A Curious Boy

by Richard Fortey

  10

  The Life Scientific

  On the shore of Hinlopen Strait in northern Spitsbergen a structure made from a few planks roughly hammered together sticks up from the endless plain. It has now partly collapsed, but enough remains to show it was once a cubicle-like affair built to give a little seclusion to the occupant, and to shelter him from the wind and the driving rain. A rectangular box in the centre giving into an excavated pit makes clear its original purpose: it was a privy for the least private place in the world. The whole thing is anchored on to a driftwood log dug into the featureless stretch of gravel to stop it blowing away in a blizzard. The Playboy pin-up that once adorned its walls has long since been shredded by the wind. It is the last of the objects in this book. In some sense it, too, is a fossil. Those few planks are almost all that remains in situ of the 1971 Palaeontological Museum and Norsk Polarinstitutt expedition to the Ordovician rocks of Ny-Friesland, Spitsbergen. The privy was well made: the photograph was taken when another expedition visited the old campsite thirty years later. My own memories have been like that relic: the pieces are all there, but they have become disarranged through time and weathering, their shape and purpose preserved, but with many details dispersed or eroded.

  What remains of the ‘room with a view’ in Svalbard.

  The expedition had to coincide with the summer months, when perpetual light rules at 80 degrees north. Little had changed since 1967 – we still had to reach Svalbard by sea. The party left Oslo by train at ten in the morning on 14 July and arrived at Andalsnes at 16.45, and thence by bus to the port of Alesund, where we boarded ship at once.[1] After travelling north along the endless mountains that make the Norwegian coast we had to head towards the open sea, men stowed alongside all the expedition supplies. Once we left the safety of the fjords we had days to cross the fearsome seas northwards, an ordeal that tested even the best of sailors. Many members of the expedition turned ashen-faced and retired to their bunks for the rest of the trip. The Lofoten Islands were passed by in a blinding rainstorm. Further on, Bear Island loomed out of the mist, like an apparition. Our vessel was a decommissioned whaler taken on by the Norsk Polarinstitutt, the Polar Star. Fuel, food and canvas housing for the expedition was all loaded on to the tough old ship at Bodø and tied down with strong ropes to stop the crates shifting in high seas. When frightening waves towered over the bulwarks they would wash clean across amidships without threatening the buoyancy of the ship. We were then confined to quarters until the danger of being swept overboard had passed. For someone with good ‘sea legs’ like mine the principal problem was suddenly getting hurled against some unforgiving bit of steel as the vessel lurched unpredictably or crashed downwards having breached a precipitous wave. Eating was almost comical. Although tables in the mess were edged with low palisades to stop plates tipping wholesale into laps that did not prevent the plates from sliding about as the diner fruitlessly tried to catch up with his whale-meat stew. Potatoes – the Norwegian national dish whatever the claims of fårikål or lutefisk – could at least be speared if the diner were quick off the mark. Gravy always finished up washing about like slops. As the marine adventure continued towards the maelstrom the numbers dining fell progressively.

