Crossing Greenland

Survival and Exploration with J.P. Koch & Alfred Wegener

Contains the First-Person Account of Expeditioner

Vigfús Sigurðsson Grænlandsfari

of the 1912–1913 Danish Expedition to Queen Louise Land and Across the North Greenland Ice Sheet

With pictures and maps

New material, links, notes, formatting, cover and translation by: Guðmundur Freyr Úlfarsson

Copyright ©2023 Guðmundur Freyr Úlfarsson. All rights reserved. Kindle Edition

ISBN: 978-9935-9725-1-4

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to others. Thank you for respecting the hard work involved in developing this ebook.

Foreword

The first part of this book contains the story of the 1912–13 Danish Expedition to Queen Louise Land and Across the North Greenland Ice Sheet, as it was described by one of the expeditioners, Vigfús Sigurðsson (Sigurðsson, 1948). The expedition was directed by Capt. J. P. Koch, who was an experienced Greenland explorer and land surveyor. Also participating and directing scientific research, which included ice drilling, was Dr. Alfred Wegener, who then had recently put forth his theories of continental drift (Wegener, 1912a, 1912b).

The first part is a new translation with additional photographs and material in endnotes. The endnotes, for example, explain which place names in Greenland, given by the expedition, are currently used and which are not. There is information about remnants from the expedition in Greenland. The endnotes give full names and extra information about named individuals. The second part contains a brief new description of the life of Vigfús’s family back home during the expedition, with additional information about Vigfús’s later related activities. The ebook contains links to webpages with information about people, places, animals and plants named in the book along with links to a website that provides satellite photos of locations.

The Geonames website map icon, that needs to be pressed to view the satellite photo.

A bibliography is provided, which includes information about available online material. The photographs from the original book and additional photographs are included in low resolution due to limitations on the size of ebooks. The photographs in this book and additional photographs from the expedition can be found on the website of the photographic museum of the Danish Arctic Institute (Arktisk Institut, 2020) where they have been collected together by the author in a public collection.

Vigfús wrote the original text at two different stages in his life. He wrote the description of the expedition from its start and through the dark of winter shortly after arriving home from the expedition. He completed the book with the description of the ice sheet crossing decades later, about four years before his death. That later text is characterized by a greater reliance on diary entries, while the older text is written in a richer narrative style with more detail. Every effort was made to let the translation represent Vigfús’s tone.

This book is somewhat unique since normally stories of expeditions are written by the leaders and from their viewpoint. Indeed, both Capt. Koch and Dr. Wegener wrote extensively about the expedition in books and scientific journal articles (see the bibliography). This book, however, provides readers with the viewpoint of a man who was a carpenter and a postman, hired primarily to handle the horses and provide labor assistance on the expedition. Vigfús’s stated goal was to describe the daily life. This gives readers an interesting new perspective on an expedition. Vigfús describes the expeditioners’ daily tasks and many of his projects. For example, he describes how he improved the expedition’s ice drill so that the ice filings were more easily retrievable. Vigfús provides readers with insight into the hard struggle for life, fought by the men and animals. Vigfús’s story is in parts suspenseful and harrowing, as the expeditioners and the animals suffer through misfortunes and difficulties along the way.

Vigfús pays close attention to nature. He often makes notes of the behavior of the animals around him, both wild and domesticated, and typically personifies the description. This is kept in the translation by using human pronouns for those animals. He describes the activities of, for example, muskoxen, foxes, hares, walrus, one snow bunting, other birds, and polar bears. Vigfús puts a special focus on the expedition’s horses, especially his favorite animal, Kári. This is the first Arctic expedition to depend on horses for transport of heavy cargo. This transport proved one of the greatest challenges of the journey. Vigfús shows the strong and independent personalities of the horses and how they responded to the hardships of the journey. Vigfús also describes the expedition’s dog, Glói, and his behavior and activities. Vigfús depicts these animals so vividly that readers will likely remember the horse Kári and the dog Glói for years to come. Others certainly did. A lake was named after Glói in the valley Vigfusdal in Greenland, which was named after Vigfús.

Vigfús’s role was the handling of horses and carpentry, and turned out important for the expeditioners’ survival. He saved their lives several times with ingenuity, craftsmanship, creativity, strength and perseverance. Vigfús, however, is modest in his descriptions and allows readers to interpret the impacts of his actions.

