Blogger Shows Life in Antarctic Wilderness

On the bottom of the world, a young woman sends out messages about penguins, walruses and an isolated, though fascinating, place.

Olga Stefanova, a 28-year-old filmmaker from Moscow, is the only woman on the 55th Russian Antarctic Expedition, a yearlong stay in the frozen continent of Antarctica.

Housed in the westernmost point of Antartica at the Bellingshausen research station, she is providing rare insight into life in the frozen south in her blog “Antarctica. Letters home” (ostefanova.livejournal.com).

“Today started with a massive penguin invasion into our station,” Stefanova wrote in the blog, which has quickly grown in popularity.

She is making a film about the polar scientists who work there and at other stations. Russia has five different stations in Antarctica, and a handful of other countries are represented there.

“It took me several months to get used to new conditions. I suffered from drowsiness and weakness, which I couldn’t overcome for a long time,” Stefanova wrote in an e-mail interview about life on the coldest, driest and windiest continent. “As for other phenomena, like the heavy winds, absence of sun and huge snowdrifts, I quickly got used to them.”

As well as describing what she sees and feels, the blog shows various tidbits about Antarctic life, from what residents collect as souvenirs, such as the postmarks from different stations, to a satirical take on the ongoing international debate over the ownership of the continent.

She quotes from Vladimir Kiryanov, a veteran polyarnik, or polar explorer or scientist, who tells in one book of how Russian scientists created their own countries in the Antarctic. One declared his land the country of Immortia, another founded the Dukedom of Pinsk after the Belarussian town that he hailed from while another explorer, Yury Kharchuk, gave it the “humble name of the Principality of the Treasure Hunter Yury Kharchuk.”

Currently, Antarctica is claimed by a number of countries but does not officially belong to any nation.

Besides working on her own film, Stefanova took part in the Antarctic winter film festival for the approximately 4,000 inhabitants of the continent. Each film had to include the phrase, “Do you want to buy a dog?” and a temperamental cook. Stefanova’s film, “One Day of Vladimir Fyodorovich’s Life,” won the best camerawork prize at the festival.

Stefanova is the only woman among the team, and she says sometimes it is not easy.

Women were not allowed to go on any of the expeditions until the 1960s, and although there are women at other stations (Stefanova has attended a hen’s party at another station and invited a Chilean friend to take part in a banya at Bellingshausen Station) they are still a small minority.

“Some tension occurs at times as a result of misunderstandings, but in general everyone in the team supports me,” Stefanova writes. “After all, it’s better to be the only woman among men than the only man among women.”

An Orthodox Church opened in 2004 at Bellingshausen Station and “when it’s getting really hard, I just go there and feel much better,” Stefanova writes.