Cold Coast by Robyn Mundy
About Robyn Mundy
For over 20 years Robyn Mundy has worked seasonally as a ship-based tour guide in Svalbard, Greenland, Antarctica, the Norwegian coast and wild Scotland. Her numerous visits to Svalbard led to her 2021 novel Cold Coast. Robyn lives in Tasmania with a penguin biologist and a Blue Heeler. For further information, visit:
A Quote from Robyn Mundy
“If Mrs Wanny Woldstad were alive today, she would be as thrilled as I am for her remarkable life in the high Arctic to be included in this distinguished list. Thank you, HNSA, ARA, and the judges, for making a literature prize possible that means the world to any writer. More especially so, when the subject of a novel stretches far beyond Australian shores, to a bygone era of trapping, making no apology for the mindset of the time, while testing the sensibilities of a contemporary reader. Cold Coast rests on a year of field and archival research, a love of the Arctic, and on twenty years of bobbing across the ocean as a polar expedition guide. Thank you, for honouring the work in this way.”
About Cold Coast
In 1932, Wanny Woldstad, a young widow, travels to Svalbard, daring to enter the Norwegian trappers’ fiercely guarded male domain. She must prove to Anders Sæterdal, her trapping partner who makes no secret of his disdain, that a woman is fit for the task.
Over the course of a Svalbard winter, Wanny and Sæterdal will confront polar bears, traverse glaciers, withstand blizzards and the dangers of sea ice, and hike miles to trap Arctic fox, all in the frigid darkness of the four-month polar night. For Wanny, the darkness hides her own deceptions that, if exposed, speak to the untenable sacrifice of a 1930s woman longing to fulfil a dream.
