Christiane Ritter

For most of us, the Arctic conjures up images of freezing and forsaken solitude. Hence, Austrian painter Christiane Ritter was at best ambivalent when her husband asked her to join him on the small Arctic island of Spitsbergen in a tarpaulin-covered hut sixty miles from the nearest neighbor. Yet his descriptions were filled not with cold and hardship but tales of remarkable wildlife, alluring light shows, and treks over water and ice. Won over, Ritter joined her husband and grew to love life on this small isle off Norway's coast, and in this charming memoir she describes her experiences, with insight and wry humor. Whether or not you ever plan a trip to the Arctic, A Woman in the Polar Night offers thoughtful reflections on isolation and the place the natural world holds in the human psyche.

A Woman in the Polar Night

Love this description of the landscape and the midnight sun.

leonie wise

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 light. The blue light pours over the strange landscape, giving it the serene tenderness and solemnity that all things take on up here in the bright night.

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