Nathaniel Ian Miller · 2021 · sea

Nathaniel Ian Miller's 2021 novel, inspired by a real Arctic hermit. In 1916 Sven Ormson leaves a dull life in Stockholm to mine coal in Svalbard, the archipelago north of Norway where the sun vanishes for months. A mining accident maims him and drives him deeper into solitude, to a hut on an uninhabited northern fjord, where, with a dog and a few unlikely friends, he makes a life against the ice. The route runs from the Baltic to the farthest north.

1. 1
   Stockholm

   Restless and bookish, dreaming of polar exploration but stuck in the mills, Sven Ormson takes his sister's advice and signs on to mine coal in the Arctic, sailing north out of Stockholm in 1916.

2. 2
   Longyearbyen

   At the coal town of Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen he finds only drudgery and danger, and an avalanche underground costs him an eye and half his face, hardening his resolve to be alone.

3. 3
   Camp Morton

   Working as a steward at the British camp, Sven falls in with the gruff Finnish trapper Tapio, who mocks his Arctic fantasies and then teaches him the trade, and survives his first winter of trapping.

4. 4
   Raudfjorden

   He flees at last to an uninhabited fjord in the farthest north, building a hut and living alone with a dog against the dark and the cold, where, improbably, friendship and even a family find him.