s text uses Inuit narratives and ontologies that share perspectives with feminist theories on space and subjectivity in order to challenge our Western modern culture’s conceptions of vision and landscape. The narrator’s experiences of dogsled travel in landscapes determined by weather, ice and light conditions create novel sensations that display and disrupt the boundaries of the physical environment as well as of Western conception of the subject. In this manner Ehrlich’s travel narrative gradually develops away from a rationalist and objectifying form of geography towards a different and more embodied perception of landscape that acknowledges the relational and dynamic nature of Greenland’s icescapes. This rewriting of landscape implies an understanding of vision as an integral part of a bodily whole, in constant interaction – or even co-constitution – with the environment. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Sigfrid Kjeldaas |
author_facet |
Sigfrid Kjeldaas |
author_sort |
Sigfrid Kjeldaas |
title |
Landscape and Vision in Gretel Ehrlich’s This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland |
title_short |
Landscape and Vision in Gretel Ehrlich’s This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland |
title_full |
Landscape and Vision in Gretel Ehrlich’s This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland |
title_fullStr |
Landscape and Vision in Gretel Ehrlich’s This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland |
title_full_unstemmed |
Landscape and Vision in Gretel Ehrlich’s This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland |
title_sort |
landscape and vision in gretel ehrlich’s this cold heaven: seven seasons in greenland |
publisher |
Septentrio Academic Publishing |
publishDate |
2015 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.7557/13.3436 https://doaj.org/article/efcbe7ee0c484ed5baae88ac6994ac6f |
geographic |
Arctic Greenland |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Greenland |
genre |
Arctic Greenland inuit |
genre_facet |
Arctic Greenland inuit |
op_source |
Nordlit: Tidsskrift i litteratur og kultur, Iss 35 (2015) |
op_relation |
https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlit/article/view/3436 https://doaj.org/toc/0809-1668 https://doaj.org/toc/1503-2086 doi:10.7557/13.3436 0809-1668 1503-2086 https://doaj.org/article/efcbe7ee0c484ed5baae88ac6994ac6f |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.7557/13.3436 |
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Nordlit |
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35 |
container_start_page |
221 |
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1766338552659968000 |