It is barely noticeable when Vigfús says his thoughts were to continue the journey so that he could make it back home to his loved ones. His family must, however, have been on his mind more often than the text suggests. He was married to Guðbjörg Árnadóttir and they had three small children, with a fourth on the way, who was born shortly after Vigfús departed for the expedition. In short, the family’s breadwinner left his pregnant wife and three children, to go on a dangerous expedition with great uncertainty of success or return.

In the second part of the book, new light is shed on the family’s life while Vigfús was away, based on interviews with his descendants. It is hoped that this work will provide a clearer picture of the expedition, which can be of interest to readers and researchers of Arctic exploration.

Guðmundur Freyr Úlfarsson, 2023.

Vigfús Sigurðsson Grænlandsfari, 1948; b. July 16, 1875, d. May 26, 1950.

Original Foreword

Vigfús Sigurðsson Grænlandsfari was born on July 16th, 1875 at the farm Gilsbakki in Axarfjörður, Iceland, but he grew up at the farm Meiðavellir in Kelduhverfi (on the western rim of Ásbyrgi canyon). Once past the confirmation age, he started working as a manual laborer at various farms, as was common at that time, and for example was a shepherd at Hólsfjallabæir in winter, where winter is about the harshest in Iceland. In 1902–’04 he was in Seyðisfjörður and for two winters he carried the mail on the highland route to Grímsstaðir á Fjöllum, one of the most difficult postal routes in Iceland. He was intimately familiar with Icelandic weather at its worst and knowledgeable about the endurance and abilities of the Icelandic horse.

At the time of his hire for the expedition, he describes here, he was a farmer at Brekka in Álftanes, Gullbringusýsla, and started his journey from there as he explains here within.

Vigfús is educated as a carpenter and after returning in 1913 he worked as a carpenter here in Reykjavík. In 1915 he was hired as the lighthouse keeper of Reykjanesviti, due to the involvement of Capt. Koch, the expedition leader. In 1925, he left that post, moved to Reykjavík with his family and has lived here since.

Vigfús went a second time to Greenland, then on the motorboat Gotta in 1929. That is when our acquaintance, or rather friendship, started and it has held unbroken since.

Vigfús went a third time to Greenland in 1930 and then to the west coast, quite far north. Dr. Wegener, who participated in the expedition described in this book, was then starting a new expedition to the Greenland ice sheet. He had Vigfús manage the purchase of 25 Icelandic horses and the transport of the expedition’s large amount of cargo from the beach up onto the edge of the ice sheet. He knew how greatly Vigfús could be trusted. Upon completing his task, Vigfús returned home in the fall.

Vigfús is barely of medium height, but he follows through and is self-sacrificing to the extreme, he is self-effacing and reluctant to draw attention to himself. He has told me stories from the expedition, where his strength was tested more than the other expeditioners’ and this could have been described in the book, but he felt that then he would draw more attention to himself than was his due. Vigfús is a man of books, he is intelligent and remembers well, as his narrative shows. In conversation, Vigfús is as if he was young still, intelligence and memory are undiminished, but physical strength is somewhat lessened, mostly due to wear because he has not spared himself during his days. He lives in the home of his son, Tómas, the well-known master housebuilder in Reykjavík.

The drawing of Vigfús, which is right hereafter, was drawn in Copenhagen once he arrived there after the expedition. The picture here in front, is of him at about the time he wrote the book.

Ársæll Árnason, 1948.

Vigfús Sigurðsson Grænlandsfari. (Drawn in Copenhagen in 1913 by Achton Friis)

A map of Greenland and past expeditions in 1913.

Part 1. The Expedition 1912–1913. Prologue

The Arctic remained little known into the 19th century despite frequent expeditions. Many of these expeditions failed; men died due to bad equipment, or the equipment was not as useful as expedition leaders and others had hoped. Among the saddest was the fate of Franklin and his men in the year of 1845, which is even still not fully known.

Like us Icelanders know, Greenland is one of the Arctic countries. Until the middle of the 19th century, its west coast was not fully known, even though it was inhabited for a long time. The coast north of Upernavik[1] was little known and it was not until many years later, that Americans found the Inuit colony, which is named after its location Cape York.

The east coast was nearly unknown. But interest awoke in exploring it. This was mainly done in an effort to locate the ancient Icelandic settlement, which had been called the Eastern Settlement, because at that time the current opinion, that the Eastern Settlement was truly on the west coast, had not yet taken hold.

