A Dream in Polar Fog offers a deep dive into the world of the Siberian Chukchi people, who live on the Russian coast near the Bering Sea. Set in the years before the Russian Revolution, it tells the story of John MacLennan, a Canadian sailor who suffers debilitating frostbite after an explosives accident. The captain of his icebound ship sends John, in the company of the local elder, Orvo, to the nearest town to be treated. But on the way, they are caught in a blizzard. Nearing death, a female shaman amputates John’s hands. When he returns to the coast, the ship has sailed. This is the set up for Rytkheu’s tale, which is thereafter an account of John’s integration into the Chukchi way of life. Rather than seeking any chance to flee, John finds himself more and more integrated, embracing a more traditional, holistic and ecological existence in the company of the Chukchi, who become his family. In this sense, the novel, published in 1970, feels way ahead of its time. Even more so, when one realises the novel emerges from an industrial Soviet culture which Rytkheu had previously embraced as a writer. Rytkheu’s need to capture and convey a way of life he knew as a young man shines through in the sometimes prosaic text. The author acknowledges the way in which technological advances have helped the Chukchi, but he is also fiercely protective of a way of life which is threatened by the onset of ‘civilisation’. The novel’s value as an anthropological text is clear, as well as offering a fascinating glimpse into one of most curious borders on earth. At one point the narrative mentions that people from Nome used to visit a festival on the Siberian coast. Curious, I looked up where Nome might be, to discover it is in Alaska. At their closest point, Russia and the USA are less than a hundred miles apart. The polar fog the people of these lands inhabit has little respect for arbitrary political or ideological divisions.
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