> The survivors, including Nobile, spent a month wandering the free-floating pack ice, at one point shooting and eating a polar bear, until their rescue

This sounds like something Jules Verne could have written. In fact I seem to remember this exact plot device in a book a read when I was a teenager, but the name escapes me.

Are you thinking of “The Iceberg Hermit”?

I read that book as well in my early teen years.