In January of 1820, Thaddeus von Bellingshausen reported seeing “an ice shore of extreme height” during a Russian expedition to the Antarctic.
In 1898-1899, the Belgica, a Belgian vessel captained by Adrien de Gerlache becomes the first vessel to spend a winter in the Antarctic after becoming trapped in the ice for a year.
In 1966, Lars-Eric Lindblad led a group of 57 tourists to Antarctica, the first tourist expedition there.
According to IAATO, the number of tourists visiting Antarctica during the October 2022 – March 2023 tourism season was 32,730 cruise-only visitors, 71,346 landed visitors, and 820 deep field visitors.
In Brand Antarctica; How Global Consumer Culture Shapes Our Perceptions of the Ice Continent, Dr. Hanne Elliot Fønss Nielsen explores how “Antarctica is, and has always been, very much “for sale.” Whales, seals, and ice have all been marketed as valuable commodities, but so have the stories of explorers,” stories that themselves were advertisements for the adventures of the explorers themselves, which as they grew in the popular media became advertisements of the potential adventure to be found there by all. Using a paradigm based on “five key framings” of the continent in the modern popular imagination and culture: “a place for heroes, a place of extremity, a place of purity, a place to protect, and a place that transforms,” Dr. Nielsen challenges her readers to reconsider what they think they know about, and the way they understand, the planet’s southern most continent.
Nota bene: Brand Antarctica is the inaugural volume in the new Polar Studies Series from the University of Nebraska Press
