Northernmost

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by Peter Geye

His wife was Inger Astrid Eide. She was born on November 6, 1855, and died on April 30, 1900. According to Jarle Berg-Hansen at the Hammerfest library, records show they had a daughter named Thea Eide, who left Hammerfest in August 1895 at the age of sixteen. In the registry, her final destination is listed as “Gunflint, Minnesota, America.” If this is not the story of your family, then there must be two of you.

  If you take the time to read this account, you might understand what I told you about this man being a legend in my part of the world. In fact, after Adolf Lindstrøm, who took part in two expeditions aboard the Fram and one aboard the equally famed Gjøa, Odd Einar Eide is probably our most celebrated character. Most anyone who lives in Hammerfest or the Rypefjord learns of him, like we learn of trolls or Vikings.

  The man who wrote and published this account is also famous. His name was Marius Granerud, from Tromsø. For thirty years or more he was the principal newspaperman in Arctic Norway. He was the first man to talk to Fridtjof Nansen when he landed in Hammerfest in August 1896 after his renowned maiden voyage aboard the Fram. In his later years, Granerud wrote many biographies of notable Norwegians, including one of a man from Hammerfest named Bengt Bjornsen, who employed Odd Einar and Inger Astrid Eide for many years. I will try to find that book to send to you also.

  I tell you all of this aware of how crazy it must seem. But after you left I made a discovery myself, that I had to know you better. Since I could not speak with you often, this is how I spent time with you. At least in my imagination. I hope that you will accept it in the spirit it is offered.

  I want to tell you also that while I was making this translation, I thought of sailing to Svalbard with you. I will take you, if you will let me.

  God jul, again. I will go to the bowsprit of my humble boat on julaften and look for you in the Christmas Star. Will you look back?

  ~ Stig

  Now, instead of the sounds filtering through her home, she heard the Vannhimmel’s sails filling with the north wind, and the call of the terns as they came out to sea to meet them. She didn’t feel the tears that fell from her eyes as she swore she would absolutely meet him under the heavens on Christmas Eve, but only the gift of his hand resting on her back.

  [1897]

  “If I have made my whole ordeal sound like an exercise in spiritual awakening, I assure you there was more to it than that.” Odd Einar studied the last bite of the jubileumsbolle Granerud’s wife had sent with him. “My thanks to Fru Granerud,” he added.

  “She saw you on the quay yesterday and thought you could use some fattening up.”

  “On that account there’s little to argue.”

  “I expect that by now, on the…what”—he glanced at his notes—“your fourth day without a meal, you’d found yourself riotously hungry.”

  “I’ve begun to think I’ll spend the rest of my days with a gnawing in my gut. I can’t quite get to the bottom of my hunger.”

  “My Heidi, she can see what I don’t.”

  “Your wife?”

  “Just last night I spoke to her of my fondness for you. I hope that’s fine?”

  “Fondness?”

  “Naturally! It would take a special lout to fail to see your generosity of spirit.”

  The only thing that seemed generous to me were my failings, but I was determined to blaze a straight line through the rest of his inquiry, so rather than digress I returned to the subject of hunger. “The truth is, it took until that night on yonder side of the first glacier for my hunger to rise up. I suppose it was terror keeping it at bay, but with the small victory of crossing that glacier and the specter of another sleep-starved night, I realized that slumber was not the only thing wanting. As I moved snow into a berm around me and my thirst welled up and started scratching at my throat, I began shoveling handfuls into my mouth, trying to trick myself into believing these were whipped potatoes.

  “Of course I knew it was only snow. For three full days I had supped on one mouthful after another—a fact that startled me almost as much as the bear had leaping up onto that berg. I wondered how long a man could live without food. What wretched state would this sort of dying entail?

  “Let me tell you, Herr Granerud, the answers came swiftly and easily, and they were hardly those of a man thinking clearly. I suspected as much even in my desperation. So do you know what I did?”

  Granerud didn’t even look up from his notes, just gestured with his hand to keep talking.

