A Woman in the Polar Night

Christiane Ritter left her comfortable European home to spend a year with her husband Hermann on the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen. Hermann, who had stayed on after a scientific expedition to fish and hunt furs, had long urged her to join him. His diaries fascinated her with descriptions of wilderness, strange light, and self-illumination, with almost no mention of cold or hardship. Christiane imagined a cozy domestic scene of knitting by a warm stove while Hermann went on winter excursions. He instructed her to bring only what she could carry in a rucksack, though she also filled old trunks with extra supplies. Her family saw her off with disapproval.

She traveled by cruise ship from Hamburg, transferring to a smaller steamer for the final leg. In Tromsø, Norway, she met Helmer Hansen, the famed polar explorer who had accompanied Roald Amundsen to the South Pole, and he advised her on gear. At Kings Bay, she reunited with Hermann, who was burnt dark brown and wearing patched, bleached clothing. He introduced Karl Nicholaisen, a young Norwegian harpooner who would winter with them. Karl spoke no German, and Christiane spoke no Norwegian; Karl privately expected the European woman to lose her mind in the loneliness. They arrived at Grey Hook, on the island's north coast, in thick mist. The captain of the steamer promised to return in a year.

The hut was a small, dark box covered in black roofing felt, surrounded by animal skeletons, on a treeless promontory above the sea. The stove was fractured and rusted; Hermann cleaned the chimney with a felt hat tied to an oar, accepting the conditions with a serenity that astonished Christiane. Over days that blurred together in perpetual daylight, they unpacked stores. Christiane inventoried their provisions with alarm: most lacked vitamins, half the potatoes were rotten, and 75 of 100 eider duck eggs were broken. When Karl shot a seal, Christiane was horrified but cooked enormous quantities of liver. She recognized that a single seal provided a whole butcher's shop, and her anxiety eased. One morning the mist lifted, revealing a magnificent bay with glaciers, colored mountains, and turquoise sky.

A young white polar fox the men called Mikkl began visiting the hut. Christiane grew deeply attached, pleading with the hunters to spare his life and offering to pay the 30 kroner his fur would bring. Mikkl accompanied them on walks and played hide-and-seek among the stones. As darkness approached, he grew timid. One day at the lagoon, Mikkl stared at Christiane with sudden horror, then bolted toward the mountains. When fox-trapping season opened on October 20, Christiane found Mikkl caught alive in a trap near the freshwater spring. She tore away the heavy stones and freed him. Karl laughed, saying the fox's fur was poor. They never saw Mikkl again.

Before darkness fully descended, the trio undertook a multi-day boat journey down the immense Wijde Bay to stock distant hunting huts. At the island of Corspynthen, they found Hermann's well-maintained hut from the previous winter, with a framed photograph of their daughter on the windowsill. A sudden storm forced them ashore on the west fjord, and they returned to Corspynthen on foot.

On October 16, the sun vanished for the last time, beginning 132 days of polar night. Soon after, the men departed on a 13-day expedition to lay traps, leaving Christiane alone. Within hours, a ferocious blizzard struck. For nine days she battled the smoking stove, dug through snow blocking the door, and crawled on all fours in the gale to retrieve fuel. The hut was buried; she had to tunnel out each morning. Her lamp ran out of paraffin, plunging her into darkness. She developed a routine of shoveling and chopping wood, experiencing for the first time the joy of struggling against something stronger than herself. She reflected that in the solitude of overpowering nature, retaining ordinary humanity might be harder than sustaining life.

When the storm ceased, she opened the door to a world of splendor: a greenish-blue sky, mountains glassy-bright with ice, the fjord reflecting the full moon. Standing at the water's edge, she felt as though she were dissolving into infinite space, losing the boundaries of her being and grasping for the first time the value of companionship. On the 13th evening, the men returned on schedule, covered in hoarfrost.

As total darkness settled, the trio fell into routines: taking turns cooking, sharing stories, and playing card games. Each developed eccentricities. Christiane compulsively sewed and polished; Hermann hoarded anything made of wood; Karl talked incessantly and sang the same mournful song. In mid-December, the mists cleared, revealing the Arctic in brilliant moonlight and Northern Lights. Christiane became entranced, wanting only to stand on the shore watching ice floes. Karl diagnosed her with rar, a strangeness that overcomes those who overwinter in polar regions, and warned that hunters say ishavet kaller, meaning the Arctic is calling, when a comrade inexplicably throws himself into the sea. The men enforced house arrest and fed her enormous helpings of seal meat. They celebrated Christmas Eve with candles on a small carved tree and a festive dinner of ptarmigan.

January brought the deepest darkness. Their last seal meat was eaten on January 6; fox meat became the emergency ration. On January 9, a small reddish light appeared on the southern horizon, proving the sun still existed. By late January, the landscape took visible shape again; the trio looked at each other and were horrified by their pale, shriveled appearance. In early February, the pack ice surged into the bay with a thunderous grinding of enormous floes, bringing joy at the return of movement. On February 25, the sun peeped between the mountains for a single second. A returning gull swooped low and circled them, the first living creature to reclaim the frozen world.

In early spring, the men undertook separate expeditions to collect foxes, leaving Christiane alone for extended periods. She read Hermann's diaries and reflected that the hunters' lives consisted of nearly inhuman feats of endurance. Hermann returned from visiting their only neighbor, Sven Ohlson, a Swedish hunter 40 miles away, empty-handed and terribly thin. Karl returned in early April after two months alone, also thin, carrying fox pelts.

In mid-April, Hilmar Nois, an experienced hunter who had built their hut, arrived by dog sleigh after traveling 175 miles to deliver mail. According to a plan made the previous autumn, the group was to depart south so Christiane could catch the first returning ship. But the night before departure, she crept out under a luminous sky and realized she could not leave. Karl called it Spitsbergen mania. Only Hermann understood, as he himself could never leave the island. Karl departed with Nois and a visiting doctor, ending the winter companionship.

In late April, Christiane and Hermann skied across the frozen fjord to Reindeerland in search of Sven and fresh game. They found Sven's hut empty but provisioned with coffee, bread, and kindling he had left for them. On the return, fog closed in and Christiane's frozen shoes caused her feet to go numb and white. They barely made it home.

By May, they had gone eight months without fresh meat. At month's end, gulls arrived in flocks and a bear was caught in a spring trap, ending their food worries. Arctic spring transformed Grey Hook into a teeming sanctuary: seals by the thousands, courting terns, and a devoted house seal that rose each morning from a gap in the ice to watch them. As the fjord cleared, Christiane and Hermann were seized by longing to go further into the Arctic rather than return to Europe.

In August, the ship Lyngen returned to take Christiane home, its captain keeping his year-old promise. In the dining saloon, the sauces and savories no longer tasted as good. Old Björnes, a fellow overwinterer, sat opposite, sawing pieces from a hunk of seal meat. Sensing Christiane's grief, he silently cut off a large piece and held it out to her. Christiane reflects that the Arctic does not yield its secret for the price of a ship's ticket: One must live through the long night, the storms, and the destruction of human pride, and must gaze on the deadness of all things to grasp their livingness.