'Mountains Before Mountaineering' with Dawn Hollis
In today’s episode, I’m speaking with Dawn Hollis about her newest book Mountains Before Mountaineering. It is a work of intellectual history, published in late 2024. It is largely aimed at countering the prevailing idea that, until the modern era, mountains weren’t visited or appreciated. Instead, they were ugly, terrifying things to be avoided.
Dawn has a PhD in History from St. Andrews, and studied at Cambridge for her Masters and at Oxford for her undergraduate degrees. Her other book is Mountain Dialogues from Antiquity to Modernity (Bloomsbury Academic 2021).
Our conversation focuses on her new book and touches on topics like Marjorie Hope Nicholson’s work and its influence, the theory of pre-modern “mountain gloom” vs. modern “mountain glory” and its genealogy from Thomas Burnett to William Wordsworth to Leslie Stephen, why Dawn believes this theory is incorrect and some evidence against it, traditional mountain practices like transhumance, early travelers who visited mountains for their religious and cultural significance, the appearance of mountains in religious art like the Madonna and Child paintings, and other topics.
Transcript
Jeremy Bassetti: Dawn, welcome to the podcast.
Dawn Hollis: Hi, thanks so much for having me on.
Jeremy: I will have introduced you properly in the introduction, and I’m eager to talk with you about your newest book, Mountains Before Mountaineering. But before we do that, perhaps you can take a moment here to describe your interests and maybe your background as a historian.
Dawn: The mountains are something that I was always interested in from early childhood. I actually grew up in a really flat part of the world. I remember as a small child sitting and drawing mountains - an upside-down V with a jaggedy line and snow at the top, then coloring the bottom green. I had this idea of what a mountain was before I’d ever actually seen a real one.
I visited the mountains around Britain and had a high school teacher who went on to climb Everest, which was massively inspiring to all of us students. She ran many trips to the mountains, taking us to Scotland to climb Ben Nevis and Booklet of Moor in the snow in February. She also had many books about mountaineering history which she lent me. One was The Mystery of Mallory and Irvine, discussing their disappearance on Everest in 1924 and the possibility they might have climbed Everest decades before Hillary and Tenzing. That idea captured my imagination.
I became absolutely obsessed with George Mallory and Sandy Irvine, reading every book I could about them. When I was invited to interview at Oxford University for history, I thought I probably wouldn’t get in. I wanted to make my trip worthwhile, so I wrote to the archivist at Merton College where Sandy Irvine’s archives are held, asking to visit. Amazingly, despite being a 17-year-old nobody, this archivist said yes.
It was an incredible experience. I went into the archives, a wood-paneled library room. It was dark and cold outside with warm lights inside. I held these letters that Sandy Irvine wrote to his mother from Everest Base Camp. I realized I could be sitting in the same chair that Irvine sat in as a student at Merton College. That first time touching archival material was spine-tingling. For me, history and mountains were both incredible, fascinating things.
As I completed my Oxford degree (I did get in despite my pessimism), I found myself drawn to the early modern period. This is broadly defined as about 1450, around Gutenberg’s invention of movable type, up to around 1700-1750 when industrialization began. This period is fascinating because it contains the roots of modernity and our current ways of thinking, yet people thought in incredibly different ways despite superficially resembling us.
It’s similar to my first time traveling to America. I thought it would be exactly like Britain because we speak the same language, but stepping off the plane I realized I was in a different country. That’s what the early modern period is like - traveling to another country that speaks the same language but has different culture, social norms, and understandings.
I was concerned that studying the early modern period meant leaving mountains behind, since mountaineering hadn’t started then. But a wonderful female mentor at Oxford encouraged me to examine mountains in that period and pointed me toward Marjorie Hope Nicholson’s Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory.
Nicholson was the first female professor at Cornell. She wanted to study philosophy but was told firmly by mentors that one couldn’t be a philosophy professor without smoking a pipe and being male. She went into history instead, studying history of science - getting as close as possible to what were perceived as masculine areas of study.
In Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory, she discusses what she calls “a basic problem in the history of taste.” She describes a dramatic shift in attitudes toward mountains in English literature - from the pre-modern “mountain gloom” when people feared and disdained mountains as ugly “warts of the earth,” to the modern period when poets praised mountains’ beauty. Though she doesn’t focus on mountaineering, the narrative suggests that fear and disdain transformed into love, admiration, and eventually the sport of mountaineering.
