Who among us hasn’t at one time - typically as a child - dreamt of running off to the woods (or the mountains, or the sea) in search of solitude and adventure, a la My Side of the Mountain or Redburn? In this tale, the protagonist is Sven the Swede, an educated but misanthropic young man, raised by disinterested parents for a life destined to involve hard work in the company of people he disdains. Raised on tales of arctic exploration, he fixates on the idea that a life in the arctic will provide him the solitude and spiritual solace that he craves. But of course it’s not as easy as that, because as tempting as it may sometimes seem, one can’t actually run away from life because life follows you wherever you go.Approached this with trepidation because “man vs. nature” tales aren’t my cup of tea. I couldn't care less about the miseries of frostbite, the care and feeding of sled dogs, or how to recognize different types of snow. (I had an unfortunate encounter with Jack London in my youth that left some scars.) But though there are some beautiful descriptive passages here and plenty of physical hardship, this tale was – to my great relief - focused on the interactions between humans, with the arctic standing in as a metaphor for all the forces in the world – culture, hardship, misfortune, societal expectations, introversion, resentment, frustration, lovelessness – that can isolate us from the world if we allow them to. This isn’t a tale about how to survive in the arctic – instead, it’s challenging us question any preconceived notions we might have about “what constitutes happiness?” and “what constitutes a worthy life?”
The story is filled with realistic detail and feels satisfyingly authentic, as long as you don’t think too hard. Because the argument could be made that Sven is improbably lucky in the acquaintances (human and canine) he makes along the way, each of them engagingly eccentric and unfailingly generous. But the advantage of fiction over non-fiction is that the author gets to create the story they want to tell, and this is a story worth telling. One by one, these eccentrics teach Sven how to reengage with the world on his own terms, how to trust, and ultimately how to love.
I’m grateful for the reminder that lives don't have to be "big" to be important, that it isn't the number of connections that you make in this life that matter but rather the quality of those connections, and that each of us needs to be allowed to define "happiness" in our own way.
