A Woman in the Polar Night has become a classic of its kind, and is now being reprinted in French. An opportunity to revisit the tale of a polar adventurer like no other.
Summer 1934, Spitsbergen. Christiane Ritter disembarks with her suitcases on a bleak, desolate beach. The only passenger to leave the luxury cruise ship Lyngen, Ritter is already wondering what she’s doing here. She had been planning this trip for several weeks. Her husband, Hermann, had asked her to join him in the remote lands of the Far North, where he was about to embark on a new season as a trapper. Christiane packed her bags with the bare essentials, and left her comfortable home in Vienna on a hot July day, dressed in ski boots. Her friends and family, worried about the trip, accompanied her to the train station, but made no secret of their disapproval. “My husband, they said, deserved to be slapped in the face for dragging me into such an adventure.”
Arriving in wild, icy, isolated Spitsbergen, she discovers a cabin that could not be more Spartan, a somewhat hirsute husband and Karl, her husband’s trapping companion who, surprise, surprise, will share the couple’s cabin. Christiane anxiously looks at the ship that is already sailing back to Europe. She won’t be back for another year.
As you can see, Christiane Ritter is not your average polar explorer or adventurer. Nevertheless, her account of her polar experience became a classic of German literature. Translated into nine languages, it has just been republished in French by Albin Michel, as we commemorate the 25th anniversary of her death this year. Polar Journal AG takes a closer look at the story of this housewife turned polar explorer and author of the classic A Woman in the Polar Night.
A polar adventurer like no other
Christiane Ritter is a typical 1930s housewife that nothing prepared for such a journey. Except perhaps one thing: her husband. A naval officer, Hermann decided one day to leave everything behind for the wilds of Spitsbergen and the life of a trapper. As he wrote letters to his wife, who eventually formed a very romantic idea of these lands, he managed to convince her to join him for the winter.
Ritter recounts the initial shock of this empty, desolate environment, which she can’t find beautiful, “even with the best will in the world”. The adaptation is difficult, and gives rise to some frankly funny scenes, between Christiane on the verge of depression and two men who seem to be rediscovering, somewhat clumsily, the basics of gallantry.
In spite of everything, life got organized and Christiane learns how to cook seal meat in every possible way, on a stove that is as bad as it is capricious, and cleans her household with ice-cold water.
At the same time, she learns to set fox traps, shoot guns, gut seals and process their skins and meat. Much to the delight of these gentlemen who, with Christiane’s arrival, swap a barely maintained cabin for a neat and tidy little haven. As well as immaculate white linen, which Ritter washes in an icy river before putting out to dry, or rather “harden”, in the Arctic winter air.
“There should be a woman in every refuge,” exclaims Karl, as he gobbles up Christiane’s delicious seal stews and cakes.
However, the Austrian wife doesn’t limit herself to housework and darning big wool socks. She is soon bitten by the exploration bug and set out to visit the surrounding area, giving increasingly precise descriptions of what she sees.
The landscapes, initially desolate and empty, as if dead, are suddenly filled with life, detail and color: here, flowers as delicate as they are tenacious, there, a family of polar bears passing over the pack, or a fox named Mikkl who follows the trio like a dog and whom the men give up shooting thanks to Ritter’s intervention.
Alone in the polar night
And then there’s the story of the isolation she chooses to live in, giving up the idea of following the men out hunting. In the middle of winter, in the polar night, Ritter decides to stay alone in the cabin for weeks on end. She recounts the immense solitude, the absence of physical landmarks in the endless darkness of the Arctic, and the strange feeling of being lost in an overpowering nature that could well push you to the edge of madness.
Ritter also talks about the constant worry of running out of food, a fear that comes from the depths of the ages and has ended up being diluted in the comfortable European society she has left behind, which seems increasingly alien to her. And yet, we cling to this civilization, and its manifestations sometimes become a source of rejoicing. As in this episode in which Ritter recounts how even reading the classified ads found in the pages of an old newspaper published in Norway becomes exciting when you’re isolated in the polar night. “Do you have a light failure? Call Sørrensen. Tel. 249, Tromsø.”