  “Well, inspired by my friend the krykkje, and understanding at least that I was a man with no resources, I saw in the darkness of that night an opportunity to catch one of those birds with my own hands.”

  “You mean to say you imagined it, friend.”

  “That doesn’t suggest strongly enough the certainty which overcame me. I as much as saw the design of it drawn in the starry sky.

  “You see, I knew there were cliffs along those shores, and that on those cliffs nested the krykkje and gulls. And I surely knew those birds were unfamiliar with the likes of me or any other man. If they saw me lying faceup to the afternoon light, why, they might think me some strangely shaped walrus or seal, dead to be picked at. Their curiosity, in any case, would be aroused. And when they came to peck at me with their golden beaks, I would need only grab one around the neck and wring it well.

  “And since I practically had one of those fat birds already in my hand, I spent the rest of that night thinking of how Inger might prepare it for me. I tell you, sir, I ate that bird braised in butter and covered with herbs. I had it stewed with potatoes and rutabagas and ripe onions. Also breaded and fried in duck fat with a tablespoon of pepper. I even wrapped it in bacon and served it with bread pudding.”

  Marius made a playful show of removing his pocket watch to check the hour. “I say, is it time for lunch yet?”

  “Oh, how many times did I ask myself that same question!”

  He put his watch back in his pocket. “Indeed, Herr Eide.”

  I felt a faraway expression wash over my face as the memory of starvation came back to life inside me. I closed my eyes, the better to see. “I would learn, the following day, that around the next headland was a veritable bird hotel. But except for one lone krykkje whirling on some gyre, my cliff was vacant. A month before there might’ve been a thousand birds nesting up there and flying all about the surrounding fjords. Certainly, it would not have been impossible to play dead for one and wring its curious neck. But when the sun rose over the mountain behind me, it shone on no birds but that single winged friend a hundred feet up.”

  “Is there a lonesomer place on earth?”

  I finally opened my eyes and was almost surprised at being in his office, with its bookcases and cabinets and newspapers stacked around like battlements. “Oh, believe me, it would grow more lonesome yet.”

  He wrote that one down, then looked back across his desk at me. “What did you eat, Odd Einar?”

  “Not much on that morning, though I did chance upon a patch of windblown ledge rock covered in mountain sorrel still clinging to its last greenness. Those are right bitter leaves on the stems of those plants, and by the time I finished with them my lips were puckered and my stomach churning. But by God, the edge was off.”

  “I believe I’d rather eat nothing at all.”

  “All those days without nourishment might convince you otherwise. In fact, for all the trouble those plants gave my bowels, I would indeed have been better off not eating them. Especially given the feast I would later that day chance upon.”

  Granerud raised his eyebrows in question.

  “Not bacon-wrapped goose, but not damn far from it.”

  He sat back in his chair and folded his hands across his lap. “This I am most curious to hear about.”

  “As I am anxious to tell, for it was a stroke of enormous luck. My second of four such bits of good fortune.”
>
  “The first being?”

  “Why, the ice bear deciding Birger Mikkelsen would make better fare than myself.”

  He nodded, a sly smile plain on his face.

  “If that sounds ungenerous or unkind, I beg Mikkelsen’s spirit for forgiveness. But how could I not see it so?”

  “I think it neither ungenerous nor unkind. I’ve not seen an ice bear but through the lens of your description. And from that alone, it’s plain that to be spared by such a toothy beast is far preferable to becoming its mincemeat.”

  “Trust me, there were times I wondered if that were true.”

  “You’ve not mentioned the bear in some time. Was it out of your mind?”

  “Not often. But though it was the first threat—and indeed the last—I hope I’ve made it clear that countless other hazards held my attention in turn.” I gestured at his pile of notes on the blotter. “I doubt I need recount any of which I’ve already spoken, but let me tell you about the second stroke of good fortune, which began as a conundrum of mighty power.”

  He sat forward now, and readied his pen, and then I told him about the reindeer.