  The working language was Norwegian, an important difference from the Harland expedition. I was a foreigner this time. Alongside his native English David Bruton had fluent Norwegian, and Gunnar Henningsmoen was perfectly bilingual, but the everyday chatter was naturally in the local tongue. I should say ‘tongues’ – despite its small population, Norway has many regional and local variants reflecting the isolation of the fjords in the past. Of all the Nordic languages, Norwegian is the most pleasant on the ear for a foreigner, musical and alliterative, at least as spoken by an Oslo chatelaine. It sounds much rougher from the mouth of a seaman hailing from Bergen or Tromsø. I was told that someone from Oslo could tell where any ordinary worker came from just by listening to his dialect. However, Norwegian is remarkably impoverished in swearwords. In fact, there seems to be only one: ‘faen’. It means ‘the Devil’ which sounds rather innocuous. In 1971, it was far worse than saying that other, old English four-letter word beginning with F, at least in polite society. If you hit your thumb with a geological hammer you might – possibly – be allowed to say ‘faen.’ If you lost your fingernail in the process you might be allowed to say it twice. If you lost the finger – three times. The devilish Farne Islands off north-east England were doubtless dubbed by a passing Viking. Some of our deckhands were ‘faening’ away for all they were worth much of the time, a habit that was frowned upon by my more refined companions. Apart from the f-word I did pick up a little Norwegian as the expedition continued. I learned that many words had second cousins in English, often an old-fashioned form. It did not take a genius to recognise that a ‘frisk bris’ was a fresh wind, as it was also a frisky breeze. Brød was obviously bread, and knekkebrød was easily recognised as the ubiquitous crispbread that has to be paired with sliced goat’s cheese at breakfast. Other everyday words seemed to have no obvious relations – ‘ost’ for cheese, ‘smør’ for butter – unless the latter was somehow related to that buttery English word ‘smear’. I soon learned that ‘pass smøret’ was ‘pass the butter’ but I never did get to discuss the finer points of Ibsen’s dramaturgy. For the most part, when I did not understand what was going on I cultivated an amiable silence. As always happens on expeditions, tension between incompatible personalities exploded periodically into arguments, but I kept out of trouble by smiling non-committally. I was regarded as a quiet person, which does not conform to my usual description.

  Most nations have something to feel guilty about – a particular sin or weakness. In China, for example, it is gambling; when I first visited the People’s Republic I recall the terrible punishments meted out to those who set up illegal gambling dens – and the money still squandered in Macao is legendary. In Britain it was, until quite recently, sex; the inhibited Englishman was a stock character. A whole genre of English theatre is built upon the embarrassment of trousers falling down. In Norway, it is alcohol. Anything with alcohol in it is inordinately expensive on the mainland. The argument advanced to me was that the population is at root Viking, and the people are likely to go berserk if allowed access to anything fermented. Sweyn Forkbeard lurks under the skin of every accountant in Trondheim. Only by making beer and wine (let alone spirits) pricey is the nation kept on the straight and narrow – as opposed to the wobbly and wide. The route to Svalbard took us beyond the excise limits: booze was practically free! I began to see what my informant meant. There were drunks aboard ship. The worst was the cook, one Olav Stavard, who staggered around all day in a state of advanced intoxication. A couple of his friends were little better. He had to go, and go he did. I believe he was put off at Bodø in the far north of Norway, where we loaded supplies before our departure to the archipelago. The helicopter pilots could not be replaced, but they, too, were tremendous carousers. They even looked like Vikings. They did have one of the most dangerous occupations in the Arctic, so hard drinking was probably built into their survival strategy. The worst thing about them was that they insisted on singing. A few years after ‘All You Need is Love’ the hit of the day was a ditty beginning with the timeless lines ‘I beg your pardon / I never promised you a rose garden’. This was the one tune they knew. The two pilots seemed to remember only the first lines, and these were repeated loudly and without end in a lurching way that somehow matched the motion of our vessel. Just when I might have fallen asleep ‘I beg your pardon’ started slurringly all over again. Since then, I have been careful to avoid this song, but it occasionally appears in bad dreams. Fortunately, the captain of the Polar Star was sober, a well-groomed figure with sleeked-back hair, and fond of sporting dark glasses. He did, however, wear carpet slippers on the bridge.

