Cold hard truths

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/12/2021 (1386 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you think the lack of human company during the COVID-19 lockdowns took its toll on your ability to make conversations, imagine the effect years of isolation in the Arctic wilderness would have on your psyche and social skills.

The difference is that in The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, a brilliantly written novel that sweeps through time and two world wars, Sven Omson’s isolation is self-imposed.

This is the debut novel for American Nathaniel Ian Miller. A prolific contributor to journals and newspapers, he’s also a beef farmer in central Vermont. He got a firsthand look at the Arctic in 2012 as a participant in The Arctic Circle, an expeditionary program that brings together artists and scientists to collaborate aboard a Barquentine sailing vessel in Norway’s high-Arctic Svalbard Archipelago.

Basing his story on a hermit about whom little is known and using the political and social situation in the region known then as Spitsbergen, Miller invents Sven Ormson, a misanthrope from Stockholm who had fantasized as a child about life in the North. When his face is crushed in a coal mining collapse in 1917, he exiles himself there to avoid the inevitable stares and mocking.

His fate seems sealed when the first thing he encounters on the tundra is the mummified skull of a whaler. It doesn’t augur well for a man whose greatest talent to that point has been reading.

Fortunately for Sven, people won’t leave him alone. A Scottish geologist and a Finnish socialist, wanderers themselves, intrude on Sven at critical moments over the years to ensure he doesn’t starve, either physically and psychologically, although he comes close. They teach him hunting and survival skills, but their best contribution comes in the form of personal advice.

After settling into a predictable rhythm, his world is blown apart with the arrival of a surprise guest, changing his life in ways he couldn’t have predicted.

Sven narrates the story, admitting his amazement at the landscape — “[I] sucked great gasps, both from the chill air and wonder at the vastness of the land and sky,” and the sun’s “stripes of turquoise and orange.” The description of the long, dark winter as “more a slow poison than a knife” evokes the image of a dishevelled Sven, huddled beside his stove in his tiny wooden shack, his one good eye leaking incessantly.

Miller’s succinct writing captures scenes of Sven’s life in short, crisp chapters. Sven has a grim attitude about his abilities. He makes serious missteps over the years as isolation wears on him. Yet he muddles on and learns to survive in the unforgiving land of ice and polar bears, realizing also that he is more than just a tortured countenance and a failure. All this takes place behind the backdrop of international politics and conflict. Even an island in the Arctic Circle becomes vulnerable to the uncertainty and violence of contending powers.

Sven’s self-deprecating humour also makes his suffering embarrassingly funny reading. When a bout of scurvy makes several teeth fall out, he adapts, proclaiming his smile is now “perforated”; the world before him is now a “literal haze” thanks to his constantly blurry eye. Eberhard, his canine companion, provides joy, unbridled optimism and the occasional conversation when Sven is beleaguered.

COVID-19 forced The Arctic Circle residency program to cancel their 2020 sailing, but this year artists, scientists, architects and others were together again, exploring the rugged, thrilling, beauty of the Arctic. Although the climate crisis has altered the environment Sven inhabited, Miller envisions what it looked like and, for Sven, what true friendship and loyalty mean in this delightful fictional memoir.

Harriet Zaidman is a children’s and freelance writer in Winnipeg. Her latest young adult novel, Second Chances (Red Deer Press) is set in the polio epidemics of the 1950s.