Music in the Dark: Soundscapes in Christiane Ritter's A Woman in the Polar Night

• Published in: Nordlit
• Main Author: Maxwell, Kate
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Septentrio Academic Publishing 2020
• Subjects: VDP::Humanities: 000::Linguistics: 010; VDP::Humaniora: 000::Språkvitenskapelige fag: 010; Christiane; Svalbard; polar night
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10037/20369; https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5537

In A Woman in the Polar Night (Eine Frau erlebt die Polarnacht, 1938), Christiane Ritter, a well-to-do Austrian housewife, describes her experience as the first central European woman to overwinter on Svalbard (1934–35). Ritter’s prose is extraordinary in its lyrical simplicity, and in German editio...