Blue-Shirt: W.T. Vollmann, The Ice-Shirt. New York, 1990.

human influences: S. Cassidy, "Environment Changing Climate: 'Compost effect' may cause global warming to reach crisis point in 2050." The Independent , 1 September 2006

Bjarne Herjulfsson, Lief Eriksson: "In the saga we read that Bjarne Herjulfsson in the year 986, on his way to Greenland, went into fog and lost his direction. They turned south, sailing for two weeks with land on the port side of the ship before reaching the latitude of southern Greenland. Years later in Norway, Bjarne had to suffer a lot of teasing for being a coward because he did not go ashore in this new land. But in the year 999 Leif Eriksson was the one to continue." www.ips-lanetarium.org/ planetarian/articles/ viking/viking.html

Erik Blodøks: Eriik Blodøks was a Norwegian Viking King of the "Hårfagre" (Fair-Haired) royal lineage who ruled from 933 to 935. He was chronicled Icelander Snorri Sturlusson's Heimskringla.

Sir Hugh Willoughy: On 10 May 1553, an expedition of three ships led by Sir Hugh Willoughby, who had no prior nautical experience, left London. Caught in a storm, the ships were separated, and near Murmansk, Willloughy’s Bona Esparanza was trapped in the ice.The next year, their corpses were found by Russian fishermen.

beyond where the North Wind: "In Greek mythology the Hyperboreans ( Latin: Hyperborei) were a mythical people who lived far to the north of Thrace. The Greeks thought hat Boreas, the North Wind,[1] lived in Thrace, and that therefore Hyperborea was an unspecified region in the northern lands that lay beyond the north wind. Their land, called Hyperborea or Hyperboria – 'beyond the Boreas'—was perfect, with the sun shining twenty-four hours a day." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperborea

grotesque appetite: The grotesque body "is a body in the act of becoming.It is never finished, never completed; it is continuously built, created, and builds and creates another body. Moveover, the body swallows the world and is itself swallowed bythe world." M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. Cambridge, MA., 1968.