Spitsbergen on the Svalbard archipelago in Norway is one of the northernmost inhabited places in the world. , Photo Credit: Getty Images
The Bruce Chatwins, Paul Theroux and Ryszard Kapuscinskis may be the more famous travel writers of the world, but that doesn’t mean there is a shortage of female explorers and writers.
Martha Gellhorn travels with oneself and with another (1978) is still on the book shelves; So is Dervla Murphy’s account of her Ireland to India adventure in the 1960s (full throttle, or Isabel Eberhardt nomadswhich details the adventures of his Sahara dressed as an Arab in 19 thcentury. To that formidable list, add Kristian Ritter a woman in the polar nightPublished in German in 1938, and translated into English by Jane deGrasse in 1954.
Christiane’s husband Hermann had always dreamed of living in a hut in the Arctic. After participating in a scientific expedition, he stopped back in Spitsbergen, one of the northernmost inhabited places in the world, fishing in the Arctic in summer and fur hunting in winter. But to Christiane, an artist, the Arctic was just another word for “cold and forbidding solitude,” and she did not immediately obey her husband when he wrote to her, “Leave everything as it is and take me to the Arctic.” Come.”
A Year at Gray Hook, Spitsbergen
But they soon found his diaries, which described journeys on water and ice, attractions of animals and woods, strange lights on the landscape, and “strange lights of his own in the remoteness of the aurora light”.
Spitsbergen Mountains. , Photo Credit: Getty Images
There was no mention of cold or darkness, storms or hardships. In 1934, Christiane, then in her mid-30s, left her home to live with her husband and spent a year at Gray Hook on Spitsbergen’s north shore, and lived to write about it.
Although in the beginning, the view was comfortable. He thought it was a terrible country, where there was nothing but water, mist and rain. In the shack, a “beast of the stove” charred the walls and everything else was covered in soot, including a pack of playing cards that had turned black. The never-ending daylight made his eyes squint, and then when the long night remained, his mind played tricks. he experienced rar (Norwegian word for “strangeness affecting many people overwintering in the polar regions”).
For human company, she had her husband and a jovial Norwegian hunter, Carl Nicholson. Their only neighbor, a Swede, lived in a cottage miles away. She cooked partridges, duck, seal-blood pancakes and steak from a seal that was kept “open like a book”.
beauty of the northern lights
Beautiful northern lights. , Photo credit: Getty Images / iStock
But the fabulous play of the polar night with the northern lights captured his imagination. “The northern lights of incredible intensity streamed across the sky; His bright rays, falling downward, look like gleaming rods of glass. They became brighter and clearer, in radiant lilac, green and pink hues, swinging and twirling in a wild dance that shook the whole sky.
A polar fox, Mikkal, also attracted her attention and she wanted to go away, to go to another country where there were no people.
When Christiane encounters a polar fox, she sets him free and wants him to go far away from people. , Photo Credit: Getty Images
She begged her husband and Karl to spare her life; When he rescued her from a net, she could never forget the sight of him: “I speak softly to him, but the fear in his eyes does not go away.”
She realized the true power of nature when she was alone in the hut during several days of fierce storm; He came to understand that in many cases it may be more difficult for a person to maintain his normal humanity in the Arctic than to maintain his life in battle with the elements.
Christian never wrote another book. She died in 2000 when she was 103, and as Sarah Wheeler wrote in the preface to the book, Kristian always said she learned equality in Spitsbergen. “A year in the Arctic should be mandatory for everyone,” she used to say, “then you will know what is important in life and what is not.”
The author looks at one classic each month.
sudipta.datta@thehindu.co.in