By Michael Engelhard
Top Arctic predator and nomad of the ocean ice and tundra, the polar endure endures as a resource of ask yourself, terror, and fascination. people have obvious it as spirit advisor and fanged enemy, as exchange reliable and ethical metaphor, as foodstuff resource and image of ecological quandary. 8 thousand years of artifacts attest to its aura, and to the fraught relationships among our species. within the White undergo, we recognize the magic of wildness: it truly is either really itself and a reveal for our mind's eye. Ice endure strains and illuminates this intertwined background. From Inuit shamans to Jean Harlow lounging on a bearskin rug, from the cubs expert to tug sleds towards the North Pole to "cuddly" famous person Knut, all of it involves existence in those pages. With meticulous study and greater than a hundred and sixty illustrations, the writer brings into concentration this strong and elusive animal. Doing so, he delves into the tales we inform approximately Nature--and approximately ourselves--hoping for a destiny within which such stories nonetheless subject.
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The bear can be roly-poly and immature, maternal, or else a combative male. These of course are stereotypical roles in the modern Western nuclear family. In a socioeconomic context, the bear functions as marketing tool and political rallying point. Yet beyond these dominant tropes, undercurrents and traditions exist, which this book will explore. Even years after his death, people continue to leave flowers at a memorial statue of Germany’s most famous, most treasured bear. To understand Knut’s hold on us, it will help to know how his kind came to live in our midst and our minds.
Though we don’t normally associate polar bears with Japan, a chronicle mentions two live ones given as gifts in 658 CE—one of the earliest verifiable written records of them. Courtesy of Mallett. grayish-brown. I think Japanese court scribes were discerning enough not to call such animals “white,” but the truth remains shrouded. No other early Japanese sources speak of white bears. To better understand the origins of our current obsession with polar bears, I therefore must turn to first-contact situations in Northern and Western Europe.
It could have been caught about five hundred miles north of Norway, in Svalbard, the birth- Kendra Haste, Polar Bear, a steel and galvanized wire representation of Henry III’s bear of 1252, commemorating the Royal Menagerie at the Tower of London. Commissioned by Historic Royal Palaces for the Tower of London, 2010–11. Courtesy of Patrick Davies, Contemporary Art, and the Tower of London. tHe Bear as early Commodity 39 Detail from Johan Axel Gustav Acke’s 1881 painting King Gustav I Vasa (ca. 1496–1560) of Sweden and King Hans (1483–1513) [of Norway] on a bear skin rug.