There is, for me, an undeniable allure in Svalbard and the Arctic (and Antarctic). Austere, windswept desolation, wide vistas, creatures eking out a living amongst the snow and ice - it is romantic. It feels so alien, so antithetical to my existence like no other place I can imagine. I have, of course, looked into visiting, living, being an IT person at a research station at the south pole or working as remotely in Svalbard (you hear good things, although finding housing is tricky). The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven captures that attraction, the peril, the loneliness and the scurvy. It is, for all the hardships and pain, for my eyes a pleasant novel of a man finding a place that works for him and a community (small and maybe including some puppetized animal corpses) of kind and caring characters, well-written and compelling.