The shallow waters along the archipelago’s western edges are rich with krill, squid, and cod, thanks to the turbulence created by the confluence of the warm nutrient-rich Gulf Stream current and the cold currents flowing southward from Greenland. The waters therefore abound not only with whales but with seals, walrus, and bears. Little wonder that hunters and fishermen were attracted to the area in pursuit of ivory, baleen, furs, and oil.
Denmark was the first to establish a settlement on the island cluster, but within six years the Danes were ousted by the Dutch, who in 1625 set about creating the town of Smeerenburg (“blubbertown”) on Amsterdamøya Island at the archipelago’s northwest corner. By the time it had grown into its own, there were twenty cookeries for the making of oil, warehouses, dormitories for over two hundred workers, bakeries, taverns, and, to ward off the Danes, a fort — a remote frontier town eight hundred miles from the North Pole. In the ensuing half century, whaling technology underwent significant changes, with hunts moving away from coastal areas into the high seas and blubber becoming processed at home ports. By 1670 activity in Smeerenburg had died out and the town was abandoned and left to decay.
In the decades that followed, Svalbard continued to attract English, Danish, and Basque whalers, plus Russian and Norwegian hunters, but apart from isolated outposts, no settlements came to be. In the nineteenth century, a coal-mining operation blossomed, financed principally by British and American interests. All the while, the archipelago had been variously claimed by England, Holland, and Denmark-Norway, and it was only in the twentieth century that the matter resolved. The 1920 Peace Treaty of Paris that ended the First World War assigned sovereignty over the island group to Norway (with the proviso that citizens of other nations could freely reside and work there). Historically, the archipelago has been called Svalbard, with Spitzbergen the largest island at the hub, but when it was incorporated by Norway, the whole came to be named after the principal island.
Today, the administrative centre of the archipelago is Longyearbyen, where three-quarters of the archipelago’s 2,800 inhabitants reside, the world’s northernmost town of size and where coal mining continues to be the major industry, in addition to tourism. The most notable feature of Spitzbergen attracting world attention is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the outskirts of Longyearbyen. Created and financed initially by the Norwegian government, the project’s mission is to collect and store seeds from up to 3 million known varieties of the world’s crops. The “doomsday vault,” as it’s popularly called, is constructed to withstand any nuclear or natural disaster that might threaten the planet’s sources of food. The location was chosen for its virtual freedom from tectonic activity, but more important, for its naturally frozen environment, boosted by locally mined coal-powered refrigeration units that help maintain a constant temperature of 0°F. Two chambers house the collection deep in the bedrock of a sandstone mountain at the end of a specially fortified 390-foot tunnel. The entire construction is lined with steel-reinforced concrete and the facility is equipped with a variety of robot systems that control blast-proof doors, motion sensors, and air locks. The seeds are enveloped in specially designed moisture-proof packets.
Sharing the North Sea waters is another Norwegian territory, a thirty-four-mile-long volcanic island lying at 71°N called Jan Mayen. Legend has it that in the sixth century, an Irish monk, St. Brendan “the Navigator,” travelled into the North Sea in a continuing search for the Garden of Eden. He did not find Eden, but he did come across a “black island” that was on fire and from which terrible noise emanated, and this, it is believed, was Jan Mayen. The venturesome Vikings no doubt knew of the island, but the sagas fail to offer such confirmation. The most likely record of European discovery of the place points to Henry Hudson, who, on his second voyage into Arctic waters, came across it as he sailed from Novaya Zemlya. For whatever reason, the explorer gutted parts of his journal and because the concerned segment of the log was missing, confirmation may not be had that it was he who uncovered Jan Mayen.