Jeremy: I did some graduate work in the history department, as you did. One thing our advisors counsel us on is finding unique arguments that counter preconceived notions. Your new book, Mountains Before Mountaineering, seems to tackle a widespread historical misunderstanding rooted in Marjorie Hope Nicholson’s book. You call this a “ghost theory” in your introduction, which I think is generous. For this conversation, could you unpack that misunderstanding as you see it?
Dawn: The misunderstanding is this concept of a sharp break in attitudes toward mountains. Nicholson speaks specifically about English literature, but the idea has since been applied to European attitudes generally. The theory claims that before modernity, before about the 18th century or the first ascent of Mont Blanc, Europeans feared mountains, avoided them, and found them ugly. After that, with the development of ideas like the sublime and the birth of modern mountaineering, people came to find mountains beautiful, admirable, and worth traveling to and up.
It’s this idea that the love of mountains is unique to the last 200-250 years of history, and that before that, people simply didn’t like mountains. When I first started researching, I took this widespread idea as probably true since everyone repeated it. My initial research proposal was “what did it look like when people didn’t like mountains?” Because you can’t avoid mountains even if you don’t like them - Europe is full of mountains.
But when I started examining original material, I didn’t find that disgust or disdain. I found some people who were reasonably frightened in mountains, just as people are reasonably frightened today. I found some who didn’t enjoy climbing mountains, just as some people don’t today. But I also found many people writing about how beautiful mountains were and enjoying ascending them.
When I first presented this research early in my PhD to mountaineers, someone said, “These are just the exceptions that prove the rule.” Now, ten years later, I realize you can’t have more exceptions than the rule. At that point, what was considered the rule becomes the exception.
Jeremy: That’s interesting. Nicholson’s idea was originally applied to English literature, then extended to European ideas, but it’s also been applied more globally in recent years. That’s the big problem - it’s not just an academic dispute; it’s spilled into popular discourse despite being untrue. I’ve read books by travel writers repeating this idea as fact. One claimed mountains “were avoided for much of human history and only visited by prophets.” It’s become folklore for the modern generation.
Dawn: Absolutely. I remember reading that a dichotomy - any concept with simply A and then B, two sides of a coin - is attractive to the human brain. Dichotomies feel safe, complete, and satisfying. Therefore, we should carefully interrogate any claim presenting a dichotomy because history is never that simple; there are never just two sides to the coin.
What troubles me is how this narrative, when internalized by wealthy travelers and mountaineers, enables a flattening of any history before mountaineers came to the peaks. This extends beyond Europe. In the early Everest expeditions, when Mallory writes about the death of some porters in 1922, he says these men “were children where mountain dangers were concerned” - as if these men who lived in Tibet had never experienced mountains until George Mallory brought them there. It’s this feeling that Westerners invented or discovered mountains and that people living there before never even looked up, which is an absurd assumption.
Jeremy: The theory becomes more absurd the more you think about it. Those spreading this idea have forgotten about the original mountaineers - indigenous Andeans and other ancient mountain dwellers who lived there for countless generations.
Your book does a good job tying this to the sentiment of modernity - central to modernism is the idea that we’re special, new, and different. We’re rejecting tradition and forging a new path - man on top of the world. And it was mostly men, trying to dominate and control the world.
Dawn: Absolutely. In modern times, though I hope this is changing as evidence proves us wrong, there’s a belief that we in the modern period have figured everything out - that our way is best and we’re at the pinnacle of human development.
This creates a weird perspective when looking at history, seen in the mountain gloom idea. We today love mountains by visiting them, climbing to their summits, and discussing them using specific tropes. Looking back at the 17th century, we don’t find people climbing summits often or using explicit language of sublimity. Because the love of mountains is defined in this narrow scope matching how we love mountains today, the conclusion is drawn that they didn’t love mountains.
We’re setting a test that earlier accounts could never satisfy because that wasn’t how they wrote about things or viewed climbing. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t have joyful mountain experiences. It’s arrogance to think our way is the only way, and any approach that doesn’t match ours indicates they didn’t like mountains or is irrelevant to the human relationship with mountains.
Jeremy: It sounds like a false consensus bias or some thinking fallacy. One of my favorite chapters in your book discusses the intellectual history of this misunderstanding. If I’m not mistaken, you blame Wordsworth for originating the idea. Can you quickly give the genealogy of this theory, starting with Wordsworth?
