Svalbard and Northern Lights (the book)

Remember that our Extreme Environment context is a POLAR region called SVALBARD.
One thing that we have to do is to be able to talk about how the region is portrayed in the media, including literature...
One book set in Svalbard: albeit a parallel version is Philip Pullman's "Northern Lights". This has some excellent descriptions of the icy landscape in Part 3 of the book.

Noel Jenkins has consistently produced interesting resources for use with Google Earth, and he has now launched another excellent resource idea using text from "Northern Lights". This is a book I read over 10 years ago. The front cover of the edition I have shows the alethiometer: a very geographical looking device.

The action in the first book ends in Svalbard, but not the Svalbard that we know - one that is subtly different i.e: it has armies of polar bears and witches in a parallel world, which has Norroway and Brytain.
Noel's idea is to use Google Earth to find the locations in the book.
This, as Noel says, is difficult on Svalbard except for the small areas where there are high definition images.
Check out NOEL's PAGE for more.

Noel uses the text to explore the landscape of Svalbard, which is shown in all its glory in the wonderful images of Laurel McFadden at her COLD PHOTO blog.

Also looking forward to the film, which is apparently due out in December 2007.