Arktické sny - Krajina Severu v představách a přáních – Lopez Barry (2021)

Barry Lopez (1945–2020), traveler, essayist, and reporter, summarizes in a collection of reports from the Arctic his impressions from numerous journeys to the Arctic in the 1970s and 1980s, complemented by insights into its history. His reports focus primarily on three themes to varying degrees. First and foremost is the landscape, its history, life, and dynamics. The second theme is the people who inhabit it – both indigenous and newly settled: he writes about the prerequisites for life in the landscape, traditions, and the set of material and spiritual culture. The third area of his attention is the modern era, where both the landscape and its inhabitants are changing at an ever-increasing pace, and their historical connections are disappearing before our eyes. All of this is supplemented by the history of human settlement from the earliest times to the present, as well as the history of the most important exploratory journeys and the struggles of Europeans with the landscape. The reader also gains an understanding of the beginnings of intensive industrial exploitation of the Arctic (oil and ore extraction) and can confront it with the current state of the landscape and its coexistence with new conditions. The collection Arctic Dreams from 1986 received the National Book Award for Nonfiction in the USA; since then, he has received numerous other awards for his books.