in the land of white death by valerian albanov

A decade later, 1928, it was translated into French, Au pays de la mort blanche, not English, and, again, with little international notice. Albanov died in 1919, at the young age of 38, without knowing how the book would someday be propagated. The book reached the Russian public in 1917, the year of the Bolshevik Revolution, but, perhaps because of the changing world scene, it went largely unnoticed in the annals of polar literature. A lean tale, with sparse writing, couched in a good, clean style, and rich detail-concerned mostly with the ninety days in which he was crossing ice-it provides remarkable testimony to Divine Providence. While the British were having their adventurers at the South Pole, the Russian was having his own at the North.Īlbanov was slow to tell his story, but eventually he spoke, sharing what happened in his 1912-14 Arctic ordeal. Valerian Ivanovich Albanov (1881-1919), a contemporary of Antarctic explorers Robert Scott (1868-1912) and Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922), was not an explorer, but a navigator. But this is not the story of a religious country or a religious man, per se, but the story of a hazardous journey and a God who shows up.

A man who carries an icon of Nicholas the Miracle-worker in his pocket must also be religious-or superstitious. In a country where ships are named Saint the people have to be religious.

In the land of white death by valerian albanov