Housewife vs. polar explorers
Ritter’s stay in Spitsbergen ended in 1935, but this single wintering (she never returned to the Arctic) left a lasting impression on her. An author and painter, Ritter began writing her story, which was published in 1938 under the title Eine Frau erlebt die Polarnacht. The book became a bestseller in Austria.
This success is perhaps due to the uniqueness of Ritter’s story. A testimony that contrasts with the usual polar literature.
Arctic stories are often tales of struggle and conquest. They are stories of man fighting a merciless nature that he must overcome to stay alive. They are also tales of willing and ambitious explorers who set out to discover largely uncharted wilderness. Sometimes for the fatherland, sometimes for science, often for the glory that comes with the privilege of being the first to set foot in coveted and mysterious lands. The resulting works are often gritty tales of conquest and survival.
Ritter’s testimony is different. It is that of a woman who is not seeking to conquer the Arctic, to impose herself through engineering, science or force. Rather, it is the story of a discovery, both internal and external. It’s the story of a woman who, at first frightened, steps into a world she doesn’t understand, a world that seems as dark as it is empty.
Then, as the weeks and months go by, she learns the harsh yet simple survival that the Arctic demands. She learns to look at and decipher the landscapes and movements of the pack, to observe the wildlife around her and to endure the endless days of blizzard or the deep silence of the polar night. She discovers the dazzling beauty of the northern lights and the silver reflections of the moon on the ice. Over the pages, she recounts how she succumbs to the charms of the Arctic, falls in love with this very special environment and surrenders to this life, isolated in the middle of nowhere where everything seems to hang by a thread.
Beyond that, Ritter’s account has the merit of abolishing distance with its readers, becoming probably one of the most accessible polar stories for the general public, while retaining its appeal for specialized readers.
Through the author’s experience, we gradually discover an environment that is at first sight hostile, but which becomes imbued with poetry and beauty. Without softening or detracting from the harshness of extreme nature, Ritter succeeds in delivering a testimony that gives the Arctic a dimension of home. Like a trapper’s cabin, isolated in the vastness of the Far North, where the rifle hangs on the nail and flowered curtains hang in the window.
Mirjana Binggeli, Polar Journal AG
Christiane Ritter, A Woman in the Polar Night, Pushkin Press, 2019, 224 pages, ISBN 978-1-78227-564-0
Christiane and Hermann Ritter, a polar couple
Born into a wealthy family in the Czech Republic on July 13, 1897, Christiane Knoll soon showed an interest in the fine arts. She studied painting and illustration at various European schools before marrying Hermann Ritter, a young naval officer. Fascinated by the polar regions, the young man spent several winters in Spitsbergen. After becoming a trapper, he met Norwegian Karl Nicolaisen, who became his hunting partner.
In 1934, in anticipation of his wife’s arrival, he moved into a cabin at Gråhuken, between Woodfjorden and Wijdefjorden, in the northernmost part of Andrée Land, northwest of Svalbard. The wintering ended in 1935 and the couple returned to Vienna, where Christiane set about writing A Woman in the Polar Night. Published in 1938, the book was a great success.
When the Second World War broke out, Hermann Ritter joined the Kriegsmarine and became commander of the Hermann, a sealing ship converted into a weather observation vessel. A devout Catholic, he had little sympathy for Nazi ideology, and his loyalty was often questioned by his superiors.
During a mission to Greenland in 1943, the Hermann was sunk and Ritter was taken prisoner by Danish soldiers and handed over to the Americans. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of war, first in Ittoqqortoormiit and then in the United States.
Once the war was over, he returned to his wife and their daughter Karin. The family moved to the Austrian state of Styria.
Hermann died in 1968 at the age of 76. His wife survived him by more than thirty years, before passing away in Vienna on December 29, 2000. She was 103 years old.
