The map as a work of art

’Tis the season of complacency, when we sit in warmth and shiver vicariously with Mary and Joseph out in the snowy wastes, A Christmas Carol or The Snowman. A handsome exploration of Antarctica seems equally appropriate festive fare.

Peter Fretwell brings us chillingly close to a continent that has always inspired awe, evidenced by christenings such as Mount Erebus and Fenriskjeften — the Wolf’s Jaw mountains, named after Fenris, the Norse equivalent of the Beast, which will arise at the end of time to eat the world. The coldest, driest, remotest and windiest place on the planet, surrounded by the roughest ocean, has always seemed like somewhere primordial deities might live and secrets subsist — entrances to underworlds, hidden civilisations, UFO bases. The ‘Roaring Forties’ and ‘Furious Fifties’ are dreaded by sailors; valleys have seen no rain for three million years and temperatures tumble to -89.5°C. These mesmerising maps offer sparklingly clear prospects of an otherwise almost incomprehensible terrain.

Some have essayed this literally awful place ever since Captain Cook surmised its existence in 1775, magnetised by its beauty, bounty and mystery, or wishing to reach the Pole, climb a peak or lay claim on behalf of some ruler of the Global North. They left legends and perishing skeletons, of themselves, their boats, cairns, crosses, huts, lighthouses and vehicles, and telling toponymy — Deception Island, Pole of Inaccessibility, Pole of Isolation. All of us know Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton, so Fretwell highlights Carl Anton Larsen, who endured equally impressively between 1901 and 1903, and Douglas Mawson, who lost his companions and walked hundreds of miles with no tent, eating dogs whose livers were poisoning him.

Others have brought bathos, such as those who named some mountains the Executive Committee Range.