This was a hard book to follow and some of the stories of hunting were just hard to read. I never felt from the writing what the reason was for the author to experience the year in the wild. I just did not feel any connection to this book. I thank NetGalley and the publisher for the advance read.

"Why have I been so shaken by the peacefulness of nature? Because it was preceded by the titanic storm? Do we really need the force of contrast to live intensively? It must be that. For a gentle song would not shake us if we had never heard a loud one."

In July 1933, Austrian painter Christiane Ritter set out for the Arctic. Persuaded to meet her husband, Hermann, on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, she travels north by boat with no more luggage than she can comfortably carry in a rucksack. Joined by Hermann's friend Karl, they set up camp in a small hut on the island's remote north coast. Their closest neighbour lives 60 miles away; temperatures drop to -50; and several months of the year are spent in complete darkness.

A Woman in the Polar Night, first published in 1938, is Ritter's memoir of a year spent living in one of the world's most isolated environments. It's an account of human endurance in harsh (and often unbearable) conditions, but also a love letter to the beauty of the Arctic. There isn't any great drama here, but somehow even the most mundane tasks - brewing coffee, baking bread, and doing laundry - make for exciting reading. Some of the most interesting chapters are those where Ritter finds herself alone for several days at a time and is therefore forced to navigate new challenges on her own.

The writing is quite restrained in places (e.g. when it comes to detailing personal information or relationships), but Ritter's descriptions of her surroundings are captivating. Landscape, climate, and nature - and how they change throughout the year - are all depicted in an almost painterly style:

"The sun is following its shallow course behind the mountains in the west, and the magic of the bright Arctic night surrounds us. Once more it seems to me a miracle that the evening twilight does not fade on the horizon, as it does at home, but slowly, little by little, again ascends, trailing with it over the mountains a streak of pastel-blue night."

This is one for fans of travel and nature-writing, but be aware there are some graphic descriptions of hunting. Thank you to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for the chance to read this new edition.

This is an astonishing book. It's so matter of fact about something so incredible and brave and frankly insane. I loved everything about it. I couldn't believe that anyone so ill equipped could just step away from all comfort and spend an entire year in a filthy, fragile shack with a failing stove anywhere, let alone in the Arctic. Even today, with cell phones and satellites, technical clothing and all kinds of ways of preserving food, it would still seem fairly bonkers. In 1934 it's nothing short of insanity. Ritter is a brilliant narrator. She has a fantastic eye for detail, a great sense of humour and the ability to tell you all the things you want to know. My only sadness was that it was too short.

In the late 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 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 memoirs might be a fast paced adventure tale, but it is not. Recommended to those who like meditative nature memoirs.

This was a fascinating tale about living in The Arctic in the 1930's. As you read A Woman in the Polar Night you feel as if you were there as well. I felt like i was apart of this memoir because Ritter’s words and drawings pull you in and you forget about your own life.

Thank you for this ARC

All thoughts and opinions are my own and aren't influenced by anyone else

I don't think I'd ever heard of this book despite being a big fan of nature writing, winter, and isolation--what a pleasure it was to read.

The book was written ninety years ago by a woman who decided to spend a winter in the remote north with her husband, who apparently had been living there for some time without her. Not until she's underway does she learn that another man will be living with them. The human relations among the few people in the area (the closest neighbor is sixty miles away by non-motorized means) are intriguing, and she also spends a lot of time alone and writes about it well.

But for me, the descriptions of the arctic weather and wildlife are the best aspects of the book. Not completely knowing what to expect going in, she winds up realizing that a life lived without a connection to nature is a lesser life.

Having lived in Yellowstone for a few years, I was able to relate to her described experiences in small ways--hiking alone in winter with no human sounds, and the transitions of going back and forth between busy human-centered life and a life more attuned to the natural cycles of the world.

Thanks to Pushkin Press and NetGalley for the chance to read an advance copy of this edition.

