"It is like the dream of a world that is visible before
it takes shape as a reality.[…] It is difficult to convey
the impression made by walking among these mysterious
scenes which spatially, it is true, are large and powerful,
and in which the human being looks like a tiny piece
of dead coal."
"Suddenly a steep white wall rises in front of me;
it seems to be quite close, but it is really a shallow
rise some distance away. There a black hill just out
of the snow, hill I have never noticed before,
but then I see that it is only a small stone. There is
a steep rise, but when I come to it my skis pass over
level ground. Everything is distorted and dislocated
in the swimming light, which affords the eye
no fixed point by which to make judgement.
[…] beyond is an infinite blackness in which
everything is swallowed up."
—Christiane Ritter, A Woman in the Polar Night [1938]
