Perhaps the best and most famous book to be written on Svalbard.
Christiane Ritter was an Austrian painter and writer, who famously overwintered on Gråhuken on Spitsbergen, Svalbard, at 79 degrees North with her husband and a Norwegian trapper named Karl. She documented her stay there, and that’s what this book is – a year’s worth of memoirs at the edge of the world.
I live here now (again) in Longyearbyen, and I make an effort to read books from and about this place. I’ve previously read and review the famous North of The Desolate Sea, by Liv Balstad who lived here in the mid 1900’s and Without Mercy by Birger Amundsen, but I think this one is my favorite.
It’s by no means a long book. Thanks to a bout of insomnia and a couple of nights off, I finished it in about three days, but still, the details Ritter manages to convey, the story she tells about those cold, lonely nights in a tiny trapper’s cabin at the edge of the world is beyond fascinating.
Her husband and the Norwegian named Karl are already seasoned hunters and overwinterers by the time she gets up there. But she gets the opportunity to join them, and she just can’t say no. Who wouldn’t want to have an adventure like that? Living in a remote, desolate place; experiencing the complete, all-encompassing blackness of the polar night; living in minus 30-40 degrees Celsius, so cold that you can’t clean the cabin properly because the floor, the dishes and the cutlery would freeze; and to never know if you’re able to catch enough food to survive through the winter. I mean, when I put it like that it might sound awful, but still… the adventure of a lifetime!
And Ritter is absolutely captivated. Even if it’s a harsh reality check once she’s there and she’s the ship that carried her up north leave for good – it must have been terrifying, but at the same time so exciting.
And the writing is actually very good. Ritter has an eye for details and descriptions, and she puts words on how the trappers live, how they think, act, and the things they end up doing just to cope in a way that is entirely unique. She’s an outsider looking in, and it’s a very interesting perspective.
She’s very captivated by the nature around her and the way the light changes. I mentioned she was a painter and there are dozens of very famous aquarell paintings from her time up there. I don’t know if she actually painted them while she stayed there or later on (though I imagine she must have done it during her stay), but weirdly, she doesn’t mention painting even once in her book.
For me, living up here, it’s very interesting to finally have read this. Very many people who visit the Arctic knows who Ritter is, and her work is probably one of the most famous ones from Spitsbergen. I feel like I’m even more connected to this place now, like I understand it even more, know it even better. And I’m sure I will appreciate the light even more when the sun slowly disappears in November, and leave us all in pitch black darkness.
Have you read anything exciting lately? Found a new favorite author? Anything you’d recommend? Let me know in the comments!
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