In 1614, the Dutch took possession of the island and set up whaling stations along the northwest coast. The waters around the island at the time teemed with bowhead whales, and these animals were particularly prized for the high-quality oil they provided. By melting down the blubber of a medium-sized bowhead of fifty to sixty feet, some twenty-five tons of high-value oil could be harvested. In one exceptional season, forty-four bowheads were processed in its furnaces. As with Smeerenburg, the whaling stations at Jan Mayen in their day had complete infrastructures and were worked by hundreds of men. And, as with Svalbard, the place beehived with activity for only a few decades before being abandoned. The oil rush had been so successful that by 1640 Jan Mayen’s whale herds had been hunted out and were no more.[1]
The island remained uninhabited for nearly two-and-a-half centuries, when in 1882, an eccentric Austrian nobleman, Count Johann Wilczek, founded a short-lived polar station, the purpose of which was to further the study of meteorology, astronomy, magnetism, and the aurora borealis.
In 1921, the Norwegians took possession of Jan Mayen and established a meteorological station that continues to operate to this day. The island enjoys a population of eighteen (thirty-five in the summer) — employees of either the Norwegian Meteorological Institute or members of the armed forces.
From earliest times, Scandinavians have been wed to the sea, and it was natural for these Nordic peoples to venture out beyond their coastlines into distant polar waters. By the tenth century, as we have seen, their settlements dotted the Greenland coastline, and in the seventeenth century, Jens Munk made his epic exploration of Hudson Bay. In the pantheon of Arctic history there stand a number of other Scandinavians — among the more notable of whom are Adolf Nordenskiöld, the first to navigate the Northern Sea Route, and Roald Amundsen, the first to traverse the Northwest Passage. The fame of Fridtjof Nansen lies not only in his explorations of Greenland, but in his global humanitarian achievements. The work of Otto Sverdrup was focused on Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, as was that of Knud Rasmussen. One might legitimately add to this list a Canadian of Icelandic blood, Vilhjalmur Stefansson.
Nordenskiöld was born in Finland into a Swedish noble family and in 1858, at the age of twenty-six, he undertook his first Arctic voyage as a mineralogist attached to a scientific expedition to Spitzbergen. In the quarter century that followed, the untiring explorer accompanied or led nine more expeditions into polar regions, principally to Spitzbergen and Greenland, in continued mineralogical and geological research. In 1875, he chalked up one notable achievement by reaching the highest northern latitude then attained in the eastern hemisphere, 81°42' N. But it was for his memorable voyage on board the 357-ton whaling ship, the Vega, that Nordenskiöld garnered his notoriety.
In July 1877, the seasoned Arctic hand presented to Oscar II, king of Sweden and Norway, his plan for an ambitious expedition, the principal purpose of which was to investigate the geography, hydrography, and natural history of the North Polar Sea beyond the mouth of the Yenisej, if possible as far as Behring’s Straits … if only the state of the ice permit a suitable steamer to force a passage of that sea.[2]
His Majesty approved the project and preparations were set in motion to get the expedition underway. The steam-driven, massively reinforced Vega was outfitted in the admiralty shipyards and two officers and seventeen ratings from the Royal Swedish Navy volunteered to form the complement. For whatever reason, the ship was denied the privilege of sailing under the naval ensign and it therefore put out to sea flying the colours of the Swedish Yacht Club. In spring 1878, it sailed out of Tromsø in northernmost Norway in and headed east.
Nordenskiöld was, first and foremost, a scientist, and the expedition he proposed to the king was of a scientific nature. Let there be no doubt, however, that of equal interest to him, to King Oscar and to the Swedish Academy was the prospect of a successful traverse of the Northern Sea Route, the linking of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Wher
e Willoughby, Brunel, Hudson, and others had failed, he would succeed. The project called for the Vega to cross the Barents Sea, round Novaya Zemlya, sail the Kara Sea, and reach the mouth of the Lena by August. There the expedition would winter and in the following spring it would continue on to the Bering Strait.
Unlucky as the early explorers had been with impassible ice conditions on the Kara Sea, Nordenskiöld was favoured by open waters, and with virtually no difficulty or undue incident he sailed through and reached the Lena as planned. Lady Luck continued to smile on him by providing exceptionally favourable weather and winds, together with mild, non-hazardous ice conditions — so much so that the explorer forwent plans for wintering at the Lena and sailed on. By mid-September, with the weather changing for the worse, and heavy ice forming, progress was appreciably slowed, and finally on the 28th the Vega was beset at its anchorage along the Chukotka coastline, a mere 190 miles from the Bering Strait.