First off, I have always been fascinated by learning about the Arctic and the numerous days of daylight & days of darkness. When Christiane goes on a year long trip to Spitsbergen and lives in a tiny hut with her husband and a hunter named Karl, I’m confused. Why would she do it? To prove that she can? She has a daughter who stays in Austria, so then I think, what was going on with her? Also, how does she put up with sleeping in the bottom bunk, while hunter Karl sleeps in the top bunk. She deals with their constant belittling since it’s the 1930’s and she’s a “simple housewife”.
But she also learned that she loves the Beaty of the Arctic. The peacefulness. Although slow and dragging, this is a good account of life n the Arctic in the 30’s.
Comment

Note: I received an ARC through NetGalley, and the passages quoted may not be in their final forms.

"A Woman in the Polar Night" is a gripping autobiographical account of life in what is now known as Svalbard, written by Christiane Ritter. Originally published in 1938, one would expect a certain degree of datedness in an 85-year-old text, but to the contrary, it feels remarkably fresh and relevant. With the rise of the 'cottagecore' and 'slow living' movements, this book's central themes of self-sufficiency and living close to nature feel particularly timely.

Ritter's writing style keenly reflects the extremity of her situation, vacillating between the stark, chilling portrait of the landscape and the poetic profundity of her inner contemplations. The language, translated from German, is intimate, almost dreamy, making the reader feel as though privy to Ritter's personal diary. The pacing is perfectly suited to their situation - long spells of waiting are broken by sudden onslaughts of terror or beauty.

"Do we really need the force of contrast to live intensively? It must be that. For a gentle song would not shake us if we had never heard a loud one."

I found Ritter's poetic yet unadorned narrative style as well as her short but powerful chapters gave the novel a timeless appeal. It is a novel that is easy to pick up but hard to put down, especially so as we head into the winter season. Fans of memoirs, philosophy, and nature, as well as those seeking a deeper understanding of a life pared back to its rudiments, will find much to appreciate in these pages.

I look forward to giving this book a re-read when this new edition is released in February!

Beautifully written and haunting, A Woman in the Polar Night is Austrian Christiane Ritter’s memoir of her year spent at the edge of the Arctic. In 1933, Ritter joined her husband Hermann who had travelled there on a scientific expedition and stayed on. She planned to read and sleep but she had to learn how to survive in the bleak Arctic which she had thought of as “another word for freezing and forsaken solitude.” She was right and she learns quickly that survival is based on your ability to hunt, to kill, cook and build a fire. The hut where she lives is basic. The private room she was promised has not yet been built. There is much disappointment but she finds beauty in the wild and lonely landscape. Ritter’s descriptions of light “there’s so much artificial glitter that the people no longer know anything about the light, about its coming and going, and about the magic of the twilight” and the sun “ rises over the horizon, irradiating a superb scene of precipitous, bright red cliffs” are magical and poetic. There are photographs of the couple and their snow buried hut which only emphasize the crazy bravery of this year in the Arctic.

As you read A Woman in the Polar Night and marvel at Ritter’s words and drawings, you forget that it was written in 1933. Her husband and the other hunters would be called sexist in today’s world. While the couple hunts, fishes and builds bear traps, her country is facing war. She will return to a very different Europe. She has learned much about herself and how the Arctic has changed her. “You must live through the long night, the storms and the destruction of human pride. You must have gazed on the deadness of all things to grasp their livingness. In the return of light, in the magic of the ice, in the life-rhythm of the animals observed in the wilderness, in the natural laws of all being, revealed her in their completeness, lies the secret of the Arctic and the overpowering beauty of its lands.” 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Pushkin Press and Christiane Ritter for this ARC.

A Woman in the Polar Night is a beautifully written memoir from the 1930’s about Christiane “Chrissy” Ritter going to the arctic to spend time with her husband. She is warned about leaving Austria and spending time at an island in the Arctic. She is told that it is no place for a woman and warned by family, friends, and even people she passes by on her travels that she should not go.