  When the sea became calmer as we approached Svalbard there was a chance to socialise in the saloon. I got to know some of those who would share the weeks
to come. Gunnar Henningsmoen, a slip of a man and slightly bent, was serious in repose but had one of those smiles that instantly lit up his face. I discovered that he was epileptic; he was probably here against his doctor’s advice. Relentless smoking probably did not help. He came with Frank Nikolaisen, his protégé, who was able to step in if Gunnar had a grand mal attack. Frank was short and stocky, with a strangely wide and narrow mouth that reminded me of E. H. Shepard’s drawings of Mr Toad. He was from a humble background, but had taught himself to be an excellent trilobite researcher. I have never seen specimens dug out of hard rock with more precision than Frank could achieve. He was something of a man of mystery: he had business ‘out East’ in some part of the exotic Orient where he disappeared for long stretches of time, only to reappear and pick up his dissecting needle as if nothing had happened. He never explained what he had been doing or where he had been. It may (or may not) have been something to do with precious stones. Gunnar tolerated his strange lifestyle. On the sea crossing I joined Frank and two others for a game of bridge, and lost badly. Frank seemed to know all my cards. Then I was told he had once played bridge for Norway. Gunnar must have recognised his unusual gifts, and treated him rather like the wayward son he had never had. My Anglo-Norse friend David Bruton had several verbal spats with Frank during our field trip. They were temperamental opposites. I don’t know what was said, but it caused an awkward silence in the mess tent and I knew it was a good time for me to look my most amiably bemused. A lichen expert, Haavard Østhagen, came along with us to sample the toughest organisms on earth; I remember his loud guffaws, so he must have been a humorous fellow. From the Norsk Polarinstitutt two experienced Arctic hands were aboard: Thore Winsnes and Thor Siggerud. Winsnes had been a pioneer geologist in the days of sleds and huskies; he was so skilled with ships that he took over from our cap’n on one occasion. He radiated calm. I had encountered Siggerud with Geoff Vallance on my earlier expedition. When I met up with him again he said: ‘They say the bad penny always turns up.’ I think it was a joke, but the fact that it has stayed with me for so long makes me wonder whether it was a value judgement. Was I really a ‘bad penny’? I thought by now I was rather a good penny. I remembered those dismissive comments on my history of science essay from Nicholas Jardine in my Cambridge days. Praise seemed to wash over me, but every critical remark lodged forever in my heart. Why should I believe the latter rather than the former? Discuss, giving reasons, as my examination papers used to say.

  Longyearbyen is Svalbard’s largest town, and now has an airport and several hotels catering for those in search of the ‘Arctic experience’. It has become a tourist destination, tucked down from the worst of the weather in the shelter of snow-clad mountain ranges. In 1971 it was still a frontier town divided by a single, rutted main road. It had grown up around coal mining, and the painted wooden buildings had a rough and ready appearance as if they were not prepared for the long term. In the summer thaw the town was muddy and unkempt. Cages holding huskies were scattered on the hillside, and the last of the fur trappers still turned up with their wild beards, and bundles of Arctic fox furs for the market. Longyearbyen was built for the export trade and ships of some size could safely dock there. It lies about halfway up the western side of Spitsbergen, sheltered from the wild ocean within a large fjord (Isfjorden); it was a relief to stand on dry land, even if terra firma continued to lurch in sympathy with the ocean for an hour or so until the body readapted. We then sailed on to Ny-Ålesund, which is billed as the world’s most northerly town: then, it was just a few undistinguished wooden buildings, and a research institute and satellite tracking station at the top of a hill. Today it continues to be a centre for research on the Arctic and, of course, climate change. I remembered the terns reiterating their shrill, scolding cries, black guillemots and little auks bobbing on the waves, and eider ducks brooding motionless upon their camouflaged nests: little had changed since my first visit. As Polar Star steamed northwards from Ny-Ålesund we passed snow-capped mountains that made precipitous cliffs at the edge of the island, and we glimpsed where the ice sheets that covered much of its interior crept towards the sea. When an iceberg was calved from the front of a glacier a sharp crack like exploding dynamite was followed by a great splash, as the mass of ice settled into the water; as if it were alive, rather than simply obeying the laws of physics. Polar Star nudged most small icebergs aside. Passing around the north of the island we crossed the 80 degrees north line of latitude, an entirely unremarkable achievement for which tourists pay top dollar. The northern peninsula known as Ny-Friesland was generally less mountainous than the south of the island – bleaker, fringed with raised beaches of hard cobbles, and not a destination for the Zodiac dinghies that brought paying visitors to see walrus or Ross’s gull. Polar Star progressed along Hinlopen Strait separating Ny-Friesland from the island of Nordaustlandet (Northeastland) to the east. We were approaching our outcrops of Ordovician rocks.