In his 758-page journal, Nordenskiöld gives every sort of detail concerning the flora and fauna encountered, geographic and hydrographic information, magnetic and meteorological data, and observations on the peoples met en route, especially the Chukchi, with whom the Scandinavians came in frequent contact during their long winter of ice captivity. The modern-day reader might be interested in one vignette that reflects on the times. While outdoor temperature fluctuated from -22°F to -40°F, temperatures within the vessel hovered from the low minus forties to 55°F, “that is to say about the same as we in the north are wont to have indoors in winter, and certainly higher than the temperatures of rooms during the coldest days of the year in many cities in the south, for instance in Paris and Vienna.”
“Christmas Eve was celebrated in the usual northern fashion.” A makeshift Christmas tree was fashioned out of wood and small twigs brought by the Chukchi, and festooned with tinsel and decorations, around which “thundering polkas” were danced by the happy celebrants.
At supper neither Christmas ale nor ham was wanting, and later in the evening there made their appearance in the ’tween decks five punch bowls which were emptied with songs and toasts for King and Fatherland, for the objects of the Expedition, for its officers and men, for the families at home, for relatives and friends, and finally for those who decked and arranged the Christmas tree.[3]
As the men of the Vega cavorted around the Christmas tree and quaffed the sequence of toasts, the world outside fretted and worried. Nothing had been heard of the expedition for some time and no sign of the Swedes had been had at the mouth of the Lena. The Swedish government sent out messages to world capitals requesting co-operation in locating the missing vessel. The New York Herald picked upon the story and Bennett, as sponsor of the De Long’s expedition, made the search for Nordenskiöld an add-on condition of the naval officer’s mission. This last-minute assignment, noble and worthy as it was, threatened to skew De Long’s tight timetable; he was less than pleased. He noted that in the previous winter Nordenskiöld had reached Cape Serdze Kamen, well along the Siberian coastline, and so, he writes:
I decided to go there and make inquiry, and if I find the Swedes were there and left, I shall push to Wrangel Island at once; if not — and there is the sticker — I suppose I shall have to grope along until I find where they did winter.[4]
At the very time that De Long was worrying about Nordenskiöld, the Swede, quite oblivious to the anxiety of the outside world as to his whereabouts, was happily sailing the Pacific. The Vega had spent ten captive months on the Siberian coastline until the spring melt and favourable south winds finally set it free on July 20. In continuing fair weather and with steady winds Nordenskiöld arrived at the entrance to Bering Strait shortly thereafter and sailed through it serenely, making a brief stop at the Diomede Islands. The Vega, he noted in his journal, “is thus the first vessel that has penetrated by the north from one of the great world-oceans to the other.”[5] Contrary to previous attempts to complete the northern passage from Europe, the Swede finished his journey almost as though it was a holiday excursion. It had been a smooth sail with no loss of life or equipment — anticlimactic, really.
From the Diomedes, the Swede continued on to Japan, the Gulf of Aden, and around Africa, making it back to Stockholm on April 24, 1860. It had been a journey of 22,189 miles — the first circumnavigation of the eastern hemisphere. On his arrival home, Nordenskiöld was wined and dined by the admiring nation and a variety of honours befell him, including being made a baron and an induction to the Swedish Academy. His massive tome describing the journey became a bestseller, richly detailing virtually all he saw about him. Marcel Proust must have had Nordenskiöld in mind when he wrote, “the only true voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” A charmed life indeed.
Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930), the Norwegian Arctic explorer, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian, and Nobel laureate.
