Geri MM’s Reviews > A Woman in the Polar Night > Status Update

This is naked and emotional snapshot from the past keeps one’s mind romantically looking towards a simpler past

“The days pass uneventfully, without any real work, without a consoling glimpse into the reality of the world. At night we lie down, neither tired nor wakeful, encompassed by the unending darkness and the profound quiet.”

Karl is a pervert ❤️

The present that Hermann and I give to Karl is a series of drawings illustrating his life next winter. He had wanted a Lapp girl as his companion, and here she is, trapping foxes and bears, and making coffee for Karl all day long, while Karl spends his time taking care of the triplets with which she has presented him.

Men and women are portrayed the same…. No such thing as strictly feminine things

120 There is great agitation. With beads of sweat on their brows and swearing horribly, holding the thin needles in their heavy hands, the men try with a kind of lunatic fervour to invent new knitting Patterns for socks. My husband works according to a complicated systern constructed on a geometrical formula,

He is what the Norwegians call for short an altmüligman-an everything-possible-man.

A bit of a Mcguiver, i love Karl

119 No, we don't have to look down on civi-lisation. We must not condemn it as a forced plant, as in our Spartan self-sufficient detachment from the world we would dearly like to. No, if only out of charity we must approve of decorated coffins, permanent waving, basins with running water, and burst pipes.

We both laugh. We both know that ghosts are imaginary, but we both know also that imagination can become reality in the mind of a man who has lost all standard of reality in the loneliness and darkness.

Some quotes

Perhaps in centuries to come men will go to the Arctic as in biblical times they withdrew to the desert, to find the truth again.

Perhaps I have already acquired the fatalism of the men. Is it the influence of nature in the Arctic that changes men? Does one know here, more clearly than elsewhere, that everything goes its prescribed way, even without man's intervention?

I love the stark contrast between how a couple of simple rugged men and a woman coming from ‘civilisation’ view Svalbard and the dangers associated with this lonely life. While the men enjoy the alone time that tests them and find comfort in solitude it seems ( or are just too used to being stoic with some measure of fun) , the woman misses the safety, the warmth and security….

Quite lighthearted and a great insight for now of what it is to move away from the everyday comforts to at least for now appease to your wild husband. As I’ve been to Svalbard it is nice to hear the places I know and follow the journey.
Karl will definitely try something- that youthful Norwegian