Conjures the rasp of the skin runner, the scent of burning blubber and the rippling iridescence of the Northern Lights…” – Sara Wheeler. It won't be too lonely for you because at the northeast corner of the coast, about sixty miles from here, there is another hunter living, an old Swede. 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. Eventually the sun sets and doesn't rise again for months, and as their food reserves dwindle they rely on their rifles to provide sustenance. Es gibt da Überraschungen in der Weltferne und der langen Dunkelheit, denen man in solcher tiefgründigen Eindeutigkeit sonst kaum begegnet.

The writing is part memoir and a travelogue of sorts that does not keep its arc or sights on geographical indicators. It took a while for me to get in to this book but as soon as the woman arrived in the polar night I found it hard to put down and the last couple of chapters left a lump in my throat. Ritter is an artist who paints glorious and timeless pictures with her powerful ability to describe scene after scene with polished, refined, yet light and simple words.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 takes off on a boat with a mirror, a feather bed, books, camel hair clothing, spoons, and herbs.

Yet, Ritter also appreciates the beauty of the landscape: the colours of the sky reflecting on the ice, the Northern lights, the mysterious beauty of the distant, snow-covered mountains and fjords, the moonlight and clear air. The year is as if outside of time: she never reminisces about her life back home, and barely mentions their daughter. They also would stop her doing almost anything, at one point she says that they actually put her on 'house arrest'.In fact, this book has some similarities with that modus operandi, except Christiane is waiting for her husband in the northern part of the Norwegian island of Svalbard, and the household is a two-room hut, shared by them plus a younger hunter, Karl, that is heated by a broken unreliable stove and buried in snow they have to dig themselves out of half the time, and their dinners are constructed of oats and seal meat.

No electricity, no facilities, no running water, nothing but a tiny stove to heat the tiny hut which was barely a bunk’s length wide and which would mostly be completely immersed in snow. It is a weird thought – the closest I’ve been is Iceland in early Feb, when the sun just came up a bit for a few hours, but not much at all. It boggles my mind that she and her companions went a full eight months without any kind of fresh meat. Temperatures are brutally cold every day, the lakes freeze over, the animals leave, and the regular snowfalls in time completely cover the hut. In a tiny hut shared with her husband and a young trapper they endure the cold, hunger and isolation with great love of their little world.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. 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 think she survived through her good humor and through discovery - the "strange illumination of one's own self" and of seeing the world anew.

The savage magnificence of the landscape carries the book for me, but the interactions between Ritter (an Austrian artist), her husband and a young Norwegian adventurer, are cheerful and sincere, and also a highlight. 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 people on the ship Christiane sails to to meet Hermann on the Arctic island can't believe she's going to attempt this, and try to talk her out of it.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. She creates vivid pictures of the midnight sun and of the "dead" polar night of not just darkness, but no signs of life beyond the three humans.