In 1839, the just 19-year-old Léonie d'Aunet promises during a salon conversation in Paris to convince her absent fiancé, the painter François-Auguste Biard, to participate in an expedition to the Arctic. Her condition: she will join as the only woman among the otherwise male crew. The journey takes them over land and sea from Paris to the Norwegian coast and further to Spitsbergen, where she exposes herself to bitter cold and great danger to experience the magic and terror of the eternal ice. d'Aunet captures her impressions of the Arctic and various stages such as Amsterdam, Hamburg, or Lapland in sharp and spirited notes and letters. It is only over ten years later, after a disastrous affair with Victor Hugo for which she must serve a prison sentence, that this extraordinary travelogue emerges.