A Woman in the Polar Night

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Rather, it is a brisk yet deeply philosophical look at nature, the bonds between human and animals, the way human comfort can be stripped down to the barest essential when faced with the existential crisis of survival and the way, the human mind and spirit can wax, wane and make small steps to start all over again when nothing familiar exists except your own solitary self. 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. It also pained me that they felt there was absolutely no wrongdoing in going to that part of the world for absoultely no reason, other than their own self exploration and to kill innocent wildlife.

And suddenly I realize that civilisation is suffering from a severe vitamin deficiency because it cannot draw its strength directly from nature, eternally young and eternally true. The descriptive sense of this is simply wonderful, every nuance of the good and the bad is in here and you can see, sense and feel the chilly arctic through the words the author uses.I would never do this in a million years, so didn't actually want hear about how freezing and depressing it is - oh but don't worry, she'll tell you on the next line that it is truly the best experience of her life and she can't imagine ever leaving. The young woman in this story is married to a man that is a hunter/trapper who takes expeditions to the Artic and lives in a hut on the small island of Spitsbergen. This would be interesting to you, then, although this is about a solitary hut-dwelling trapper’s life on the Svalbard islands and presumably town life for families was a little bit more comfortable (I’d hope!

Her transformation from the excitement of arriving on the island, which reads like an Enid Blyton style adventure of the day (1930s), to a fear of what she has let herself in for as the sun goes down in October, not to rise until February, is perfectly described. 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. They break out from a tremendous height and seem to be falling directly toward me, growing brighter and clearer, in radiant lilacs, greens, and pinks, swinging and whirling around their own axis in a wild dance that sweeps over the entire sky, and then, in drifting undulating veils, they fade and vanish. She's able to find the majesty in the landscape and the animals, despite the loneliness and fear when the men leave on hunting expeditions lasting for days.Eventually the sun sets and doesn't rise again for months, and as their food reserves dwindle they rely on their rifles to provide sustenance. And away she goes, leaving behind her small daughter, and travels to Svalbard, a small island that touches the 80th parallel, far north in the Arctic Ocean.