Northern Lights: A History of the Arctic Scots

Historian Cowan (The Declaration of Arbroath) offers a meticulous if meandering chronicle of arctic exploration by Scots. Contending that Scottish explorers have conventionally been rendered “invisible” by histories “representing them as English,” Cowan attempts “to properly return” to his subjects “their nationality and their achievements.” Noting that “three of the four greatest British Arctic explorers of the nineteenth century came from Dumfries and Galloway region in the south-west of Scotland,” Cowan spotlights John Ross, who, during his 1818 expedition in search of the Northwest Passage, sighted and named a mountain range that turned out to be a mirage; John Richardson, whose 1819 Coppermine Expedition, an overland arctic survey in Canada, may have descended into cannibalism; and James Clark Ross, John Ross’s nephew, who discovered the Magnetic North Pole in 1831. Elsewhere, Cowan details the many Scots who set out to discover the fate of England’s Sir John Franklin and his lost crew. Among the searchers was John Rae, the first person to learn from a group of Inuit people in the Canadian arctic that Franklin’s expedition had resorted to cannibalism before they perished. Though Cowan relates these adventures in charming and authoritative prose, his account too often circles back to cover the same material. This is best suited for completists. (Sept.)