Cold places that don't exist.

It was mighty cold here by New York standards over the weekend, those standards being four degrees Fahrenheit with the windchill. That ought to be cold enough for anybody.

But no! 

While turning to ice outside with the dogs, Tralfaz and Nipper (a.k.a. Thing 1 and Thing 2), I got to thinking about cold places in fiction, or rather places that are very cold that don't really exist. This is hardly a comprehensive list -- in fact, if you can think of any others I'd appreciate your leaving a note in comments. Just a fun thing to think about while freezing to death waiting for the dogs to defile the lawn.  

Frostbite Falls, Minnesota: The first place I thought of was the hometown of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle Moose from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. According to the show's Wiki site, the population of this chilly spot roars to 48 during the summer rush. For such a tiny and cold place it is not underserved; it has a Rotary club, a newspaper (the Picayune Intelligence), a train station, and a hospital. It also has a town hall, movie theater, and bowling alley -- all in the same building. Apparently the inspiration for creator Jay Ward was football player Bronko Nagurski, who came from International Falls, Minnesota. Bonus Cold Place: The island that would become known as Moosylvania on the show became the focus of a comical campaign for statehood by Jay Ward and publicist Howard Brandy -- the timing of which turned out to be very bad, as they arrived in Washington, DC, in November 1962. 

Doc Savage's Fortress of Solitude: The pulp hero Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze, had a Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic that predated Superman's. This is where Clark "Doc" Savage Jr. goes "in order to make new scientific or medical breakthroughs, and to store dangerous technology and other secrets." That includes things from "Doc’s labs, and many of the inventions Doc has captured from the villains around the world," according to the Doc Savage fandom page. I only read a couple of Doc's books, because he was so perfect, so without weakness, he made Superman look like a wimp. And speaking of which:

Superman's Fortress of Solitude: When you're the world's most famous superhero, where do you go to get away from it all? Not just Clark Kent's apartment -- city apartments are too small for that, and the landlords complain if you keep interplanetary crap around. So, Superman totally ripped off Doc Savage. Originally he built a "Secret Sanctuary" in a mountain outside Metropolis, but later moved it to the "polar wastes." As time went on the in the comics, the Fortress was established to be in a secret location in the Arctic, and Superman literally used a huge arrow disguised as a luminous marker for airplanes as the key.

The Fortress had all kinds of stuff, like a zoo of animals from other planets, Superman robots, rooms dedicated to his friends (Lois, Jimmy, and so on -- and Clark, in case someone came in and wondered why his friend Clark Kent wasn't represented). There was alien weaponry, Superman's giant diary (written in Kryptonian), world monitoring systems, all kinds of stuff. It also contained the bottle city of Kandor, an entire Kryptonian city that had been shrunken and stolen by the evil android Brainiac before Krypton exploded. Superman spent a long time trying to find a way to bring the Kandorians back to normal size and a place to put them when he did. And you think your closet is a mess.

Santa Claus's Workshop and Castle: Got to be the most famous frozen fiction fortress. According to Oceanwide Explorations' blog, it was New York cartoonist Thomas Nast, remembered for driving Boss Tweed crazy and for designing the first modern Santa Claus, who put Santa "way up North where the air gets cold" (cf. Beach Boys). "St. Nicholas’s migration to the North Pole is due most directly to Thomas Nast, an American cartoonist who submitted 33 Christmas drawings to Harper’s Weekly magazine between 1863 and 1886, one of which featured a village called 'Santa Claussville, N.P.'" And, as they further point out, reindeer, who live in the arctic, had already been established as Santa's ride by Clement Clarke Moore. But why the North Pole? "During the 1840s and 50s, public imagination in Europe and America was stirred by several highly publicized expeditions to the Arctic, which at that time was largely unexplored." Just think -- if it had been the early 1800s, when there was great interest in exploring Africa, Santa's place might have been the source of the Nile.

Lake Woebegone, Minnesota: Garrison Keillor's chilly town of Lake Woebegone, whose tales were told for years on NPR's A Prairie Home Companion and featured in the best-selling book Lake Woebegone Days. I enjoyed reading the book, but that was many years ago and I can't recall anything much about it now. But the town is in Minnesota, like Frostbite Falls, so you know it's cold.

Blofeld's Research Station: From James Bond's adventure On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Located atop the Piz Gloria in the Swiss Alps, the evil Ernst Blofeld uses the cover of an allergy research station to plan biological warfare that will either destroy England's agriculture (1963 novel) or kill people all over the place (1969 film). Personally, if I were Blofeld, I'd have located the lab in a nondescript building outside Cleveland, but Bond villains always like to live it up. 

Arendelle: People kind of think that the setting for Disney's film Frozen is Norway, and if more proof were needed, the Maelstrom ride in Epcot Center's Norway pavilion, which was great, was replaced by a stupid Frozen Ever After ride in 2016, which is stupidly stupid with stupid sauce. What's the point of the "permanent world's fair" gathering of nations if you're just going to shove Disney junk everyplace anyway? Anyway, yes, Frozen takes place in Norway, during summer, which Queen Tantrum ruins for everyone by plunging the whole joint into freezing cold. But, being Norway, we know they're used to it. I'm sorry I even brought it up, but at least I haven't mentioned that pile of cowardly excrement, the snow homunculus Olaf. Oh, damn it. 

End of the Road, Alaska: Tom Bodett, best known probably as the friendly voice of Motel 6 ads (and author of the "We'll keep the light on for ya" slogan) is also a story writer and novelist. He has written several books about the people of End of the Road, which is based on his real-life home town of Homer, Alaska (Homer's nickname is "the End of the Road"). The stories are pretty good, and definitely in the style of Garrison Keillor. Bodett clearly loves his characters, except for the Lutheran minister and his wife, whom he paints as the stupidest people on earth. Go figure.

Ice Station Zebra: Drift Ice Station Zebra is located an ice floe, and is the setting of a British arctic meteorological station, in Alistair MacLean's 1963 novel and the 1968 movie loosely based on it. The men at Zebra have suffered a catastrophe, and no one knows if anyone has survived -- so a U.S. submarine is sent to find out. I haven't read the book nor seen the movie, but it's a freaking ice floe, so coldness is assured. And it's imaginary, so it's on the list. For the record, ice-floe based stations are real -- MacLean was no slouch for research. I loved his The Guns of Navarone before I saw the movie.  

City of the Elder Things: Maybe the worst thing to ever be found at the Antarctic in fiction was this ancient city in H.P. Lovecraft's 1936 novella, "At the Mountains of Madness." I haven't read a lot of the famous horror writer's work, but that was one I read around Halloween and it was truly unnerving. More horrible than discovering the evidence of the advanced and awful Elder Things is discovering that some are still alive.... Surely no cold place Man's imagination could be more terrible than this!

The Ninth Circle of Hell: Unless it's this. In Dante's Inferno, every circle of hell is horrible, but the lowest, the innermost, the place reserved for abominable traitors like Judas and Brutus, the place Satan himself stands, is not burning, but frozen. I almost didn't include this because... do we really know that it's fictional? 😱

Lake Lebarge: To end on a lighter, if still eerie, note, Lake Lebarge in the Yukon is the place where the cremation of Sam McGee takes place in Robert W. Service's poem about that singular event. It's a terrific poem for several reasons -- for one, I love that it introduced me to the word moil. The problem is that there is a real Lake Laberge (note spelling) in the Yukon in Canada. But since Service changed the spelling and thus pronunciation, I'm calling it fiction. Also, I wanted to include this poem, because it makes you feel cold and it's so good.

Well, I've moiled through all the ones I can think of; what've you got? 🧊❆⛄