Ice Bear: The Cultural History of an Arctic Icon

304 Pages·2016·25.27 MB·English

by  Michael Engelhard

The
Cultural
History
of an
arCtiC
iCon
Michael Engelhard
university of WasHington Press
Seattle and London
© 2017 by the University of Washington Press
Printed and bound in China
Design by Thomas Eykemans
Composed in Warnock, typeface designed by Robert Slimbach
21 20 19 18 17 5 4 3 2 1
frontisPieCe: “Taco” in Santiago de Chile’s Metropolitan Zoo.
Photo by Aldo Fontana.
image on Page v: Postcard after a lithograph by the Norwegian
painter and illustrator Thorolf Holmboe, 1915. Author’s collection.
image on Page vi: With its “chiseled” silhouette, the polar bear
lends itself to abstraction in sculptures or logos. In his acrylic
painting and serigraph Scary Scenario, the American modernist
Charley Harper (1922–2007) reduced to their essentials two spe-
cies whose ranges could soon overlap. Courtesy of Charley Harper
Art Studio.
image on Page viii: Echoes of Goya: this untitled oil-on-wood
portrait by Miguel Macaya (born 1964) asserts the bear’s individu-
ality. Photo by Inés Mazuela.
“The Polar Bear,” by William Carlos Williams, from The Collected
Poems: Volume II, 1939–1962, copyright © 1962 by William Carlos
Williams. Excerpt by permission of New Directions Publishing
Corp.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechan-
ical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
university of WasHington Press
www.washington.edu/uwpress
Cataloging data is on file with the Library of Congress
isBn 978-0-295-99922-7
The paper used in this publication is acid-free and meets the min-
imum requirements of American National Standard for Informa-
tion Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ansi Z39.48–1984. ∞
The land is very sterile. There are in it many white bears . . .
—legend By seBastian CaBot on a maP of nortH ameriCa (1544)
They appeared to be very fat and prosperous, and very much at home,
as if the country had belonged to them always. They are the unrivaled
master- existences of this ice-bound solitude.
—JoHn muir, The Cruise of The Corwin (1917)

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Polar Bear–Human Time Line xi
Map: Territories of Northern Peoples and Polar Bear Range xiv
A Beast for the Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
The Life and Death of a Superstar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
The Bear as Early Commodity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Object of Scientific Curiosity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
From White Terror to Trophy of Modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Zoo Bear and Circus Bear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Honored Guest and Ten-Legged Menace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
A Taste of the Wild . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
The Transformative Bear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Helper and Protector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .170
Lover, Super-Male, Mate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .187
Archetype, Role Model, Eco Ambassador . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Another Seaside Attraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Notes 249
Associations and Websites 267
Selected Bibliography 269
Index 271

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It has been a pleasure, in the course of writing this book, to meet fellow polar
bear buffs and other specialists (and that’s putting it mildly), even if only on-
line. I appreciate their time, expertise, and patience with endless follow-up
questions. Thank you, Valerie Abbott, Naja Abelsen, Silke Adam, Sigurður
Ægisson, Eric Ames, Martin Appelt, Allison Athens, Ronald Broglio, Bernd
Brunner, Victoria Buckley, Joel Castanza, Jack Coogan, Ekaterina Devlet,
Alexander Dolitsky, Kelsey Eliasson, Richard Ellis, Klaus Gille, Patty Gray,
Lynn Hetlet, Linda Honey, J. Donald Hughes, Larry Kaplan, Anatoly Kochnev
and Svetlana Kochneva, Janis Kozlowski, Lisa LaPoint, Raynald Harvey Le-
melin, Martha MacDonald, Garry Marvin, John McKay, Sean Mooney, Georg
Nyegaard, Ævar Petersen, Rachel Poliquin, Russell Potter, Tanyo Ravicz, Wil-
liam Reaves, Richard Reynolds, France Rivet, Mette Rønsager, Bernard Sal-
adin d’Anglure, Michael Schimek, Dennis Sears, Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir,
Rhonda Sparks, Amy Dee Stephens, Ann Sylph, Chris Trott, Zac Unger, Glen
Vaudrey, Haijo Westra, and Mark Wilson. Unsurprisingly, this polyglot lineup
testifies to a far-flung fascination with all things polar bear, an attraction that
draws people of all stripes to each other and to the North.
Special thanks go to Jonathan Burt, editor of Reaktion Book’s Animal se-
ries, for helping me “find” this animal, as intriguing a writing subject as it
is face to face. Winfried Dallmann at the Norwegian Polar Institute com-
piled and kindly provided the map, Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic, which
we adapted to include the White Bear’s range. Thanks go to Wolfgang and
Mechtild Opel and to Hartmut Jäcksch of Mana Verlag for a copy of their
fine book, Eisbären. Wolfgang also generously shared information and im-
ages. Andrew Derocher, one of the world’s leading polar bear biologists,
made useful suggestions and caught errors and oddities in his close reading
of the manuscript.
The University of Washington Press saw the potential, perhaps even need,
for another polar bear book in the slew of already published titles, one that
deals exclusively with the animal’s cultural aspects. For that, I am grateful.
ix