Sometimes I dream that I am on a yacht. I let someone persuade me. The long voyage is just beginning. I stand on the unsteady deck, look out at the sea, and I am terrified. I can't believe how I could be so stupid. Again, I haven't learned anything. I wanted to prove something to someone or not disappoint someone, and now I'm paying the price. Fool. I want to go back to the land, but there is no turning back. When I wake up, I lie still for a long time, ecstatically enjoying every second of actual reality.

Mikkelsen and Iversen spent three years in Greenland. They survived three winters. Three polar nights. They couldn't be sure that anyone would find them. Or even try. They could rather be sure of the opposite. They had nothing to eat, nothing to wear. But they had a lot, a whole sea, a whole empty universe of time. And they had each other – a miserable caricature of a community.

But their tragic fate will not be the main topic here. Their tragic fate will be, at most, a subtle counterpoint. As one playwright said (paraphrasing a bit): tragedy is easy, comedy is difficult.