The fearless Fridtjof Nansen stands unique amid Scandinavian Arctic explorers, for his fame transcends his impressive accomplishments in the world of exploration and science. He is perhaps even better known for the astonishing range of achievements following his withdrawal from Arctic activity. As one biographer puts it adroitly, “there is a timelessness about great men; and in Norway, and indeed the world, Nansen was among the greatest.” Explorer, oceanographer, zoologist, geologist, athlete, author, statesman, and humanitarian — all that, plus Nobel Peace Prize laureate. When one wonders at what manner of men were those who were challenged by the Arctic Siren, Nansen confounds accurate depiction. As New York’s Herald Tribune noted in 1932, he “should have been born in the Renaissance, before specialists became civilization’s heroes.”[6]
Born near Oslo of a prosperous professional family in 1861, as a tall, slim schoolboy he was a brilliant athlete and a prize-winner in swimming, gymnastics, and skating. For twelve consecutive years, he won the Norwegian national cross-country race and it was his extraordinary prowess at this sport that helped mould his life. At age nineteen he made his first trip to Greenland as a note-taker and artist for a scientific expedition. It was an eye-opening experience for the young man. The mist-covered snowfields of the great glacier so captivated him that he resolved some day to return and explore that unknown land. The following six years he spent in intensive study of zoology, which culminated in a doctorate from the University of Oslo.[7]
In 1883, Nordenskiöld capped his earlier successes by making a final voyage to Greenland where he succeeded in breaking through the almost impenetrable ice barrier of the east coast, a feat that had thwarted explorers for over three centuries. The twenty-seven-year-old Nansen was so inspired by this that he immediately embarked on preparations for his dream exploration of the Greenland interior. The plan he had in mind was to land on the uninhabited east coast and then ski across the island to the peopled west coast. Once his party was deposited on Greenland’s shores, therefore, there would be no turning back and only one way to go — forward. On more than one occasion, he urged students to burn bridges behind themselves so that no alternative would remain but to move forward. His actual words: “Never keep a line of retreat; it is a wretched invention.”
Nansen’s party of six was duly transported to Greenland and on August 11, 1888, the men found themselves ashore, ready to set off on the trek across the glacial island. It was a gruelling hike with a climb to nine thousand feet above sea level, over roughest ice and deep crevasses, all the while hauling sledges heavily laden with equipment and supplies. The September temperatures hit lows of -50°F, “these temperatures,” wrote Nansen, “are without any comparison the lowest that have ever been recorded at this time of year anywhere on the face of the globe.”[8] He continued, “Constant exposure to the cold was by no means pleasant. The ice often formed so heavily on our faces that our beards and hair froze to the coverings of our heads and it was difficult to open the lips to speak. This inconvenience had to be endured because we had no way of shaving.”
Two months later, Nansen’s party arriv
ed on Greenland’s west coast, but too late to catch the season’s last vessel sailing for home. He therefore spent the winter living among the Inuit, learning about them and studying their ways. In 1893, he brought out a book on these studies, Eskimo Life, one of six works he authored in his lifetime. Shortly after returning home in the spring, he began plotting his next project.
In his studies of Arctic pioneers, Nansen was captivated by the saga of the Jeannette. He wrote:
It was in the autumn of 1884 that I happened to see an article by Professor Mohn … in which it was stated that sundry articles which must have come from the Jeannette had been found on the southwest coast of Greenland. He conjectured that they must have drifted on a floe right across the Polar Sea. It immediately occurred to me that here lay the route ready at hand. If a floe could drift right across an unknown region, that drift might be enlisted in the service of exploration — and my plan laid.
Nansen now set about raising funds for the construction of a special ship, the hull of which would be impervious to pressures of ice. He planned to sail it out from the Siberian coastline until it became ice-bound, and then allow it to drift westward with the currents toward the North Pole and on to Greenland. Some members of the Swedish Academy thought him quite mad and would have no part in the hare-brained scheme. Others, however, believed in their enterprising hero and readily subscribed funds for the project, the king among the first.
The 127-foot Fram, used in passages to the North Pole by Nansen and by Sverdrup, and by Amundsen to the South Pole.
Arctic Obsession Page 22
