Spitsbergen Quotes

“Young people today...it ought not to be allowed... You can't get rich there," he cries at last, quite desperate.
"No, we can't get rich there," I agree.
"Yes, you will get rich," says the young Norwegian, but there is no suggestions of material gain in his gentle smile.”
― Christiane Ritter, A Woman in the Polar Night

“Many Fujiyamas lie in a row along our coast to the south. As the distance increases, their sombre blackness seems to be lit up by a deep red light. They take on every shade from red to lilac, and all the colours have a glowing depth that is neved found in the landscape at home, or at most only in some exquisite flowers. In the holy stillness, everything is lit by a supernatural brightness. Two gulls fly low and silent close by the hut toward the fiord. They are lit up by the red rays of the bright sun. Their magnificent broad wings are a deep pink in the turquoise sky.”
― Christiane Ritter, A Woman in the Polar Night

“There it was, the land under 80 degrees, a land of stern magnificence, where icebergs rear up almost to the very mountaintops, and mountain rises above mountain; there it was, inviolate, alive to the raucous voice of millions of birds, the continuous staccato bark of foxes, the castanet click as the hoofs of great herds of deer fell in a swinging trot; there it was, surrounded by waters whose surface was slashed and sprayed by schools of walrus and whales that had swum there before ever man was born.”
― Jeannette Mirsky, To the Arctic!: The Story of Northern Exploration from Earliest Times