A Woman in the Polar Night

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One day melts into the next, and you cannot say this is the end of today and now it is tomorrow and that was yesterday.

She takes off on a boat with a mirror, a feather bed, books, camel hair clothing, spoons, and herbs. She spends a full year there with her husband Hermann and his Swedish friend Karl, enduring not only loneliness (Hermann and Karl frequently leave on hunting trips, plus they are the only two humans she sees for much of that year) but terrible storms, extreme cold, food insecurity, and a lack of light. It made me think about things bigger than myself, as indeed living through it gave Cristiane Ritter food for thought, I highly recommend it if you want knowledge of experiences you’ll likely never have during a time we won’t see again. And suddenly I realize that civilisation is suffering from a severe vitamin deficiency because it cannot draw its strength directly from nature, eternally young and eternally true. There are the mildewed clothes that she finds under a mattress and, after investigating their provenance, chucks into the sea.And I felt she almost wanted her writing to be so 'beautiful' that she never actually got to the point, it was just descriptive words.

Because the women were the ones who stayed at home, looking after the household and worrying about their explorer husbands. There are lots and lots of classics of Polar literature of course, but very few of them, and certainly not until very recent times, have been written by women. It has since become a classic of travel writing, never going out of print in German and being translated into seven other languages. In Anbetracht der Erstveröffentlichung und der davor angetretenen Reise muss man den Mut der Autorin anerkennen. The concept - I was actually really intrigued to read this book at first as it thought it would be fascinating to learn about life in the Arctic (I should have just stuck with the David Attenborough documentaries!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. The author spent a year in Spitsbergen in the Arctic, with her husband and another hunter, in a tiny cabin miles away from civilization and other people, isolated by the weather and the long polar night. They told of journeys by water and over ice, of the animals and the fascination of the wilderness, of the strange light over the landscape, of the strange illumination of one’s own self in the remoteness of the polar night. He is silent on the privations he suffers on hunting trips across the frozen wastes, and she doesn’t ask. 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.

well, the words that kept coming to mind as I read were things like marvellous, delightful, plucky, and smart. She thinks it will be a relaxing trip, a chance to 'read thick books in the remote quiet and, not least, sleep to my heart's content', but when Christiane arrives she is shocked to realize that they are to live in a tiny ramshackle hut on the shores of a lonely fjord, hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement, battling the elements every day, just to survive. This rediscovered classic memoir tells the incredible tale of a woman defying society's expectations to find freedom and peace in the adventure of a lifetime. She's able to find the majesty in the landscape and the animals, despite the loneliness and fear when the men leave on hunting expeditions lasting for days.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. However, this is an intriguing account, and captures both an extremely unusual place, and a very new life experience. She seems happy to act as a housewife to the two hunters, her husband and Karl, and celebrates their courage and manliness.

She thinks she will spend the year relaxing, drawing, sleeping and reading, and isn't prepared for the daily struggle to stay alive. I was fascinated by the details of Ritter’s daily tasks, but also by how her perspective on the landscape changed.In addition to certain standard Google cookies, reCAPTCHA sets a necessary cookie (_GRECAPTCHA) when executed for the purpose of providing its risk analysis. The oppression of endless dark days in a hut with dripping wet bunks and an inch thick coating of ice on the inside walls is unimaginable.