∎ PDF Gratis This Cold Heaven Seven Seasons in Greenland Gretel Ehrlich 9780679758525 Books

This Cold Heaven Seven Seasons in Greenland Gretel Ehrlich 9780679758525 Books

Download As PDF : This Cold Heaven Seven Seasons in Greenland Gretel Ehrlich 9780679758525 Books

This Cold Heaven Seven Seasons in Greenland Gretel Ehrlich 9780679758525 Books

I read this book while I was in the Army and deployed to Iraq. I have always been interested in Greenland, Iceland along w Scandinavia. I would love to see an Audible version of this. I also liked the feel of the cover. Recommended!


Tags : This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland [Gretel Ehrlich] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. For the last decade, Gretel Ehrlich has been obsessed by an island, a terrain, a culture, and the treacherous beauty of a world that is defined by ice. In <b>This Cold Heaven</b> she combines the story of her travels with history and cultural anthropology to reveal a Greenland that few of us could otherwise imagine. Ehrlich unlocks the secrets of this severe land and those who live there; a hardy people who still travel by dogsled and kayak and prefer the mystical four months a year of endless darkness to the gentler summers without night. She discovers the twenty-three words the Inuit have for ice,Gretel Ehrlich,This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland,Vintage,0679758526,TRV010000,Essays & Travelogues,Ehrlich, Gretel - Travel - Greenland,Greenland - Description and travel,Greenland - Discovery and exploration - Danish,Greenland;Description and travel.,Greenland;Discovery and exploration;Danish.,Rasmussen, Knud - Travel - Greenland,1879-1933,Anthropology - Cultural & Social,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Personal Memoirs,DESCRIPTION AND TRAVEL,DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION (GENERAL),Ehrlich, Gretel,Essays,General Adult,Greenland,HistoryPolar Regions,Non-Fiction,Polar Regions,Rasmussen, Knud,,SOCIAL SCIENCE Anthropology Cultural & Social,Social ScienceAnthropology - Cultural & Social,TRAVEL,TRAVEL Essays & Travelogues,Travel - General,Travel writing,Western Europe,adventure;biography;autobiography;travel writing;anthropology;arctic;antarctica;biographies;travelogues;iceland;sociology;autobiographies;adventure books;world history;explorers;biographies and memoirs;evolution;historical nonfiction;science books;european history;fitness;biographies of famous people;travel gifts;travel book;history books;travel;memoirs;cultural anthropology;travel books;science;history;memoir;social engineering;human evolution;travel diary;europe travel guide;bucket list,sociology; biography; autobiography; anthropology; biographies; memoirs; history books; science; world history; history; travel books; evolution; memoir; science books; biographies of famous people; cultural anthropology; social engineering; travel gifts; autobiographies; biographies and memoirs; human evolution; sociology books; adventure; travelogue; travel writing; iceland; travel memoir; arctic; exploration; antarctica; explorers; fitness; travel; travel diary; travel book; europe map; bucket list; european history,Anthropology - Cultural & Social,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Personal Memoirs,HistoryPolar Regions,Polar Regions,SOCIAL SCIENCE Anthropology Cultural & Social,Social ScienceAnthropology - Cultural & Social,TRAVEL Essays & Travelogues,Travel - General,1879-1933,Ehrlich, Gretel,Greenland,Rasmussen, Knud,,Description And Travel,Discovery And Exploration (General),Travel,Travel writing

This Cold Heaven Seven Seasons in Greenland Gretel Ehrlich 9780679758525 Books Reviews

