In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic

Although I have been a devotee of Arctic and Antarctic exploration for three decades, before 1997 I had never heard a word about the ill-starred journey of the Saint Anna... a French publisher recommended to me an obscure book, published in French in 1928, called Au pays de la mort blanche... originally published in Russian in 1917... I read Albanov with a sense of awe laced with a growing excitement, for it is a stunning revelation to discover a great work in a field of writing in which one thinks one knows all the canonic books.
—David Roberts, Introduction to In the Land of White Death

Valerian Albanov left Alexandrovsk (now Murmansk) as navigator aboard a hunting and exploration vessel, the Saint Anna, in the late summer of 1912, just six months after Scott had perished in the Antarctic. The ill-equipped expedition set out almost casually—in fact, a young lady, Yerminiya Zhdanko, joined the rag-tag crew in Alexandrovsk in lieu of the doctor, who had missed the sailing. The captain, Georgiy Brusilov, had apparently invited her to party with him, and felt that her nursing skills would be helpful on the voyage. Busilov stocked the British-made ship with food for 30 for 18 months, expecting to be ice-locked during the winter of 1912.

The food stocks may have been sufficient for the trip, but other supplies were seriously short: few anti-scorbutics were included and the crew soon became ill with scurvy. Fuel was also limited. When the ice in which the ship was locked drifted north of the 82nd parallel, there was no chance that summer would bring open water.

On board the Saint Anna, [Norwegian Fridtjof] Nansen's magisterial account of [the 1893 Fram] expedition had become a kind of bible. Albanov had read certain passages so many times he had virtually memorized them. And Brusilov loitered on deck toward his second icebound summer in the serene faith that the drifting pack would liberate the Saint Anna just as it had the Fram.
—David Roberts, Introduction

The approaching winter of 1913 found the ship even further north, in dire straits, scavenging the wood paneling of their vessel to feed their cook fire. By Spring 1914, continuing to drift north, the Saint Anna was 80 to 100 miles from the closest land, and well over 300 miles from the closest human settlement on Svalvard.

This is the point where n  In the Land of White Deathn begins. Written in first person in the form of a daily journal by Albanov, it is an amazing chronicle of the grueling journey of 14 men who left the Saint Anna on April 10, 1914, and set off across the ice pulling sledges loaded with kayaks and supplies, to walk to the Franz Joseph Archipelago, far to the south.

Captain Brusilov acknowledged in his log (brought by Albanov out of the icy wastes) that he was happy to see them go; fewer men to support on the ship gave them a better chance to wait out the drifting ice, eventually to come free into the North Atlantic. He had relieved Albanov of duties as navigator that winter, at Albanov's request, but relations between the two men were strained and tense. The entire crew turned out on that brisk April morning to accompany the travelers on the first leg of their trek.

Behind a high rise that hid the ship from view, Miss Zhdanko and Kalmikov, the cook, decided to return to the ship. The weather was rapidly deteriorating. Two hour later a strong south-southwesterly gale began to blow, bringing with it a raging snowstorm.

We pitched camp for the night... Our pedometer indicated that we had barely covered three miles.

The men who set out to cross the frozen Arctic Ocean had warm caribou jackets that doubled as sleeping bags. They had warm socks and boots, gloves and outer clothing, a tent and an iron fire box and samovar cooker. They had bags of hard biscuits and powdered meat from the ship's stores, along with tea and a small ration of chocolate. They counted on killing seal and polar bear for additional meat once they got to open water where these animals could be found, so they took several rifles and a stock of ammunition.

Their only map was a hand-traced copy of Nansen's map from the 1893 account. Albanov wrote about two months into their crawl southward across the ice:

...I have been worried by a secondary phenomenon that i have kept hidden, for the moment, from my companions. The ice is drifting to the south-southwest... this rapid southwest drift will cause us to miss land altogether, and eventually sweep us into the Barents Sea... We might miss Franz Joseph Land altogether and still not make Svalbard...

Albanov with a four of his companions made it back to civilization. Of the others, however, as Roberts tells us in the haunting conclusion to his introduction,

...the nine men who died trying to reach Cape Flora; the thirteen, including Brusilov and Yerminiya Zhdanko, who stayed aboard the Saint Anna; of the doomed ship itself—not a trace was ever found.

This is a tightly-written, intense tale of man against the most deadly—and most beautiful—land on Earth, the Arctic. I am deeply grateful to my brother-in-law Tom for the loan of this book, and I recommend it highly to anyone who thrills to the triumph of man in such bleak conditions.

