June beginnings: "to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice…"*

HMS Erebus in the Arctic ice, Sir John Franklin expedition 1846,   Francois E. Musin  © Royal Museums Greenwich

"On the morning of September 4th, 1910, the inhabitants of Enmyn, a settlement spread out on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, heard an unusual clamour.  This was not the cracking of shattered ice, nor the rumble of an avalanche, nor the crashing of stones down the rocky precipices of the Enmyn cape.

Just then Toko was standing in his chottagin  [the outer entrance to his yaranga] pulling on a white kamleika.  He thrust his arms carefully into the wide sleeves, touching his face to the material, inhaling its smell -- had a good airing out in the freezing wind.  Otherwise all he touched - traps, Winchester, snowshoes - everything would be permeated with that smell.

A crashing noise roared in his ears. Toko quickly stuck his head through the neck-hole, and sprang out of the chottagin in a single bound.

Where, only yesterday, there had been the white people's ship, a cloud was spreading.  There were ice splinters under his feet,
People rushed out from all twelve of the yarangas.  They stood in silence looking out toward the ship, and making guesses about the explosion.  Now Armol' came up to him.
' Likely, they were trying to crack the ice…'  'I think so, too', Toko agreed.  'Let's go.'  And the two hunters set off for the ice-bound ship.

The cloud over the ship was dissipated, and in the dawn twilight you could make out a hole in the ice under the bowsprit.  There were more and more chunks of ice underfoot, strewn all about the ship.
The deck rang with agitated voices, long shadows flickering across the portholes.

Toko and Armol' slowed their step.  The others caught up with them.
'Blood!'  Toko exclaimed, bending down to the tracks that led from the hole to the ship. 'Blood!' the people echoed, looking down at the stains on the ice and on deck.

From the frozen-through wooden belly of the ship came a long drawn-out moan, just like the howl of a wounded wolf."

A Dream in Polar Fog  Yuri Rytkheu, 1968.  Eng. trans. I. Y. Chavasse, © 2005

This is the story of a young Canadian, John MacLennan, who sails to the Arctic to seek his fortune and make his name.

The Bering Strait and Chukotka Pensinsula, Eastern Siberia

Trying to sail right round the Chukotka Peninsula of Eastern Siberia, too late in the season, their ship is caught in an ice field and carried to Enmyn.

While dynamiting the ice-field a faulty fuse has blown John's hands apart and the captain (offering rifles) persuades the local Chukchi to carry John to hospital at far distant Anadyr.  To save his life on the journey, a shaman has to operate on his gangrenous stumps, but when the men finally get back to Enmyn, the ice has parted and the ship has sailed without him.

Spring in Chukotka    Photo A. Kutskiy

Stranded in this tiny remote settlement of a dozen families, over eight years, he learns to use his mangled hands, learns to hunt walrus and whale and adopts the Chukchi way of life,  marrying and raising a young family.   But white trappers and whalers arrive, outside elements which will threaten these indigenous people's traditions, with the revolution in Russia and the discovery of gold further north, and finally John is forced to make a far-reaching  decision.

"We believe that we live on the best land in the world.  That's the beauty, that no one wants it except for ourselves."

Yuri Rytkheu was born in 1930, and grew up among the Chukchi people, where his grandfather was a shaman, and whose way of life he celebrates in this novel.  In 1949 he studied at Leningrad University, where he made his name as a writer and journalist, and later settled there.  He died in St Petersburg in May 2008.

A walrus rookery   

Modern bulk carriers trapped in the Arctic ice   © maritime executive

* Measure for Measure, Act III   W. Shakespeare