Another "travelogue for the soul." This author does these incredibly well. If you're into this kind of thing and don't like lightweight "new-agey" stuff, read Gretel Erlich.
An awesome read. Exactly what I had hoped this would be. A wonderful narrative of the lands I wish I could visit (or even live in), despite the harsh climate conditions...
My fellow Wyo resident Gretel Ehrlich has never been a personal favorite of mine - I have found her writing a bit bloodless and strident. This Cold Heaven is no exception. Fortunately in this case, bloodless not only works, it is preferable. The native residents of Greenland are a hardcore bunch of seal-eating, dog whipping, communal living Last Best Men and their stories rival any on the planet for sheer toughness. Ehrlich packs her book with tales of ice explorers like Peter Freuschen and Knud Rasmussen, who make the cowboys, Marines and murderous I have known seem as simpering as Boy George and Anne Heche off their Wellbutrin. The author weaves their tales cleverly among her own personal accounts of more modest contemporary adventures, although we never really get to see what drives Ehrlich to this place. Maybe that doesn't matter. Ignore the Luddite whining that stains books like these and you're in for a treat.
Gretel Ehrlich's wonderful book has been a nightly treat, savored at the fireside. Since the lives of the Greenland Inuit are so remote from daily experience, it takes quite a bit of adjustment to enter into their perspective. Ehrlich accomplishes this through an obsessive, recurring immersion, reminiscent of her hero Knud Rassmussen. She went back to Greenland seven times, for goodness sakes! The focus she achieves through these revisitings, and our chance to re-encounter characters and experiences, builds a powerful emotional bond. I felt a real loss when I had to say goodbye to these characters for the final time. This is a deceptively beautiful, powerful book.
This amazing book opened my eyes to the Inuit culture and homeland in a most unexpected way. I really bought it hoping to learn something about Inuit kayak hunters, but that aspect of Inuit hunting life is not heavily covered in the book. Instead, the author takes us on many wonderful journeys by dogsled and gives the reader a most fascinating viewpoint - right behind the dogs. We experience the hard but thrilling life of the skilled Arctic hunter as described by an articulate passenger in the sled, and in that way we come to know the people of the north country in a most sympathetic way.

I recommend this book to anyone who loves beautifully written adventures. They are here.
This woman truly loves the high north, with all its paradox and ambivalence . . . Erlich paints the beauty and complexity of northern Greenland (before reading this book it never occurred to me to think of Greenland as HAVING a "north" and "south"!) and the struggle a tiny minority are having to maintain their ancient -- and sustainable -- ways of life. I'd classify this first of all as a love story between woman and land, but it is a love story in which the sentient observer is aware of the problems with the beloved, and yet still remains committed.
This is not a "been there, seen that, got the T-shirt" travel book -- Erlich is drawn to Greenland no fewer than seven times, in various seasons, and she lives with the people in traditional housing (including tents on the ice). She encounters the brutality of bureaucracy as well as the incredible hospitality of the Inuit -- and at the same time she does not shrink from the pervasive alcoholism and domestic violence that are a sad feature of northern life, nor does she neglect to mention the impact even in Greenland of the growing pollution in "the south" (i.e. North America). Her thesis is essentially Romantic in a philosophic sense . . . subsistence living was/is hard but authentic. The coming of modernity, with its internet connection, TV, store-bought goods, etc., has removed both the means and the incentive for a life of integrity. She leaves it to the reader to see the Greenlandic experience as paradigmatic of the wider world.
Read this book - it will lift your heart and trouble your mind, and leave you wanting more.
I very much enjoyed this book. It was a fascinating look at a land steeped in tradition and culture, and I feel I got to know the people and their lives.
Ehrlich is a wonderful writer who knows how to turn a phrase. But...but....but--why I am only giving this three stars? It's because I felt the book was too much of a good thing. While the stories of the people she met and the Inuit ways are fascinating, do I really need to read 356 pages of how beautiful the ice was over and over and over and over? How many times do I have to hear that "ice is chaos", "ice is time", "the ice was like newly shampooed hair", "the sun was like a flashlight", "the ice was like broken dishes", etc. This gets tiresome very fast. Enough already! I get it-the ice is beautiful and it's cold. Too much of the same thing and too many metaphors detracts from the power of the whole. I wish Ehrlich would have put the metaphor-theasurus away for at least two consecutive pages.
I'm sure that to Ehrlich all of her endless trips across the ice are individual, but to me, they all sound the same. She could have cut out the descriptions of about 10 of the trips she made on the ice, which would have cut the book by 50-100 pages, and had a much more powerful account. Although I loved most of the book, I finally couldn't wait for it to end. She made something that was fascinating into an account that was, ultimately, boring and endless.
I read this book while I was in the Army and deployed to Iraq. I have always been interested in Greenland, Iceland along w Scandinavia. I would love to see an Audible version of this. I also liked the feel of the cover. Recommended!