In one of the lesser-known tales of polar survival, a Russian voyage in search of whales, bears, seals, and the Northeast passage goes spectacularly wrong, and after two winters drifting north in the grip of the pack ice, ten of the 23 on board decide to trek south with sledges and kayaks in the hope of reaching Franz Josef Land. Only two of them live to tell the tale.

There’s all the usual stuff you expect from the genre: frostbite, scurvy, raw birds and polar bear liver for breakfast, and frequent dunkings in frigid brine. But what makes this one especially interesting compared to the likes of Nansen, Shackleton, Cherry, Mawson etc. is that none of these guys signed up for an arctic death-march. The crew of the Sant Anna, a mix of ordinary sailors, hunters, general adventurers, and, extraordinarily, a woman (who, however, stays behind on the ship) has almost no polar experience and is unprepared even for the planned itinerary. They have hardly any maps or geographical knowledge, not enough fuel, one sleeping bag between them, they have to improvise their sledges and kayaks out of stuff lying around the ship. The author and ship’s navigator, Albanov, shows some leadership ability by his own account, but the men in general are resigned, indolent, querulous bordering on mutinous, and habitually uncooperative — just as you’d expect ordinary people, rather than intrepid British/Norwegian arctic hands, to be. Where Scott and Shackleton and their men have nightly revues and singalongs to keep their spirits and stiff upper lips up, this lot always look on the gloomy side of life. In a way, it’s as miraculous that 10% of them made it out alive as it is that 100% of Shackleton’s did. In a dark and somehow very Russian twist of fate, the author only lived a few more years — blown up in a freak munitions train explosion.

Don’t skip the afterword, which contains a fascinating revelation about Albanov’s fellow survivor.

If you like firsthand exploration accounts and you’re fascinated by people who willingly explore the arctic, this is for you, a practically unheard of Russian polar expedition.

An account of one trip to the Arctic in the early 1900s, BY one of the Russian guys who was actually there, and one of the two who made it back to civilization alive.

The trip wasn't for science or pure exploration but just for finding hunting grounds. I have to admit when this book was recommended to me by a scientist I love and admire I was dubious-- I have read some nature survival tales and while I'm always impressed that they did a challenging thing and faced the elements etc etc, the writing itself was always kind of dry and uninspiring. NOT SO with Valerian Albanov! This spicy man can really write! The humor and wit really came through, and there are some deeply beautiful scenes, like this one:

"The Saint Anna seemed to be dreaming under her sparkling white carapace, as if a masterly hand had adorned her with exquisite crystals of hoarfrost and robed her hull in snowflakes. From time to time garlands of snow would come loose from the rigging and drop softly like flowers onto the dormant ship."

OK Valerian!!!!!

In the additional material of the book, there are also some real gems. I laughed out loud at the ship nurse's very brief mention of the engineer when he deserts the vessel (engineers are renowned to this day, I would say, for being ornery at best): "It was no great loss. No one felt particularly sorry about it. All the people here are so charming; he was the only one who spoiled our company." Nurse Zhdanko 1, ship engineer 0!

Anyway, come for the survival adventure, stay for the scurvy, trichinosis, exquisite shade, and poetic scenes of Arctic wildlife.

Loved it...probably the best book I have read all year, and one of the best books I gave ever read about hardship in the Arctic. It's a fairly quick read that will grip you right from the start. I also really enjoyed the epilogue as it provides more detail than what is found in the account .

In 1975, Arctic expert William Barr wrote “The name of Valerian Ivanovich Albanov must be ranked among those of the immortals of polar exploration. This is his story. In 1914, after 18 months trapped in the ice on board the Saint Anna , Albanov, known as the permission to abandon the ship along with 13 crew mates, to attempt to travel by hauling and sailing kayaks to the distant Franz Joseph Land. He sees it as their only chance of survival. With no map other than a rough sketch, and constant attacks by walrus, polar bear, and much sickness, the survival story is incredible, and the fact he kept a diary, even more so. His narrative was first published in Russian in 1917, but not translated until 2001. Yet it reads like a modern day Arctic survival thriller. There are references to the Jeanette , and the subsequent rescue attempts, told so wonderfully in Hampton Sides’s In The Kingdom Of Ice . Both books are excellent additions to the classics of polar exploration.

This book is an amazing read about Albanov's expedition. What these men went through is almost impossible to put into words. One passage really struck me:
'It is when you are alone that you are free. If you want to live, fight for as long as you have strength and determination. You may have no one to help you with your struggle, but you will at least have no one dragging you under.'

For every adventurer, this is a must read. For everyone else, this book is a life lesson.

Captivating story. Fast read. Simple style. Lovely connections with Nansen and Jackson expeditions which were contemporary. Solid four stars, without hesitation.

Reading the introduction by Roberts was a SPOILER, however! I wish I had known and read the intro after completing the book.