Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Amsterdam Querido Fosfor 2018
User reviews
LibraryThing member klburnside
In 1934, Christiane Ritter spent a year living in Spitsbergen, an Arctic island north of Norway. A Woman in the Polar Night is her memoir of her time spent there. While on the island, she lives in a tiny hut with her husband and his hunting partner. They have very little in the way of sustenance,
This book alternated between incredibly terrifying and incredibly awe inspiring. At one point in the beginning of winter, Ritter is alone in the hut while the men are out on a two week hunting expedition. It is the time of year when the polar bears start arriving in the area, so the men leave her a rifle and instruct her to shoot any bears that she may see. While they are gone, the first major snowstorm also hits, leaving her digging herself a path out of the hut each morning. Eventually, the snow rises to the level of the roof, and she writes about taking walks, as she was advised to do every day to stay sane. On these walks, while it is dark outside, as it is all day, she bangs on the roof with a stick to scare off any polar bears that may be hiding in the dark. At times, her descriptions of the isolation and sensory deprivation are completely terrifying and make me wonder how someone can live there and not go crazy. At times she feels like she is going crazy.
Then she writes a beautiful passage describing the spiritual experience of the quiet and the solitude and her feelings of being simultaneously so significant and so insignificant. It makes the vast emptiness of the Arctic sound like the most magical place on earth. Basically all of the descriptions of the world around her were breathtaking: the northern lights, the fjords, the first glimpse of the sun after months of darkness.
I don’t think this book would be everyone’s cup of tea, but it was a really nice book to read on a cold winter night. It makes the darkness seem infinitely magical.
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relying on very basic staples and any fresh meat they are able to hunt. The island is very desolate and the closest humans are many days journey away. This book alternated between incredibly terrifying and incredibly awe inspiring. At one point in the beginning of winter, Ritter is alone in the hut while the men are out on a two week hunting expedition. It is the time of year when the polar bears start arriving in the area, so the men leave her a rifle and instruct her to shoot any bears that she may see. While they are gone, the first major snowstorm also hits, leaving her digging herself a path out of the hut each morning. Eventually, the snow rises to the level of the roof, and she writes about taking walks, as she was advised to do every day to stay sane. On these walks, while it is dark outside, as it is all day, she bangs on the roof with a stick to scare off any polar bears that may be hiding in the dark. At times, her descriptions of the isolation and sensory deprivation are completely terrifying and make me wonder how someone can live there and not go crazy. At times she feels like she is going crazy.
Then she writes a beautiful passage describing the spiritual experience of the quiet and the solitude and her feelings of being simultaneously so significant and so insignificant. It makes the vast emptiness of the Arctic sound like the most magical place on earth. Basically all of the descriptions of the world around her were breathtaking: the northern lights, the fjords, the first glimpse of the sun after months of darkness.
I don’t think this book would be everyone’s cup of tea, but it was a really nice book to read on a cold winter night. It makes the darkness seem infinitely magical.
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LibraryThing member bness2
A true classic of polar literature. Ritter is both witty and profound as she describes her one year in an isolated hut in Spitsbergen with her husband and another hunter. The opening chapters are especially amusing, as she discovered the harshness of her home for the coming year and the nonchalance
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of her husband over the various shortcomings of the place. Her descriptions of the polar winter are truly enchanting, and make me long to give it a try myself. Show Less
LibraryThing member akblanchard
In the mid-1930s, Austrian artist Christiane Ritter joined her hunter-trapper husband Herman for a year-long expedition in the Arctic wilderness. Along with their friend Karl, the couple brave extreme darkness, cold, and snow, and cope with the constant need to find fresh seal or bear meat.
Given the subject matter, I thought this memoir might be a fast paced adventure tale, but it is not. It also does not address the characters' inner lives or relationships in any degree of detail. Recommended to those who like meditative memoirs that focus on the environment.
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Christiane mostly keeps herself busy transforming their tiny hut into a sparkling home and holding down the fort while the men are away. With her painter’s eye, she discerns the wild beauty of untamed nature. When the big boat arrives to take the adventurers back to Europe, none of them really want to leave their beloved Spitsbergen.Given the subject matter, I thought this memoir might be a fast paced adventure tale, but it is not. It also does not address the characters' inner lives or relationships in any degree of detail. Recommended to those who like meditative memoirs that focus on the environment.
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Subjects
Language
Original language
German
ISBN
9789021408958