I opted to slip Nancy Campbell’s memoir cum scientific and social history of ice into my backpack when taking a cruise from Liverpool to the Norwegian Fjords. Rather absurdly, my journey commenced in mid-July when there was more chance of sighting ice in the chef’s lemon sorbet than through the porthole in my cabin (although, there were smudges of snow visible on the distant mountain tops), however, I felt compelled to read something vaguely Nordic while touring the region.

As it happened, I was immensely pleased with my choice. The Library of Ice: Readings from a Cold Climate follows the author over a seven-year-period as she travels from the world’s northernmost museum at Upernavik in Greenland to Oxford’s Bodleian Library, scooting off at various points to visit a variety of chilly places such as Iceland and Antarctica. Thankfully the freakish heatwave affecting parts of Scandinavia at the time of my trip did not in the least spoil my pleasure in this insightful book. In fact, it absorbed me completely during the long days at sea.

Campbell scrutinizes her subject from the perspective of a writer. In her quest to record the effects of climate change on harsh but stunning environments she is drawn into the lives of the people she meets, developing an intense fascination with their beliefs and traditions. Her enthusiasm is contagious and left me hankering to visit some of the locations she so vividly describes.

The Library of Ice is an enchanting though objective account of the author’s icy wanderings, from remote Arctic settlements to dusty archives containing histories of doomed polar expeditions. It’s intriguing, poetic in parts, and the perfect book to accompany one on a voyage to the land of Trolls, Vikings and the midnight sun.

Enjoyably discursive and digressive, at the expense of coherency and momentum occasionally. Many of the tangents are fascinating, but some border on tenuous.

From her home in Oxford, Nancy Campbell spent 7 years overall travelling to locations across the world in what I can only describe as a pilgrimage to discover all she can about ice, its composition, its effect upon our world, its uses, the secrets it hides, and to follow the trails of those who have explored it as well as those who have learned to live and survive on it. Starting in Greenland, she spends months living in a museum in Upernavik, to which it has taken her 3 days to travel, learning about the science of ice - she nearly lost me there! - and the Greenlanders extensive knowledge of it. She seems to have a knack of finding artists’ refuges and grants that allow her to travel and live in places conducive to study and writing - Iceland, the Netherlands, the amazing Jan Michalski Foundation in Switzerland where she lives in an architecturally designed tree house. With her, we learn about the battles fought by Arctic and Antarctic explorers to overcome the barriers that ice in its many forms put in their way, about those who record the acoustics of ice and turn it into music, about the technology required to create the perfect curling rink, about perfectly preserved bodies found in glaciers, and about the harvesting of ice on Thoreau’s Walden Pond which made millions for the early 19th century entrepreneur who perfected the technique of preserving it so that it could be shipped to Madras and Bombay to be served at the tables of high ranking officials.

This is a book that twists and turns through its story. Campbell has mined the topic of ice to produce a fascinating, eclectic compendium. She writes very well and clearly loves her subject. Highly recommended.

An enjoyable and interesting book that is part memoir and part popular science book. An exploration of the cultural history of ice.