I grew marginally more adept at hunting and trapping. Never what you might call talented or very skilled. But even Tapio had to admit that I was almost competent. It helped that “my” land was teeming with life. I didn’t yet know or appreciate just how lucky I was. Tapio had secured for me one of the richest hunting claims in Spitsbergen—sought after for centuries by those who trade in meat and fur. Raudfjorden put the grounds by Camp Morton to shame. We left the bears alone, for the most part, because Tapio believed in a certain wary armistice between man and bear, and he felt that such a truce would have its best chance of success if neither of us killed the other. Ice bears who made repeated attempts to breach our tiny fort in order to get at our supplies, or us, were unceremoniously shot. We ate the meat—not the liver, of course, learning from Nansen’s mistakes—made pants for ourselves, and sold the rest of the hide at a premium. But by and large we trapped fox and hare, and Tapio taught me how to judge the reliability of sea ice so we could hunt seal and walrus. We never hunted from our small dory, as it felt like a deathtrap even when the bay was mirror-smooth. To take a frightened, thrashing animal of many hundreds or thousands of pounds, then, and add it to our boat’s nautical disquiet, seemed ill-advised. Perhaps the Inuit would not flinch, but Tapio suspected that their kayaks were far more seaworthy than the H.M.S. MacIntyre, as we had dubbed her.
Bruceneset was by no means the extent of these grounds. They stretched, in ways I could scarcely comprehend at the time, all the way from Raudfjorden’s eastern shore to the wide flat peninsula of Reinsdyrflya—aptly named, for the reindeer congregated there in great herds—which culminated at Velkompstpynten, a point that thrust northward into the Arctic with nothing but sea miles between it and the famed walrus breeding ground of Moffen Island, and loomed over the entrance to mighty Woodfjorden. In between, at the mouth of Breibogen, the next bay to the east, was Biscayarhuken, named for Basque whalers of centuries past, where I would later purchase several more huts. Tapio had a copy of No Man’s Land, the history of Spitsbergen from 1596 to 1900 that Sir Martin Conway had published in 1906. It was in English, of course, but my fluency had improved markedly during my summer sojourn with MacIntyre. Conway’s text was full of references to “Welcome Point” and “Biscayer’s Hook.” Reading it in small increments (for it was lethally dull) made me feel as though I had wandered into a veritable city of ghosts. Almost every step I took upon rock or ice, though it seemed that no human could have done so previously, was a place where others before me had sailed, hunted, or flensed. Many had also suffered until their very death was a labor.
We weathered that first winter in style. Between the reindeer, the foxes, and the hares, we amassed a truly royal hoard of pelts and skins, and when the first trading ships made it through the following April, they were amazed. For the first time in my life, I had money to spend. No way to spend it, of course, but that did little to dampen the satisfaction. I sent a great deal back to Olga with the wish that some, at least, be set aside for Helga’s education. I held the conviction that my niece was built for something more than household work, and I wrote her a letter attempting to convey the sentiment. No doubt it was ill-done. She was thirteen, after all, and unlikely to appreciate a bromide about the virtues of schooling. She didn’t reply—had in fact never written—but Olga assured me that Helga held on to all of my correspondence, cramming the stained missives into a tin of Samuel Gawith Skiff Mixture that also contained her baby teeth. According to Olga, the old can still emitted a putrid campfire odor even though its original contents were long gone, having been smoked in flagrant disobedience by Helga, who stored it beneath her pillow and “evidently cares more for the tin than her clothing or her person.”
Tapio and I collected a few injuries that winter, none too serious, mostly on our arduous return trek from Reinsdyrflya, during which it took the combined strength of two men and a dog to haul the fur-laden sledge.
Sometimes we bickered like an old couple. Sometimes days passed in which we spoke no word to each other. Raudfjordhytta could feel very small at times. But Tapio’s work ethic, the likes of which I will never see again under sun or moon, kept us occupied. I had so much to learn, and my respect for him only grew. Perhaps I flatter myself, but I sensed, though it was never said, that he began to respect me as well. I toiled through every obstacle—corporeal, intellectual, meteorological—and did not often drag, complain or lapse into self-pity. The darker and more hostile our world became, the harder we worked. Tapio had no patience for hiding or biding indoors when every primordial fiber seemed to scream that we should do so.
“To languish is to perish,” he liked to say. “Torpor is death.”