  * * *

  —

  During the months I’d spent on the seas around Spitzbergen, I’d seen countless of those furry creatures. I call them reindeer as though they have much in common with the herds that make their home in the fjelds and rocky hills around Hammerfest. In truth, they share about as much in common with each other as Bengt Bjornsen and I do.

  The Spitzbergen variety had shorter legs and longer coats, which were brown across the back and blending to white like the snow on their bellies. It was the season of their rut, and I’d seen an awful lot of lonely bachelors on that island. While watching them, their heads bowed, seemingly feeding on pebbles from the rocky ground, I wondered what in creation they were eating. It turns out they were great fans of the mountain sorrel, same as me that morning.

  After my bitter breakfast, I went back to my bivouac made of snow and mountainside. As my stomach kept growling, I feared I might have a bout of the runs, but after a while it settled and I actually felt revived. It was then I sat up and looked out over the sunny slope down to the ledge rock. One of those lonely bucks was grazing where I so lately had, his squat legs fixed on the scree, his towering antlers like birch branches above his hidden face.

  As quick as I saw him, I shouldered the Krag-Jørgensen and sighted him. An easy shot, not fifty yards, without wind, his heavy left shoulder broad as a barn door. I levered my last bullet into the barrel. But the sound of it clicking into place brought with it a sudden and grave qualm: if I fired into the shoulder of that reindeer, I would be left without defense against the ice bear, should he make his inevitable return to devour me as he had Mikkelsen. But if I saved the bullet, by needs I would subsist on those sour leaves and whatever other vegetation could be scrounged from the rocks and snow.

  I lowered the rifle and thought further across the expanse. I remembered the stink of seal blood in the killing boat and how that must’ve drawn the bear to our berg. Surely the blood of a healthy reindeer might work similarly, then I would not only have wasted my bullet, but also forfeited my kill. I might get only a single bellyful of that tender meat, as well as an hour of being elbows-deep in the warmth of its guts. Would that be worth it?

  The reindeer lifted his face to the sunlight, his jaw working, before stepping a few paces farther on and resuming his lunch. From this angle I had a full profile of his majestic girth. Those creatures are generally smaller than the mainland reindeer I knew so well, but this one had twice the bulk of most I’d seen. He would reasonably have given me fifty or sixty pounds of raw meat, a bounty, but this led to the concern of how I could carry it all. I’d be soaked in blood from mittens to boots, with straps of tender venison like a coat over my back. Given my physical condition, already weak with hunger and exhaustion, I might reap but a third of it, and how long would that sustain me? I sighted him again, and this time he lifted his head and sniffed in my direction, his heavy neck now a perfect target. I’d not have missed him from twice as far.

  I could have spent another hour deliberating, but then something struck me. I noticed the shadow of the reindeer long behind it. I noticed, too, that the sun, which had been so gracious all morning long, was falling toward the southern mountains. Reckoning another two hours of daylight, I felt the cold and sleepless night creeping toward me in the form of that blasted reindeer’s shadow, and suffered then and there the gnawing of my hunger through a long, cold night. Would I even make it through another, without something proper to eat? Did I want to?

  The answers were easy, and so I steadied my gun and aimed for that spot right behind his shoulder. He dropped where he’d stood before the report of the rifle bounced off the mountain beside me.

  I had decided that the certainty of one more night alive outweighed the prospects of the rest of my life.

  * * *

  —

  Granerud sat there with a conspiring expression on his face, his head shaking in solemn agreement. “And this reindeer you felled with your last bullet, you fed off its raw flesh? Flesh you cut open with Mikkelsen’s stuorraniibi? The very same blade you found at the site of his dismembered body?”

  “I fed off it for the next eight days.”

  “And your bear, he left you alone?”

  “Until the ninth day, if I count them rightly.”

  Granerud stood, his potbelly packed under his waistcoat, and walked over to a cabinet in the corner of his office. His gait was clumsy, and when he returned to his desk with a white cloth sack that fit in the palm of his hand, I thought I detected a grimace on his ruddy face. He sat with effort, but motioned me closer and held up the bag.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I believe I told you I was the first man from the press to interview Fridtjof Nansen when he emerged from farthest north? Well, he gave me a small gift I would like to pass on to you.”

