A Curious Observer

Synne Borgen is the author of “Observations on Ice,” an essay featured in our June 2023 issue. After spending the past decade in New York City, she moved into a cabin by a fjord in her native Norway to work on a book inspired by a trip across the North Atlantic.

Synne bowled me over with her descriptions of the Arctic’s alien (and alienating) landscape — I think the piece works as both exciting travelogue and introspective memoir. We spoke recently about her essay and the Arctic Circle expeditionary residency program she recounts. In July she plans to return to the Arctic, this time to Greenland.

Hank Stephenson: Can you tell me about the Arctic Circle residency program?

Synne Borgen: It’s an annual expeditionary residency where around two dozen scientists, educators, and artists of multiple disciplines spend two weeks on a sailing ship, exploring the shores and waters of Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago between Norway and the North Pole. I’m from a coastal town in Norway and often write about northern landscapes and the sea, so when I found out about the residency, I immediately wanted to go.

I had only been writing creatively for a couple of years, and, in addition to giving me access to a remote landscape I wouldn’t otherwise have seen, the residency opened up my artistic gaze. We spent several hours every day exploring, photographing, experiencing a small piece of land. The residency encouraged close observation. In an extraordinary place like Svalbard, it’s easy to focus on the landscape’s majesty, but the way the landings were set up forced me to pay attention to the minutiae — and to practice the kind of deep attention that’s essential for making art.

Hank: How did you decide to weave details of your experience with Osler-Weber-Rendu syndrome into an essay about the Arctic?

Synne: Mary Ruefle paraphrases Paul Valéry in her book Madness, Rack, and Honey: “The opening line of a poem, he said, is like finding a fruit on the ground, a piece of fallen fruit you have never seen before, and the poet’s task is to create the tree from which such a fruit would fall.” This is also a good metaphor for how I wrote “Observations on Ice.” I like to work associatively, and when I think of writing an essay about one topic, another seemingly unrelated image often pops into my mind. My task then becomes to figure out why the two are connected.

When I thought about my time in the Arctic, my mind frequently took me to the genetic medical condition I’ve lived with all my life, which causes malformations in the blood vessels — and in particular the many nosebleeds I have because of it. The explanation might be as simple as my use of ice to stop the nosebleeds, but there was also something about the fear and wonder the Arctic summoned in me. It’s a landscape that seems still and everlasting — everything is frozen — but it can abruptly change at any moment. A crevasse can open in a glacier, an iceberg can flip. This is not dissimilar to living with a body, whether you have a medical condition or not, where everything can seem fine but turn catastrophic in the blink of an eye. So the Arctic brought into focus this lack of control in my body.

In the essay, the line between the body and the landscape is sometimes blurred. Because I write about the precarity of the body, the piece is also about the vulnerability of the Arctic landscape, though climate change is rarely mentioned directly.

Hank: You reference your impatience and restlessness on this journey. Why was that important for you to write about?

Synne: It’s embarrassing, but one of many feelings I had when I arrived in the Arctic was a sense of disappointment. Two years prior I’d crossed the Atlantic on a cargo ship, which felt like being dropped into a different world. I craved something similar, but the Arctic didn’t give me that. The other artists in the residency were lovely, but also familiar to me. As I’ve done many times in my life, I was chasing a romantic vision instead of reality.

It took a while to attune myself to the landscape. The glaciers and icebergs were often impressive, but other parts were quite desolate. It’s a landscape that’s so mythologized you expect to be knocked down with awe when you get off the plane, but it wasn’t that way for me. I did end up witnessing some spectacular things, but what has stayed with me with equal force is the small stuff I could have easily overlooked: how gravel covers every mountain so it seems like time itself is chewing them up, or the tiny gardens that grow in the cracks of the scattered whale ribs.

I was looking for a way to carry the weight of having a body, of living with the uncontrollable nature of being alive — looking for answers in the epic and the transcendent. But perhaps I should have been looking at the small.

Hank: One thing that impressed me is your ability to describe the otherworldly beauty of the Arctic. Was there anything about it you felt you couldn’t capture in writing?

Synne: I feel like I only scratched the surface. I found it difficult to convey that the Arctic landscape, to me, could be both completely awe-inspiring but also monotonous, bleak, nearly colorless.

Many people have preconceived notions about what such an exotic place feels like, and I was battling mine. The early drafts of the essay contained only the most awesome moments. It was trickier to write about the times the landscape underwhelmed me, the moments it caused disappointment or impatience.

Hank: You made the journey with several other artists. Did their art inspire the essay?

Synne: We had presentations every night on the ship. Most of the participants were visual artists, and it was inspiring to see how important sustained observation was to many of them, like following the same lake or copse through a long period of time. Those presentations motivated me to refocus my gaze, which ended up being a big part of the essay. They showed me that truly seeing something takes a long time, and helped me be more patient. It’s a lesson I often have to remind myself of.

Hank: Did your perspective on everyday life change after returning?

Synne: The residency helped me become a more patient and curious observer. I love writing creative nonfiction because it encourages me to look at the topics I’m writing about with a similar artistic gaze. I can’t make stuff up, so I’m forced to look more closely at the material I’ve got to find the richness and complexities that are already there. It’s not like I see wonder every time I go to the grocery store, but I think it’s a rewarding way of being in the world.