This memoir is so fascinating. The “drama” is nature and Chrissy’s battle with surviving in the depressing landscapes. Ritter paints a vivid picture of the arctic and the icy, frozen, and foggy wilderness on these pages. Watching her transform her thoughts from arriving and not being thrilled with how she is introduced to her staying there to finding beauty and connection in nature and means of survival makes A Woman in the Polar Night seem like art.

“To paint this landscape would require the devotion of the old masters. Perhaps this habit of devotion will one day be recaptured.”

I do think that it is important to mention that there is sexism and hunting for food and fur involved. Ritter talks about this in a way that aligns with the time it is written. She is explaining her lived experiences when writing this and sexism is not the focal point of this book. Hunting is used for survival and combatting a limited food supply in an area with limited access to buying goods and services and poor land for growing – 4 stars.

Huge thanks to the publisher for allowing me to access A Woman in the Polar Night on NetGalley! I may not have ever found this to read if I had not noticed it there.

What marvellous fun. I've been meaning to read this for years (I love me a good off-into-the-frozen-wilds real-life adventure story), but I'd been putting it off because I'd gotten it in my head that it would be a serious, grim account of survival in those frozen wilds, and instead it's...well, the words that kept coming to mind as I read were things like "marvellous", "delightful", "plucky", and "smart".

Ritter was an Austrian painter, and this is her only book—an account of the year she spent with her husband on the island of Spitsbergen, which is far, far, *far* north in Norway. It was the 1930s, and this was the sort of adventure that was acceptable for men (her husband had been in Norway for several years at that point) but not for women. Pretty much everyone she knew advised her against going, but her own expectations were perhaps a bit...rosy:

"The little winter hut appeared to me in a more and more friendly light. As housewife I would not have to accompany him on the dangerous winter excursions. I could stay by the warm stove in the hut, knit socks, paint from the window, read thick books in the remote quiet, and, not least, sleep to my heart's content." (loc. 145)

Her husband writes, devoid of irony:

"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. We can visit him in the spring when it's light again and the sea and fjords are frozen over." (loc. 153)

And so off to Norway she goes, and is swiftly disabused of her original romantic notions.

"I look round for a bed. I am seized by a secret horror of the two bunks with their hard straw mattresses. Who knows what wild hunters last slept there.

'Where is the boudoir you promised me in your letter?' I ask my husband.

'It's not built yet,' he replies. "First we have to find planks. The sea sometimes throws them up.'" (loc. 454)

But for every moment of well-bred horror that she has, she finds many more moments of beauty and awe. There's the fortnight when she's left alone in the hut and the first big storm comes, and she finds herself digging the hut out day after day, hoping that her husband is safe and trying not to think too much about the alternative—and she gets on with it, because what is the alternative? There are the mildewed clothes that she finds under a mattress and, after investigating their provenance, chucks into the sea. There are the months of unending darkness, and the weeks when they wait and hope for the ice conditions to change to improve hunting. If she despairs, she rarely lingers in it, and instead dives back into new experiences and new lessons and the beauty of their frozen isolation.

It's worth noting that one of the major points of this Arctic adventure was to trap and hunt for fur—something that has fortunately gone out of fashion. I've been vegetarian since I was four and cannot imagine hunting, especially for something under so much threat as polar bears; the attitudes toward hunting have to be taken within the context of the book's time. But it says something about Ritter's writing that by the end of the book even I (well, part of me) was hoping(!) for a polar bear for Ritter and her husband.

The book has never been out of print in Germany, and someday I'd like to try a reread in the original German. 4.5 stars.

"How varied are the experiences one lives through in the Arctic. One can murder and devour, calculate and measure, one can go out of one's mind from loneliness and terror, and one can certainly also go mad with enthusiasm for the all-too-overwhelming beauty. But it is also true that one will never experience in the Arctic anything that one has not oneself brought there." (loc. 1297)

Thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley. Quotes are from an ARC.