Dawn: I’m afraid it probably starts earlier. Thomas Burnett, a scientific writer in the late 17th century, wrote a theory where he argued mountains resulted from the biblical flood when God punished mankind. Burnett claims mountains are ugly, disordered, and unappealing. But he also notes “there is something in the air of these things which doth inspire the mind to great thoughts and passion” - acknowledging mountain inspiration.
Burnett was taking away the idea that God created mountains. Many people responded negatively, arguing strongly against his theory. However, Burnett influenced early developers of sublime theory like Joseph Addison and John Dennis.
What Burnett did was invoke a period of mountain ambivalence by removing the main basis for early modern mountain appreciation - that mountains were created by God. Addison, who definitely read Burnett as he wrote a poem praising him, created a version of mountain appreciation not dependent on God.
In my thesis, I called this a “blip” in mountain attitudes at the 17th century’s end. People looking back saw writers saying mountains were ugly “warts of the earth” (taken from Burnett) and back-projected it across the whole period.
When this idea was articulated by someone looking backward, the first person was indeed William Wordsworth. I find him interesting because he was self-declaredly creating a new form of poetic writing. He and Coleridge wrote at the start of Lyrical Ballads that they were deliberately creating something new - a very modern mindset.
Wordsworth describes this theory of pre-modern mountain gloom in a letter to a local newspaper while living in the Lake District. There was a proposal to run a railway to Lake Windermere, and he was very angry about it. He was about 80 - a grumpy old man who didn’t want visitors coming to his rural retreat.
He wrote arguing that the railway was only worthwhile if poor people coming by train would benefit. He claimed they wouldn’t because “the love of mountains is of quite recent origin.” Before the late 17th century, people didn’t like mountains, which proved appreciation was a cultivated taste requiring education and intellectual development. Therefore, poor people lacked the education or intelligence to appreciate mountains, just as early modern people lacked the intellectual development to appreciate them. It’s an incredibly elitist argument.
In the UK we call this NIMBYism - “Not In My Back Yard.” It’s a massive NIMBY argument, but he’s leveraging history to make it. When you look at it, this isn’t a historian making a measured description of archives - it’s a grumpy old man making whatever argument he can to stop a railway.
Jeremy: I underlined sections in your book about this. When Wordsworth makes this argument, he’s pointing the finger at himself, saying the love for mountains is learned through education and culture, specifically through his own readings and those of the Romantics. He’s glorifying himself, claiming one must be cultured in his writings to learn proper mountain appreciation.
Dawn: Yes. The next step in this genealogy is Leslie Stephen’s discussion of the “old school” and “new school” in mountain attitudes and mountaineering. Stephen was a literature professor and literary scholar who mentions Wordsworth as a possible originator of modern mountain feeling, though he ultimately prefers Rousseau.
Wordsworth’s claim that he invented mountain love did influence subsequent scholars in the late 19th century, who acknowledged his role in creating mountain appreciation. So he got what he wanted, although the railway was eventually built.
Jeremy: Leslie Stephen didn’t acknowledge Wordsworth as much as he might have liked, favoring Rousseau and de Saussure.
Dawn: For Stephen, it’s Rousseau and de Saussure as two sides. Rousseau is the literary creator of this mountain idea, and de Saussure the activator who brings it into the physical ideal of climbing. Stephen says if anyone “has to be tried for the crime of creating the love of mountains,” Rousseau would be the main culprit with de Saussure as accomplice.
This appears in Stephen’s introduction to Playground of Europe, his book about mountaineering exploits. As president of the Alpine Club during a time of many first ascents, he traces this history of mountain attitudes. He’s read Wordsworth’s claims about a shift and describes this change, ending by saying that while all “good and wise men” love mountains, “those that love them most are those that have wandered longest in their recesses and most risk their lives in the ascent of them.”
Stephen’s analysis is more nuanced and historical than Wordsworth’s, but at the end, he shows his hand - thoroughly believing that he and his fellow Alpine Club mountaineers love mountains most because the true way to love mountains is risking your life to reach the summit.
Jeremy: Your book makes this point well. There is something new about modern mountaineering advanced by the Alpine Society, but the fabricated fable that they’re the true mountain lovers or that non-mountaineers cannot possibly love mountains properly is wrong.
