About this deal
In the late summer and autumn, Ritter, her husband, and their friend, the hunter Karl, live well, eating eider ducks and duck eggs, seals and foxes they shoot, and wandering on the shore in the beautiful landscape. The painter Christiane Ritter leaves her comfortable life in Austria and travels to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen, to spend a year there with her husband. One day melts into the next, and you cannot say this is the end of today and now it is tomorrow and that was yesterday. Like you, rather less keen on the hunting/trapping stuff, but of course it fits in with the context and the way of life in that region.
While the life is harsh and daunting, the author reflects on how a simple life is so much better than the complexity of modernity and on the beauty of the Arctic landscape. The sweet stories in this book were the ones about a white fox adopting them, as well as a seal later on. It is a weird thought – the closest I’ve been is Iceland in early Feb, when the sun just came up a bit for a few hours, but not much at all. She thinks she will spend the year relaxing, drawing, sleeping and reading, and isn't prepared for the daily struggle to stay alive. Blöder Titel, hässliches Cover, und man muss es wohlwollend lesen, um über das Frauenbild der Autorin wegzukommen, es geht immer wieder mal um Hausfraulichkeit und "weibliche Koketterie" (dabei kann sie schießen und kommt entspannt klar in ihrer kleinen rußigen Hütte).
The author's husband had been living for a few years on the island, hunting and fishing, and had been encouraging her to come spend a year with him.
One of the first things her husband does when she gets there is to leave her alone for 12 days while he goes hunting with his male friend who also lives with them. Klar, über gewisse Dinge/Ansichten muss man einfach hinwegsehen können und man darf nicht vergessen, dass aus dem Jahr 1934 berichtet wird. The ability to manage isolation and solitude amidst a breathtaking, yet formidable environment was simply amazing.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. Looking at the convoys of cruise ships rounding Cape Horn and exploring the Alaskan fjords, we don’t feel we want to contribute to the commercialisation of once wild places and would rather leave the wildlife and wild places in peace.
I've been meaning to read this for years (I love me a good off-into-the-frozen-wilds real-life adventure story), but I'd been putting it off because I'd gotten it in my head that it would be a serious, grim account of survival in those frozen wilds, and instead it's. There’s a lovely map in the front, drawings of the goings-on of everyday life throughout the book, and reproductions of a few photographs in the back – it’s of course a beautifully designed Pushkin Press book so we have French flaps and an impeccable cover image. She brings to life so vividly the stark landscape of this tiny Arctic island and the hardships she endures. But it is also true that one will never experience in the Arctic anything that one has not oneself brought there.
She arrives in August and she does indeed live for a year with her husband and, as an added bonus, his hunting partner, Karl, a Norwegian. Aber dann ist es lustig, und vor allem geht es überhaupt nicht um Wichtigtuerei mit Gefährlichen Tödlichen Lebensgefahren, sondern darum, dass man am Polarkreis ein unkompliziertes Leben umgeben von Schönheit führen kann. I was fine with it, and also found it odd being there in June when there was almost no night at all, but I don’t think I could live like that. When her husband asks Christiane to join him for a year in Spitsbergen, Ritter imagines many days spend cooking and painting while her husband hunts artic foxes.