Monika Kristensen. Una giallista geographical nel sole di mezzanotte

[Autom. eng. transl.] Where there is a lot of light, the shadow is blacker: thus recited a famous motto by Goethe, which turns out to be more appropriate if the theater of action of a crime or a carnage are the immaculate Svalbard islands in the Arctic Ocean and to illuminate the scene is the relentless and sleepless midnight sun. "Under the plane, the tops of the mountains and the glaciers seem like an unbroken line of perfect winter days under the midnight sun," writes Monica Kristensen. But in a land where nature seems to dominate the unchallenged scene, every human action ends up taking on a clearer meaning, punctuating the history of tracks that snow covers only without erasing. The Svalbard islands at the beginning of the Second War were still neutral territory, but they found themselves fatally involved in the conflict when in June 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union. The population was evacuated, but later both the Germans and the Allies sent units to set up meteorological stations, fundamental to manage the attack or defense of the Allied convoys bound for Murmansk and destined to supply northern Siberia and Norway. Operation Fritham takes its name from the military operation of the same name carried out in May 1942 by the Norwegian Brigade, established in Scotland with the aim of preventing the Germans from installing air bases in Svalbard and hindering the exploitation of the rich coal mines on the island greater than Spitsbergen.