Sergey Aleshchenko

canadian gothic

it’s snowing again, you can’t remember the last time it wasn’t snowing. has it always been snowing? have you ever seen real grass or felt real warmth? 

you pass some kids playing hockey on an empty parking lot. they stop there game when you pass. they all wear blank expressions on their face and their eyes appear to be glazed over 

you think you see some canadian geese fight over what looks like a human femur   

tim hortons always seem to appear when you need them. even in the middle of nowhere. is it just a coincidence?  

“The Ascent”, photo by Mikhail Litvinsky (1970s)

Gotta love how in books about polar exploration, members of other expeditions keep showing up randomly like it's all just a cast of the same 20 white guys going back and forth between the north and south pole.

Historical crossover fanfiction

The Norwegian research vessel Lance is stuck in the Arctic ice, 2015

“a grand nautical drama”

On their illustrious 1841 return from a successful first season in the Antarctic which marked Ross’ discovery of his eponymous 200 foot tall ice shelf (among other finds including an impressive amount of dead bird specimens) Captains Crozier and Ross were treated to a well-meaning, but by all accounts tooth-pullingly painful theatrical production by Hobart’s enthusiastic dramatic society. 

Both Crozier and Ross politely (and wisely) declined to appear. Eleanor Franklin, daughter of Sir John, was not allowed to attend as her father “did not approve of the theatre,” but heard enough to recount to a friend that the most unbelievable exaggeration was that “Sir John had hair!” 

It was so bad that surgeon Robert McCormick who had chosen to make an appearance and no doubt regretted it, gratefully concealed himself in a curtained box seat until it was over. 

The Grand Ball hosted on Erebus and Terror–gorgeously bedecked in mirrors, steel bayonet chandeliers, with Erebus’ deck cleared as a dance floor and Terror groaning to the gunwales with food, claret, champagne, and port–no doubt made up for it. 300 guests and both captains danced until six in the morning. The Hobart Town Advertiser gushed that it was ‘quite impossible for any fete to have been more elegant and tasteful.” It became known throughout Hobart as “The Glorious First of June.” 

The next day they “cleaned up the Wreck” with the worst hangovers of their lives. 

Northern Gothic

Photos taken by Harald Sverdrup of the aurora borealis as viewed from ‘Maud’, 1918-1925

Man Proposes, God Disposes (1864) by Edwin Henry Landseer

inuit mythology • pukkeenegak

pukkeenegak is the goddess of children, pregnancy, childbirth, and the making of clothes.

GAY TEST: put some of your blood into this petri dish and I'll expose it to a hot needle. I lied this has nothing to do with your sexuality I'm trying to find out if you're the Thing