If a polar bear enters the village, one should be able to flee inside, so there are no locked doors. Eira is staying as a writer-in-residence in a research hub on Spitsbergen. The biologists she lives with have it all figured out for her: ‘This in an excellent setting for a murder mystery.’ And although Eira does everything she can to keep death out of her writing, it keeps turning up; in her thoughts, in her memories and, ultimately, in the village itself.

The Polar Bear Protocol is a multifaceted story about how a house is affected by thawing permafrost, an individual by her thoughts, and a small community by social control.