The Ice Museum UK Reviews
A fascinating travel book and a magnificent literary accomplishment. Joanna Kavenna’s accounts of her travels through northern Europe are always vivid and evocative, insightful and illuminating, and sometimes very amusing. But her writing is also informed by a profound knowledge of Nordic history, literature and myth. The result is a magical book about a magical land.
Avi Shlaim
A truly original debut: the sensitive exploration of a dark myth
Colin Thubron
An evocative account of crossing frontiers - geographical, cultural, political and personal.
Timothy Garton Ash, Sunday Times
Joanna Kavenna writes in many forms, and in many voices, beautifully, always convincingly: the literary essayist, the historian, the child, the memoirist, the social sketcher, and the travel writer. This is a brilliant debut, an important and unusual book about metaphors and myths can drive history.
Robert Macfarlane
A book for anyone who has ever been fascinated by ice landscapes and ice myths. I was captivated.
Giles Foden
On a journey notable for its many dangers and lack of creature comforts, Kavenna’s remarkable voyage takes her to those places once identified as Thule, including the Shetlands, Norway, Iceland, Greenland and, quite plausibly it turns out, Estonia. Exceptionally readable...reminiscent of Lawrence Millman’s Last Places and Colin Thubron’s In Siberia...compelling...beautiful...
Paul Watson, Times
The Ice Museum is neither travelogue nor essay but the expression of a heartfelt passion for dark myth and the far reaches of our imagination. Hers is a wonder voyage which never seems to tire; it has a ceaseless enchanting energy that washes over the reader as if from those restless seas. She is poetic, bold, and brave in language ... it’s an astoundingly self-assured debut. A sensitively poised, cherishable book.
Benedict Allen, Independent on Sunday
Wonderfully eloquent and compelling
Jenny Diski, Guardian
An involving, astonishing book of travels... Joanna Kavenna’s sense of place is exceptional
Peter Davidson, Scotland on Sunday
Beguiling...Her story sheds light on our growing knowledge of Earth and our persistent wish for something strange just beyond the horizon.
Martin Ince, New Scientist
Part diary, part detective story... an enchanting work that transcends conventional genres, full of poise and passion.
Kelly Grovier, Observer
A fascinating cultural history... The descriptions are truly poetic... Kavenna certainly has a feeling for snow... It is a book that coolly recommends itself to those who yearn for the North.
Dagbladet
An exciting and profound book...Kavenna relies on a formidable battery of skills ... as historian..., literary critic...social observer....as lyric celebrant, everywhere...To think about Thule is not just imaginatively exhilarating but a grave responsibility. And it is hard to envisage a more compelling or wiser guide than Joanna Kavenna to discharge it.
Paul Binding, Spectator
Atmospheric - Kavenna documents her journey, vividly describing encounters with wizened philosophers, walks across lava fields... with skill and passion
Wanderlust
Kavenna’s depictions of the natural world are worthy of Dorothy Wordsworth
Mark Sanderson, Sunday Telegraph
Beautiful, clever, ambitious, funny, well-observed...Kavenna’s writing...is gifted
Nick Smith, Literary Review
Kavenna’s book is part geographical history and part travelogue. Her ability to draw together the strands of the Thule myth is deft and entertaining.
Time Out, London
Luminously poetic, strange and magical
Daily Mail
[Kavenna] has a natural gift for descriptive writing and for delineating the character of the curious people she encounters on her travels. The reader is left wondering where the author hopes to go next, what further will-o’-the-wisp will attract her; but most of all he is left hoping he will be able to go with her and enjoy another such stimulating read. Fascinating.
John Ure, Times Literary Supplement
A rich alloy of history, culture and travel continues to supply a template for many inventive works of non-fiction. That mix crystallises beautifully in Joanna Kavenna’s journey through the past and present of Nordic lands, from Greenland to Estonia, in search of the legendary "Thule": The Ice Museum
Boyd Tonkin, The Independent
Joanna Kavenna’s The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule (Viking) is a most original book, both scholarly and adventurous. She blends fantasy with fact and shows how the culture of all countries arises from make-believe and wish-fulfilment.
Michael Holroyd, The New Statesman
Why not fling yourself into the chilly bliss of The Ice Museum and make joyous mental snow angels? Finally shortlisted for a first book award last month, Joanna Kavenna’s debut might have been in the running for more honours if it was easier to classify - partly a traveller’s journal, partly a literary essay, partly a long poem so exquisite that nobody could bring themselves to edit it.
Celia Brayfield, The Times
Luxuriously poetic descriptions of landscape are intercut with lively passages about endearingly patronising Victorian tourists, whose voracious appetite for excitement and strangeness led them to traipse doggedly across the Nordic territories. But what makes Kavenna’s account particularly enjoyable is the absence of machismo - there is no shortage of books recounting polar expeditions in every last grisly detail. By sparing us the manly-struggle-against-the-elements dimension, Kavenna allows more space for mental exploration, which is where Thule comes alive.
Alex Heminsley, The Observer
Kavenna has a deep empathy with ice and snow, and with the early history of the Arctic. Here is "the trans-European migration of the ruined and hopeful" across the seas to settle in Iceland and the President of Estonia, Lennart Meri, surrounded by books and memories...It is a fascinating book that makes you glad that Kavenna gave up her job and left London.to seek this "potent symbol of empty lands and silence".
Ross Leckie, The Times
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