  Supplies were ferried from Polar Star to the unforgiving shore: boxes of food and drink, tents, radio equipment, fuel drums, geological equipment, notebooks, everything we could possibly need. Rifles were on hand in case we were attacked by the isbjørn, the polar bear, which was capable of felling a human with one mighty blow. At suppertime there was always much joshing (in Norwegian) about isbjørn; if somebody complained of constipation a sudden encounter with an isbjørn was recommended as an instant cure. It was sad that we never saw a single isbjørn. The site may have been too bleak even for a polar bear. The camp was placed near the same melt stream we had used previously for our water supply. A large, communal tent was securely erected as dining room, office and kitchen. Sleeping quarters were shared tents, not much roomier than the one Vallance and I had lived in. David Bruton became my tent mate. He put up a Union Jack on a pole outside the tent; the Norwegian flag fluttered elsewhere, but it was better made than ours and stayed the course – the relentless wind blew ours to bits. After some unpleasant experiences digging our own toilet on the open beach the wooden latrine was constructed that still survives. The side facing the sea was left open so that the occupant could enjoy the view from the throne. Northern Svalbard is way beyond anywhere that trees grow but there was a quantity of wood lying on the beach, drifted in from Siberia, or from even further afield on the back of the North Atlantic current. Firewood was not a problem. Polar Star left us to our work, taking Winsnes and Siggerud on to some geodetic projects elsewhere in the archipelago. The Russians were after some of Norway’s oil, and establishing the extent of territorial waters was top of the political agenda. When the sea ice blew in to Hinlopen Strait we were truly alone.

  The routine of scientific collecting began. The weather was usually rather horrible, and blizzards occasionally prevented us from working at all. Northern Svalbard is the only place on earth where fog coexists with driving sleet. In perpetual daylight it is important to maintain a daily routine or the body clock goes haywire. Supper was on the table at the same time every ‘evening’. There was no ‘lights out’ in the tent, so you hoped exhaustion would do the trick, and it usually did. I still have my eiderdown-filled Arctic sleeping bag – I cannot bring myself to throw it out. My feet were usually icy cold when I climbed into my snug bag, but the special feathers had a magical ability to nurture every particle of body heat, until, little by little, the toes began to thaw and then to gently glow. It was one of the best moments, and usually heralded sleep. Collecting filled most days, often just breaking hard limestone with geological hammers, putting promising material to one side for wrapping, while I made notes about the exact locality. Somebody pointed out that they used to make criminals break tough rocks for a punishment. We had aerial photographs, but no topographic maps. We were obliged to name features that had never been named before, and these labels had to be officially approved by some Norwegian government office. Vallance’s and my ‘Melt stream A’ became Profilbekken (Profile Stream) for ever. It was not just trilobites that were immortalised. Several of the techn
icians from the Oslo Palaeontological Museum proved to be great assets in the field, working hard without complaint. Åge Jensen and Leif Koch hammered the rocks as if their own future depended on it. One or two of the others were less assiduous, blowing on their fingers against the cold, or overreacting if a chip of rock nearly went into their eye. When an exceptional trilobite turned up everyone gathered round to admire it. A specimen of the giant of the fauna – Gog catillus – split out perfectly the size of a small plate. For a while the collecting effort redoubled, but with hundreds of metres of rock to sample it is not surprising that not everyone was as fanatical as I was. Some parts of the rock succession were covered in ice that showed a reluctance to melt, and we dynamited it away to complete our sampling. Nothing was going to get in the way of telling the story of the rocks.