A Woman in the Polar Night
Book description
"Conjures the rasp of the skin runner, the scent of burning blubber and the rippling iridescence of the Northern Lights..." Sara Wheeler, author of Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica
"Ritter manages to articulate all the terrible beauty and elemental power of a polar winter" Gavin Francis, author of Empire Antarctica…
Why read it?
3 authors picked A Woman in the Polar Night as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Perhaps one of the most classic Arctic memoirs, this book is Ritter’s account of the year she spent in the remote Arctic wilderness of Spitsbergen in the 1930s.
The nature writing is exquisite, and you can’t help but be transported to the time in place in which she lived, replete with polar bears and long, cold, (and dark) Arctic nights.
From Laura's list on life changing books on life in the Arctic (and other cold climates!).
What kind of person dreams of months of frozen winter darkness?
In 1934 Christiane Ritter set off for a remote hut in the Arctic with her husband and Karl, a hunter, to spend a year in the ice far from her luxurious city life in Austria.
She imagines a cosy retreat until she sees the hut and the horrifyingly basic conditions they’ll live in – just to get water for their first meal involves an hour and a half’s trek to a glacier, even the potatoes freeze, and she hadn’t expected to be left completely alone for weeks as the…
From Sarah's list on solitude by one who fears and yearns for it.
I’m recommending it for several reasons. First, it’s a splendid read. Second, it presents a view of the Arctic from a woman’s rather than a man’s point of view – not a common thing, at least not in the 1930s, when the book was written. Third, I felt so strongly about the book’s merits that I got it back into print and wrote an introduction to it, too.
From Lawrence's list on the North.
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