A Woman in the Polar Night

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Maybe somewhere with individual days and nights: “For here there are no days because there are no nights. 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).

He is silent on the privations he suffers on hunting trips across the frozen wastes, and she doesn’t ask. I've been meaning to read this for years (I love me a good off-into-the-frozen-wilds real-life adventure story), but I'd been putting it off because I'd gotten it in my head that it would be a serious, grim account of survival in those frozen wilds, and instead it's. I was fine with it, and also found it odd being there in June when there was almost no night at all, but I don’t think I could live like that.My husband’s mother’s family lived north of the Arctic Circle in Norway, and I was always curious about their life there. On arrival she is shocked to realise that they are to live in a tiny ramshackle hut on the shores of a lonely fjord, hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement. Her transformation from the excitement of arriving on the island, which reads like an Enid Blyton style adventure of the day (1930s), to a fear of what she has let herself in for as the sun goes down in October, not to rise until February, is perfectly described.

At first, Christiane is horrified by the freezing cold, the bleak landscape the lack of equipment and supplies… But as time passes, after encounters with bears and seals, long treks over the ice and months on end of perpetual night, she finds herself falling in love with the Arctic’s harsh, otherworldly beauty, gaining a great sense of inner peace and a new appreciation for the sanctity of life. Then the 'Hunters' (ew) come back and she's like 'oooo thank goodness I can feel safe again and I must make them their morning coffee and flit about like a useless woman'. At first, Christiane is horrified by the freezing cold, the bleak landscape the lack of equipment and supplies. I mean, I’ll read an older book that has foxhunting in the background (Angela Thirkell, I’m thinking of you) but not a modern book or one concentrating on it; here, the pull of the description of polar life outweighed the discomfort, however, it wasn’t all entirely of necessity and there is talk of making good furs to sell for ladies to wear which was difficult to read. And away she goes, leaving behind her small daughter, and travels to Svalbard, a small island that touches the 80th parallel, far north in the Arctic Ocean.

Neuveriteľne silná osobnosť musela byt autorka a odhodlanie, humor a pokora, ktoré preukazuje počas tejto výpravy - prezimovania v loveckej chate daleko na západnom pobreží Spicberg - sú obdivuhodne. We are entertained onboard ship, and are given a whole kilogram of coffee and four tins of condensed milk as well as a four-week-old newspaper. The painter Christiane Ritter leaves her comfortable life in Austria and travels to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen, to spend a year there with her husband. I could stay by the warm stove in the hut, knit socks, paint from the window, read thick books in the remote quiet, and, not least, sleep to my heart's content. A Woman In The Polar Night is a fascinating memoir, one woman against and with nature, in an extremely inhospitable landscape takes a journey of self discovery.