Karel Čapek: Journey to the North

On a journey undertaken mostly by boat, Karel Čapek captured in words and drawings the tranquillity of remote places where polar day and night alternate orderly, where roads and railways end. The writer was not looking for cultural monuments. This time the focus of his interest was nature and places untouched by civilization. The fifth travel book by the writer, playwright and journalist Karel Čapek (1890-1938), Journey to the North, was first published in 1936, when the author, accompanied by Olga Scheinpflug, visited Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The full title of this distinctive travelogue is: "Journey North: accompanied by pictures by the author and poems by his wife for greater illustration." Among Čapek's collections of traveller's feuilletons and "travelogues" it is the most extensive work, but also the last. Two years later, the brilliant observer of cultural differences and significant trifles died.