The Alps

Abstract

This chapter studies the evolution of Alpine climbing in the mid-1800s and examines the ways in which Humboldtian writing and science, the Romantic sublime, and bodily sensations and disruptions shaped perceptions and representations of European forays to Alpine summits. It presents a brief overview of the history of Alpine development from antiquity to the present, with special consideration of British tourism in the Alps. The chapter recounts how mountaineering emerged as a sport of radical individualism that solidified and simultaneously challenged new models of masculinity and broadly affected patterns of tourism, leisure, and consumption by the end of the nineteenth century. It also mentions German climbers on the remote Similaun glacier who came across Ötzi the Iceman, a corpse that was remarkably well preserved in the ice in 1991. It points out how scientists concluded that Ötzi's body was dated to circa 3500 BC, which gives evidence that even in prehistoric times Neolithic humans regularly frequented the mountains.