Mythos of the North Pole: The Top of the World
Not a few early twentieth-century cultural histories conceive of the development of humanity in modern times as a northward shift of the civilizational centre. In this thinking, they transform into narrative and geography the static image of a cosmos constructed along one axis of the globe, based on...
Published in: | Nordlit |
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Main Author: | |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | Norwegian |
Published: |
Septentrio Academic Publishing
2015
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlit/article/view/3422 https://doi.org/10.7557/13.3422 |
Summary: | Not a few early twentieth-century cultural histories conceive of the development of humanity in modern times as a northward shift of the civilizational centre. In this thinking, they transform into narrative and geography the static image of a cosmos constructed along one axis of the globe, based on the Christian story of salvation. In this notion of the cosmos, with its upward-oriented vertical axis understood as a sign of hierarchical order, these histories refer back to a global symbolic legacy with origins in the cosmologies of very different cultures: the idea of the world as a mountain, the world with a mountain and a summit at its centre. In my article I trace the history of this image and its visualization from European antiquity onto the peak of heroic modernism in the first half of the twentieth century. In conclusion I ask what kind of transformation this image underwent to survive in our (still) post-heroic times. |
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