The Idea of North - Davidson

Some notes from my reading so far of Davidson's, The Idea of North

• "North moves always out of reach, receding towards the polar night."
• Everyone carries their own idea of north within them
• To say, "we are leaving for the north tonight" brings immediate thoughts of a harder place, adverse weather, remoteness from cities
• North vs. South - south as presented as warm climates, vacation, pleasure
• For Scandinavian North - arctic north represents a place of extremes and wonders
• Icelandic painter, Johannes S. Kjarval - The north was the beloved Icelandic landscapes - giant figures shadowed in lava rocks and patterns of snow
• C.S. Lewis - North was huge regions of northern sky - something never to be described, cold, spacious, severe, pale, remote
• Longitude 60 degrees north
• Fading light, rain, twilight, loneliness, melancholy, remoteness
• Even in photographs, the landscape of the Arctic is an inevitable and insistent element in anyone's idea of the north
• Arctic exploration as an element of the formation of an idea of north
• This book is not so much about Northern Places, but about places that have been perceived to embody an idea or essence of north or northness
• As you advance towards the "true" north, the real north recedes away northward - unattainable?
• Women who share the nature of swans, who are blind and live in the night of perpetual winter
• Iceland as an island surrounded by vast ocean, meanish dwellings, mysterious happenings, a land enduring bitter cold, while producing abundant fuel for such heat
• Immense mass of ice drifts, cliffs heard re-echoing, hence a belief of the wicked souls condemned to torture of intense cold
• "Beyond the habitable world."
• Perceptions of Iceland - Unnatural North that lies beyond the north that is merely wild: water can petrify anything it touches, volcano Hekla
• Vikings: dark Northland, the man-eating, the fellow-drowning place
• Two ideas of north - endless dark and endless day, attraction and repulsion, ideas are alternate and intertwined
• Traditional countryside - how to preserve tradition in non-rural areas, how to meld together tradition and modernity instead of a feeling of separateness.
  
• How does Yrsa Sigurdardottir present Iceland in My Soul to Take?
  Icelandic music - is northness portrayed or presented in the instrumentation and sounds?
• My own view of North - influenced by Minnesota and Alaska - expectations of trip
• How has Iceland's northness been presented to me?