Eglinger H (2026)
Publication Language: English
Publication Type: Book chapter / Article in edited volumes
Publication year: 2026
Publisher: Routledge
Edited Volumes: The Sea in Nordic Literature. Oceanic Criticism and Blue Humanities
Series: Routledge Environmental Humanities
ISBN: 9781041089391
This chapter examines Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow (1993) through the lens of ecosemiotics, interpreting the Arctic Ocean as a literary and ecological ecotone—a dynamic threshold where natural, cultural, and epistemological systems meet. It explores how Smilla’s “Arctic literacy” combines Indigenous, embodied, and scientific ways of reading the icy environment. By foregrounding the Arctic’s materiality—its mutable states of water, snow, and ice—the novel exposes colonial, capitalist, and ecological tensions while developing rich metaphorical correspondences between ice and life. Høeg’s Arctic Ocean emerges as an ethical, aesthetic, and epistemological zone of transition and interconnection.
The first collection to address the role of the oceanic in literary texts and traditions from across the Nordic region, this book explores applications of ecocriticism, postcolonial theory, new materialism, and gender studies at a time when interest in marine ecosystems and their vulnerabilities to anthropogenic climate change is generating new theoretical insights and interest across the humanities.
The Nordic countries with their long coastlines and archipelagic geographies have long histories of seafaring and mariculture. This book simultaneously introduces Nordic literatures about the sea to international scholars with an interest in the oceanic; and blue humanities to scholars working within Scandinavian/Nordic Studies. Its historical sweep incorporates the work of Nordic writers of particular significance for European and world literature, such as Henrik Ibsen and Tove Jansson; it also explores texts known chiefly within the Northern countries, including contemporary literature engaging with the sea; and historical texts, such as the Icelandic sagas and Early Modern seafaring guides. The book takes an innovative geographical orientation, grouping chapters to correspond to the various pelagic ecosystems that surround the Scandinavian peninsula and connect it to the rest of the globe.
The combination of canonical and lesser-known texts with key theoretical approaches makes the volume ideal for teaching. With its broad historical and theoretical scope, The Sea in Nordic Literature is a valuable resource for scholars and students in blue humanities, Scandinavian and Nordic studies, and comparative literature.
APA:
Eglinger, H. (2026). Investigating the Arctic Ecotone: The Arctic Ocean in Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow (1993). In Frederike Felcht; Søren Frank; Katie Ritson (Eds.), The Sea in Nordic Literature. Oceanic Criticism and Blue Humanities. Routledge.
MLA:
Eglinger, Hanna. "Investigating the Arctic Ecotone: The Arctic Ocean in Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow (1993)." The Sea in Nordic Literature. Oceanic Criticism and Blue Humanities. Ed. Frederike Felcht; Søren Frank; Katie Ritson, Routledge, 2026.
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