A Woman in the Polar Night

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Christiane writes in a spare and straightforward manner. She is very descriptive of the landscape, animals, weather, and the three's activities such as hunting, cooking, meals, going on hikes. You feel like you are right there with them in this isolated winter world. It was fun to read how her attitude towards her arctic home changed over the course of the year. Ritter manages to articulate all the terrible beauty and elemental power of a polar winter” Gavin Francis, author of Empire Antarctica

The book has never been out of print in Germany, and someday I'd like to try a reread in the original German. 4.5 stars. The utter wretchedness of their hut ("a small, bleak, bare box") disturbed Christiane, at least at first. Although she doesn't actually admit it in her book, I suspect she was even more disturbed that another person-a Norwegian hunter named Karl Nicholaisen-would be sharing the cramped hut with her and her husband. For his part, Karl expected Christiane to go crazy sooner or later, probably sooner, and he figured that the various manifestations of this craziness would provide him with (as he later told explorer Willie Knutsen) "some mid-winter entertainment." Later, he changed his opinion of her. Christiane, he said to Knutsen, was "one hell of a woman." This is not a gendered or sexist remark, but-to this blunt hunter-a blunt truth. She agrees, leaving her small daughter with family in Germany and ignoring pleas about this being a "hairbrain" scheme. She arrives in August and she does indeed live for a year with her husband and, as an added bonus, his hunting partner, Karl, a Norwegian. I wondered how she felt when she found, with no warning, that she would be living in a 10x10 hut with not just her husband but a strange man! Her writing is both matter of fact and lyrical, with never a mention of complaint. 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. I kept wondering how her year in Spitsbergen would be experienced if it were done today. I'm certain she would have a satellite link and be blogging and tweeting about it. My thought is living in the polar night today would remove one from actually experiencing it the deep way that Chrissie, as she was called by her husband did. I searched for Spitsbergen and saw awe-inspiring photographs of the dramatic landscape I had just read about. I also saw that it is the location of the Global Seed Bank, something I have read about with interest over the years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard... And I see they have cruises in the summer when there is open water. I thought for few minutes about taking one, but . . .A year in the Arctic should be compulsory to everyone," she would say to friends and family, in fact almost everyone she knew, adding: "Then you will come to realise what's important in this life and what isn't."

Published in 1938, ‘A Woman in the Polar Night’ by Christiane Ritter based on the author’s experiences in the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen is considered a cult classic with the original German book translated into over seven languages, never going out of print over the years. The author is no self proclaimed or experienced explorer and that makes this book all the more interesting. There is no insight given to readers as to what makes her take up her husband’s offer of joining him for a year in the vast desolation except a vague fascination about the beauty of the wilderness that her husband writes to her about. What would cause a woman to want to go live in the Artic for a year? The young woman in this story is married to a man that is a hunter/trapper who takes expeditions to the Artic and lives in a hut on the small island of Spitsbergen. He asks her to come live with him, and that is all it took for her to leave their young child. She takes off on a boat with a mirror, a feather bed, books, camel hair clothing, spoons, and herbs. Speaking of herbs, you have to find some way to spice up the meals that they end up eating. The feather bed and books were a good idea too, but everything in the hut got damp, very damp. But I once spent the night in a jungle with a wet wool blanket, and it kept me warm, so maybe feather beds are like that, still warm when damp. In Anbetracht der Erstveröffentlichung und der davor angetretenen Reise muss man den Mut der Autorin anerkennen. Die Malerin ließ ihr Kind bei der Mutter und reiste zu ihrem Mann nach Spitzbergen. Aufgrund der damaligen Zeit war Ritter eine wahre Abenteurerin.Many nights I fell asleep with Ritter painting images in my mind of sublime, polar land. Her unbending, positive attitude makes her life a joy to follow, and her story an inspiration to read. It's not built yet,' he replies. "First we have to find planks. The sea sometimes throws them up.'" (loc. 454) Christiane Ritter was neither an explorer nor a luminary. Instead, she was a well-to-do Austrian hausfrau who, prior to her year in Spitsbergen, had never strayed far from her comfortable surroundings. Yet perhaps because she had no interest in an Arctic Grail, whether the Pole, the Northwest Passage, or just an Unknown Land, she could appreciate the Arctic in ways that the aforementioned luminaries, wrapped in their Grail-oriented blinders, could not. And in appreciating the Arctic, indeed thriving in it, she gave the lie to the notion that women do not belong at the ends of the earth.