A Woman in the Polar Night

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Ritter is an artist who paints glorious and timeless pictures with her powerful ability to describe scene after scene with polished, refined, yet light and simple words. Looking at the convoys of cruise ships rounding Cape Horn and exploring the Alaskan fjords, we don’t feel we want to contribute to the commercialisation of once wild places and would rather leave the wildlife and wild places in peace. If she despairs, she rarely lingers in it, and instead dives back into new experiences and new lessons and the beauty of their frozen isolation.

Them - as mentioned above, I didn't like any of them, I didn't care what experiences they went through or how they felt about it, but above all, I couldn't stand they sense of self entitlement that came with their experience. The men have absolutely no faith in her, and when they leave her alone for a week (about the only chapter I could stomach) she literally excelled and sorted everything without thinking twice. It has since become a classic of travel writing, never going out of print in German and being translated into seven other languages. So there’s hunting to make sure they have food, and trapping to get furs to sell to keep themselves going, and that’s not going to appeal to everyone – it didn’t appeal to me, of course, but I was able to read it as part of a particular – very particular – situation in which it is understandable.Both a period piece and a travel memoir, in 1934, Ritter travels to Svalbard, the Norwegian Arctic, to spend a year with her husband in a tiny hut. This luminous classic memoir tells of her inspiring journey to freedom and fulfilment in the adventure of a lifetime.

Unter anderem – wer weiß es, dass der Mensch in der totalen Einsamkeit, wo die Anregungen und der Widerhall durch den Mitmenschen fehlt, schließlich an das Ende des eigenen Ichs gerät?I know we all got a bit concentrated on whether the whale museum in the last book was a hunting museum, but I have to say this is a book with a lot of hunting in it. She also doesn't really comment on how she feels about the fur hunting that is central to their reason from remaining in Svalbard. I think she survived through her good humor and through discovery - the "strange illumination of one's own self" and of seeing the world anew. The book has never been out of print in Germany, and someday I'd like to try a reread in the original German. Weird things happen – voices and other sounds travel miles across the still ice and Christiane is surprised to recognise one of her own old bedcovers, trapped in the ice having been used as a sail before she got there.

Sounds intriguing in terms of the picture of life it gives one; though I can understand that they did need to hunt to meet their needs and live, it will be something I will find hard to get through (I’m glad the fix gets through it fine). The author's husband had been living for a few years on the island, hunting and fishing, and had been encouraging her to come spend a year with him. There's so much lovely stuff in here - days and days without sunlight, being stuck in a shed surrounded by snow, the weird sounds in the Arctic - so it seems likes someone is speakijg right next to you when they are miles away, being awed by nature and having that realisation that the fox fur coveted back in 30s Austria actually comes from a fox. To be fair, most of the books I’ve picked out are from/about Iceland and I’m a massive Icelandophile so that was always going to happen (I would go and check what other regions I have but the piles are terrible!I didn’t expect January to bring me a 5-star read, and I certainly didn’t expect to find it in the Arctic. She captures the majesty feels as she wanders in this place and learns the moods of the seasons, and the beauty of the terrain. It is difficult, and quite graphic – my love of polar books had to work hard to overcome that but it’s not all of the book and it is a very special book.

She brings to life so vividly the stark landscape of this tiny Arctic island and the hardships she endures. I hadn't planned on finishing this memoir or snapping this photo when it was -17 air temp outside, but it certainly added to the experience. No electricity, no facilities, no running water, nothing but a tiny stove to heat the tiny hut which was barely a bunk’s length wide and which would mostly be completely immersed in snow. The English translation was done by Jane Degras in 1954 and this really pretty edition was published by Pushkin Press in 2019 – I’d imagine I saw it on a few blogs at the time.He’d participated in a scientific expedition and caught the Arctic bug, it seems, for he stayed on to fish and hunt. It proves, once again, that a few books written decades ago are not only relevant today but have a rare sustaining power to inspire and move us. Ritter's wry commentary over house duties, the depth of her contemplations on life and social ties, her emotional bonding to the animals she grows familiar with, the way she takes to life in sub zero temperatures on her own, all make for a compelling read.