  “Whatever for?”

  He loosened the strings and shoved his papers aside before dropping three bullets onto his blotter. He handed two of them to me, and held the third between his thumb and forefinger and regarded it in the lamplight. “The closest I have ever come to holding a gun—never mind firing one—is with this bullet right here. And I don’t foresee needing to start hunting anytime soon.” He handed me the third bullet and the cloth sack and sat back, comfortable again in his leather chair.

  It occurred to me that Marius Granerud had the same aspect in that seat as the reindeer had had on the plains of Spitzbergen. I felt a pang of jealousy that my lot had been cast with the fishermen and hunters of the world, rather than with newspapermen or civil servants. I doubted Granerud’s arms were pocked with scars, that his hands and feet ached with every shift in the weather, that when he woke in the morning his first thoughts concerned the luck of the sea. Instead, he had only to wait for some poor sap like me.

  I noticed the gentleness with which he regarded me. “I was just thinking,” he said, “how much I envy men like you, Herr Eide.”

  “Why should that be?”

  “I suppose it’s for the same reasons men always envy other men. Because I suspect my aches and sorrows are nothing next to yours; because I wish I knew what it was like to experience the type of fear you have; because I wish that I could pull the trigger on a Krag-Jørgensen and watch my target fall, then go to my prey and make it my dinner.

  “Isn’t it often true that our lives are but pale reflections of our aspirations, Herr Eide? Unless you are as heroic as Nansen—whose family will live on his accomplishments for generations—you’re a man much like you and I are. Dissatisfied. Envious. Untrue. And lest you feel too sorry for us, think of our poor wives and daughters, who aren’t even allowed to dwell on their own happiness or sadness, busy as they are attending our every pathetic need.”

  “I’ll
have to ponder that, Herr Granerud.”

  “Do you mean to tell me you weren’t thinking, just now, that my life seemed easier than yours? That my rotund belly and fine clothes and warm office seem preferable to your own circumstances?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “For more than four decades, I’ve sat with men like you and asked of their woe or triumph. I believe I’ve paid attention. I think I understand the nature of men like you. Some wish to own or conquer the world. But you, you don’t strike me as the sort of man who desires so very much. It’s a quality I wish I possessed myself.”

  It felt otherworldly, to have this man gleaning my thoughts as though I’d already spoken them plainly. I wasn’t irked, as you might expect. Rather, I found his understanding quite comforting. I put the bullets back in the pouch and drew the strings into a knot. “A very kind gesture,” I said, holding it up before putting it in my pocket. “I thank you. And you’re right, there’s not much I wish for. Only a little peace and prosperity. These desires, they’re the reason I signed on with Sverdrup. They’re the reason I went with Svene Solvang.”

  “And I suppose they’re the reason you’re sitting here with me.”

  “At the outset they were.”

  “How was it that you ended up with Solvang?”

  “I was occupied by that question for many hours on Spitzbergen. So much so that I believe I lost the thread of how it really happened.

  “I recall with certainty that the Lofoten was anchored at Hotellneset, on the Isfjorden. There was a hotel and saloon there, full of trappers and tourists and hunters like Svene. He made an impression even in that assemblage of hard men and charlatans.

  “Sverdrup introduced us. He recommended me for a spot on board the Sindigstjerna, which was bound for Nordaustlandet the next day, and when Solvang offered I found myself intrigued.”

  “And why was that?”

  “I suppose I was flattered by Sverdrup’s confidence. And Solvang’s compliments. He said he could see in my eyes a marksman and a seal spotter, both of which proved to be true enough. I might add I relished the chance to see the icy side of the islands. The prospect of true adventure appealed to me greatly. And perhaps most important, I imagined it would be less thrilling to spend my days coiling hawsers on the deck of the Lofoten.”

 

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