We’re short on time, but your entire book argues this theory is wrong. Can you briefly explain your approach to disproving it - what types of sources you used and perhaps an example?
Dawn: I started by studying the Thomas Burnett debate, where I first saw that striking gap - all these writers of his era saying “No, mountains are beautiful, mountains are useful, they are important parts of the environment.” That was my master’s project.
For my PhD, I wanted to expand that, looking at scientific literature, poems, literature, artworks, and travel literature. But the most interesting material was trying to understand the lives of the real mountaineers. The mountains of Europe were populated very differently in the 16th-17th centuries compared to today.
I recently visited the Scottish Highlands, a stark example because Scotland had the Highland Clearances when scattered mountain communities were removed to make way for more profitable sheep farming. We now see Scottish mountains as wilderness without people, with the only inhabitants in tourist towns. But in the early modern period, people lived all over the mountains in small settlements.
Josiah Simler’s 1574 book Commentary on the Alps discusses local people’s mountain knowledge. He covers almost everything in a modern mountaineering safety course. People knew how to avoid avalanches, that if caught they should put hands in front of their face to keep airways open, and practiced mountain rescue by thinking where travelers might be when avalanches fell. They understood hypothermia and knew to heat someone slowly to avoid heart attacks. This extensive knowledge indicates they navigated mountain dangers daily without fear - they were equipped and knew how to handle mountain life.
Most European mountain regions practiced transhumance - taking cattle herds up into mountains during summer for better pasturage and to protect lower-level crops. Every European language has a term for these settlements: shillings in Scotland, Alps/Alpages in Germany, Boulies in Ireland, Seters in Scandinavia. Ethnographic records from the end of Scottish shilling usage describe a joyful mountain experience - moving to upper pastures was celebrated, and the whole community would bring herders down at season’s end.
In Sweden, law dictated only women could go to these upper pastures. This female-only summer community must have been like a holiday for women usually surrounded by men and children - a real change in the social order. These everyday experiences are often discarded by the elite narrative that sees mountaineering - outsiders coming to climb mountains - as most important.
Travelers also visited mountains in this period. The mountains of the Holy Land were regularly frequented since medieval times. Jean de Thévenot, a jeweler, climbed several mountains in a short time. Significantly, he wasn’t necessarily aiming for summits but visiting important places along the way.
When climbing Mount Quarantine, where Jesus was tempted, Thévenot and companions stopped at the grotto halfway up where Jesus supposedly fasted. Thévenot says his traveling companions continued to the summit where Jesus was tempted to throw himself down, but he didn’t go because it looked “too slippery.” This shows an anti-modern spirit - he’s not apologetic about not reaching the summit because it wasn’t all-important. Significant mountain experiences occurred without summit obsession.
Looking at visual evidence, mountains commonly appeared in Madonna and Child paintings - a crucial Christian image. Mary is often framed by mountains or has mountains in the background. They couldn’t have viewed these mountains as ugly features behind this beautiful religious image.
There was no mountaineering literature then as we have now, so you can’t find books solely about mountains. You must piece together different details because there wasn’t a self-conscious narrative of mountain affection. But when you assemble all the pieces, you see the complete opposite of mountain gloom.
Jeremy: I agree, which is why I like your book so much. The historical record is filled with examples like these. When exceptions outnumber the supposed rule, one must question assumptions. Your book presents this well.
We’re short on time, but to wrap up, do you have any new mountain-related projects?
Dawn: I’m currently focused on letterpress printing, but mountains keep appearing in that work. I’m typesetting Marmaduke Rawdon’s account of his ascent of Mount Tyde (Peak of Tenerife), which in the 17th century was thought to be the world’s highest mountain. This is my small way of presenting these stories in different formats to reach more people.
I’ve had thoughts about a mountain-related novel for a long time. Maybe watch this space, but I don’t want to discuss it too much while it’s still developing.
Jeremy: I should mention I also have your Mountain Dialogues anthology of academic essays. I’m working through that now.
Dawn: Yes, that’s with Jason König.
Jeremy: Who also has an interesting book. Maybe I can interview him someday.
Dawn: Yes, you definitely should.
Jeremy: I’ll link to all your books and website in the show notes. Dawn Hollis, thank you so much for your time.
Dawn: Thank you very much.