Christiane Ritter (1897–2000)

In 1934, Ritter, a painter, left her presumably ordinary life with a teenage daughter to join her husband in his life as trapper in Arctic Spitsbergen. It turns out to be as cold and inhospitable as we all imagine, and twice as primitive. Home is little better than a shack, the stove is primitive and unreliable, and all fuel needs to be found and collected by them, The same applies on the whole to food. They have supplies of lentils, coffee, condensed milk and not much else. Seals have to be caught and processed, birds too, and these fatty unfamiliar meats form much of their diet. Husband and Norwegian friend and housemate are often out trapping, looking for animals whose fur they will sell. That's enough to tell you what much of this book is about. It's twice as tough as it sounds in this unforgiving climate. But it's beautiful too, and Ritter dwells on this. Straightforwardly yet engagingly written, this book offers an insight into the strange world which she chooses for a year to inhabit, and leaves reluctantly.… (lisätietoja)

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. Christiane 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 beauty of untrammeled nature. When the big boat arrives to take the adventurers back to Europe, none of them really wants 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.

I received an electronic pre-publication copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I was not compensated in any way.… (lisätietoja)

A Woman in the Polar Night is my favorite read of 2019. First published in 1938, its most recent incarnation is a pretty paperback published by Pushkin Press in mid-November 2019. Author Christiane Ritter was an Austrian artist who wrote of the year she lived in a remote, polar region of Finland (Svalbard) with her husband Hermann. I'm thankful to Jane Degras for this English translation.

Christiane's memoir shimmers with painterly descriptions of the bleak and ethereal polar landscape that enchanted her and Hermann. So many of Christiane's passages are quotable that I'm tempted to fill my review with them, but I think it better to let readers discover these treasures for themselves. Well, maybe just one:

The whole sky is deep lilac, lightening into a tender cobalt blue at the horizon, over the sea of ice. From the east a pale-yellow brightness spreads, and the frozen sea, reflecting the heavenly colours, shines like an immense opal. Where sea and land meet, and where the tidal water thrusts through to the surface around the heavy masses of ice, the colours of the sky are reflected as brightly as in a mirror.

I love it when an author describes a landscape so vividly that I can "see" it. Christiane's drawings are scattered throughout the book, and in the back of the book are photos of Christiane, Hermann, and the hut they lived in.

Christiane told of her adventures, venturing out with her husband and being left on her own for weeks at a time. Her stories impressed me with the extreme isolation and danger of the arctic climate, where physical and psychic survival is critical and miscalculations could mean losing your life or your mind. She reflected on the beauty of living simply, in harmony with nature, and the unnecessary excesses of European society. Her reflections are as relevant today as they were when she wrote them, nearly a hundred years ago.

Christiane Ritter was a hardy woman who lived to the age of 103. An example of her art is here: http://www.polarstern-ag.de/zitate/ritterbild.jpg.

I bought the paperback from Amazon. Yup, I bought a book. I pre-ordered it actually, and waited impatiently when its release was delayed.… (lisätietoja)