There is much poignant art and literature about polar purity and silence, but the longer I spent among the snow, the more I suspected such tropes are born of luxury and distance. It is a view that overwrites the peopled landscape, ignores the tracks of sleds and snowmobiles that cross it, the busy burrows and root systems beneath it. As time passed and I looked more closely, I realised snow does not always appear white. As I listened more carefully, I realised that snow was not silent. I spoke to those who worked with snow, from Inuit hunters to Scottish hill farmers, and noticed that their traditional knowledge was often enshrined in highly differentiated vocabularies. Fifty Words for Snow is a journey to discover snow in cultures around the world through different languages.
I don’t know what I thought I would get from Fifty Words for Snow — its description made me think that it would have something to do with how culture shapes language and how language then reflects culture in return; and further, how declining rates of snow will contribute to losses of culture and language — and as a resident of Canada, I thought there would be something for me to identify with here. But for the most part, there wasn’t much. Author Nancy Campbell — a poet and essayist — has lived and worked in Arctic landscapes, and with an interest in how climate change is impacting those landscapes (and the people still trying to eke out a traditional life within them) and with a partner whose stroke-induced aphasia has made her more attuned to “the complexity of language loss”, I was somehow set up to expect more from this. What there is: Literally, fifty words for snow from languages around the world, followed by an essay (from a paragraph to many pages) that gives some context for how the word is used (whether in everyday use, mythology/literature, or the sciences) , each accompanied by a gorgeous photo of a snowflake by Wilson Bentley (1865-1931, the first known person to take detailed photographs of snowflakes and record their features). What is missing: A through theme or analysis or overarching conclusion; this is more coffee table book than narrative nonfiction (and to be fair, I wasn’t promised more than a coffee table book). (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
Pana snow knife (Inuktitut: ᐸᓇ) / Sparrow batch spring snow (Newfoundland English)
To begin my thoughts close to home, it was annoying to me that Campbell referred to Canada’s largest and most northern territory as “the state of Nunavut”, adding “Nunavut is also the newest state”. (We have provinces and territories in Canada — there are no geographical or political areas or communities we would refer to as “states” — and even googling the word for its generic definition doesn’t satisfactorily describe Nunavut.) Later, Campbell writes that the residents of Newfoundland refer to their island dialect as “Newfinese”, and that’s a word I’ve never heard used before. All of this to say: If I don’t recognise Canada (definitely a snowy country) in the two mentions made of it in a book on snow, I don’t know how far I can trust the author to tell me about other snow-bound cultures. Many of the words that Campbell has chosen are sourced from polar countries, but she seems to have found more delight in sharing words from cultures we don’t necessarily equate with snow: from Hawaiian (Hau kea, white snow; “most likely to be found on a simmering crater”), to Thai (H̄ima, snow; useful to describe the one time it allegedly snowed in Thailand in recorded history, in 1955), and Amharic (Barado, snow or hail, used in the debate among early European explorers over the presence of snow in the Ethiopian mountains). When it comes to the literary, it was more meaningful to me to learn about the word Snemand (snowman, Danish) and how it was used in a famous story by Hans Christian Andersen than the chapter on Calóg shneachta (snowflake, Irish) that then goes on to recount James Joyce’s “The Dead” and a conversation about snow that happens at a party (what Campbell cites as “one of the most famous mentions of snow in literature.”) The shortest chapter reads, in its entirety:
Cheotnun first snow (Korean: 첫눈) The word for snow in Korean, nun, is the same word as is used for ‘eye’. And so if you experience the first snowfall of the year – cheotnun – with someone you have eyes for, it is said that true love will drift into your arms.
I don’t know if I find that as complete an entry as the Inuit process of building an iglu, and it’s this feeling of unevenness that makes this collection feel themeless. But there were many interesting tidbits I learned along the way:
• Immiaq melted ice or snow; beer (Greenlandic) The great glacier Sermeq Kujalleq...calves around 46 km3 of ice every year – an amount that would cover the annual water consumption of the USA.
• Seaŋáš granulated snow (Sámi of Norway) while there are around one hundred Sámi terms for snow, the words relating to reindeer are estimated at over a thousand.
• Jäätee ice road (Estonian) Drivers must keep to speeds of between 25 km/ h and 40 km/ h – the lower limit is important. No stopping is allowed. This is a precaution against changes to the car’s rate of progress causing a wave under the ice; if such a wave accumulates it can be strong enough to crack it. For the same reason vehicles must travel at least two minutes apart, and so drivers wait at the shore for a green light before they set out. These strict safety measures are accompanied by an unexpected road rule: it’s forbidden to wear seatbelts, because drivers and passengers might have to exit the car speedily in the event of the ice cracking.
And I did connect with the mythological — and only wish there was more of this — as with Yuki-onna snow woman (Japanese: 雪女):
Are all human encounters with the elements so ill-fated? Is it possible to keep our most profound dealings with nature a secret? Will the snows stay forever, or will winter turn to spring? Whether the yuki-onna is a malevolent ghost stealing lonely lives in the wilderness or a supernatural beauty living in disguise among humans, she affirms the transformative qualities of snow.
(I also didn’t know that Japan has the deepest snowfalls in the world — 40m/year in the Japanese Alps — and that there is a highway known as the Snow Corridor that travels between 20m high snow walls; I would love to see that.) So: I would have liked more of this — more writing about actually snowy countries and how that snow influences their lives and their mythologies, with a touch of authorial analysis thrown in — but again, I wasn’t actually promised that and another reader might be completely pleased with what is to be found here. Middle of the road three stars for me.
