The Colors of Vanishing Ice: Mapping the Arctic in Contemporary Young Adult Literature

The primary challenge in dealing with literary texts involving the Arctic landscape is that its geography is not uniform: elements like snow and ice, rivers, coastlands, wetlands, and urban spaces all coexist in this unique and vast ecosystem. When approached at a distance, these same territories have been seen as in line with a biased ideology of an empty Arctic devoid of life because of its whiteness and freezing wilderness. This article offers a counterweight to that belief, emphasizing the cultural, literary, and humanist dimensions of Arctic-related narrations and the meaningful power of its mapping. Through the analyses of two contemporary young adult econovels—The Song that Sings Us (2021) by Nicola Davies and Beyond the Frozen Horizon (2022) by Nicola Penfold—this study maps visions, perceptions and imaginaries related to ice, snow and cold. The process of mapping is thus here considered in its two-fold meaning: both in the more obvious sense related to cartography and as an abstract concept of cognitive representations through the act of reading.