A riveting, multifaceted history of women’s exploration of Greenland and a stirring portrait of a nation contending with the climate crisis and the legacy of colonialism

Arctic exploration is dominated by the myth of the valiant male hero, yet this mythmaking leaves us with a skewed sense of history and a limited understanding of the nature of exploration itself. Women Who Dare offers an entirely new perspective, recounting the experiences of women who have played vital roles in Greenland exploration, from guides and translators to ethnographers, botanists, photographers, artists, scientists, and activists.

Joanna Kafarowski introduces readers to the trailblazing Indigenous and non-Indigenous women who have been written out of polar history, tracing the connections between past women explorers and contemporary women who may not even think of themselves as explorers. We meet such figures as Tookoolito, who worked alongside Charles Francis Hall on the 1871 Polaris Expedition; Arnarulunnguaq, who was an active member of Knud Rasmussen’s Fifth Thule Expedition of the 1920s; filmmaker and botanist Isobel Wylie Hutchison; and geographer Louise Arner Boyd, who led four expeditions to Greenland in the 1930s. Today, Greenland is a harbinger of global climate change. Kafarowski tells the stories of women who are redefining exploration in the face of this crisis, such as paleoclimatologist Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, artist Pia Arke, activist-turned-politician Mariane Paviasen Jensen, and dog sledder Ane Sofie Lauritzen.

Women Who Dare reveals what can be learned about a land and its people by asking what constitutes exploration and who can be an explorer, showing how women are rewriting the past and helping us meet the formidable environmental challenges ahead.