The first expedition, which was made from the west coast to the east coast and which had good success, was the woman-boat[2] expedition of Capt. Holm[3] and Garde[4] in the years 1883–’84. With this expedition, the old opinions of the Eastern Settlement were changed. They also found the Inuit colony, which is now called Angmagssalik (i.e. Capelin fishing station), and Capt. Holm wintered there but then returned. Nordenskjöld[5] had noticed the colony earlier that same summer, but had not achieved contact with the Inuits themselves.

After this, there was one expedition after the other. The best known is Nansen’s crossing of the ice sheet[6] from Umivik to Godthaab in 1888, for which he became most famous. Then the Amdrup-expedition[7] in 1898–1900, when he drifted with the sea ice from Scoresby Sound to Angmagssalik, to where Holm had returned.

Men had set foot on land on the east coast further north in a few places, but not north of Cape Bismarck, which is at 77° N. latitude. However, Peary,[8] the well-known Polar explorer, had in the years 1892–’95 crossed the ice sheet from the northwest coast, a place called Inglefield Gulf, to the northeast coast and reached a place he called Navy Cliff. It was from there that he saw the sound, which he called Peary Channel, and thought it separated Peary Land from Greenland. This sound or fjord later became a dispute but Knud Rasmussen[9] has ended the argument, by going there in the summer of 1912. It was discovered that this sound does not exist.

At the turn of the last century, no man had stepped foot, as far as was known, on the eastern coast of Greenland between Cape Bismarck and Navy Cliff, but this coastline spans about 6 latitude degrees. There was a large gap in the map, which needed filling.

In the year of 1906, new excitement in exploring the east coast began with a Danish man, the writer and poet L. Mylius Erichsen,[10] who with a grant from the Danish government bought a ship for conducting research. He had newly arrived at home after a research expedition in West-Greenland, from Upernavik to Cape York. He had made this trip on a sled with Greenlandic dogs. The trip had been a success as he was an intrepid and tenacious explorer who gave himself completely to the tasks he wanted completed. He had also been lucky to have found good men to participate in the expedition, especially, as it turned out, had he been fortunate with the hiring of the Inuit who should lead the drive. It was Jørgen Brønlund,[11] a teacher.

The ship, which he purchased for the trip, was an engine-assisted three-masted schooner, and he named the ship “Danmark”. There were 28 men aboard. The ship’s captain was a first lieutenant in the Danish navy, Trolle, land surveyors were the first lieutenants J. P. Koch[12] and H. Hagen,[13] the meteorologist was Alfred Wegener,[14] a German man, who had then recently completed a degree in that science from the University of Marburg in Hesse. Three Inuits were on the ship, Jørgen Brønlund, Tobias and Hendrik.

Erichsen had thought to spend two years on the east coast and get as far north with the ship as possible, but then continue traveling north with dogs and sleds to the northern tip of Greenland. With the ship, he reached a location, which he called Danmarkshavn,[15] to the west of Cape Bismarck. They built a cottage and remained there with the ship for two years. They succeeded in surveying and land marking all that which previously had been unknown of that coastline. It cost them much hard effort and labor and, which was the saddest, the lives of three men, who were lost in November 1907, after having struggled to survive the summer before, mostly by consuming the meat from the sled dogs. These three men were L. Mylius Erichsen, H. Hagen and Jørgen Brønlund. The corpse of Brønlund was found by J. P. Koch in the month of March 1908, along with his diary and H. Hagen’s drawings, which he had placed at his feet, when he lay down to die. The last pages in the diary were written in Danish, the rest in Greenlandic. The last page reads verbatim:[16]

“Perished 79 fjords after trying to return home over the ice sheet in the month of November. I came here in diminishing moonlight and could not travel further due to frostbitten feet and the darkness. The others’ corpses will be found in the middle of the fjord in front of the glacier (about 2½ miles). Hagen died on Nov. 15 and Mylius passed 10 days later.

Jørgen Brønlund.”

Thus, he described their last hours.

But despite this large loss, which the passing of these men was for the expedition, and especially the passing of M. Erichsen, the others returned home after the two-year outing, with what can be called full victory. The only objective, which they had not achieved to complete their plans, was to cross the land, from Danmarkshavn to Upernavik or Prøven.[17]

But J. P. Koch, who was promoted to Captain in the army after the return, and A. Wegener took the idea of the expedition across Greenland and started, soon after the homecoming in 1908, to prepare for that trip, get people to provide funding for the expenses and more. Yet it was not until 1912, that it was possible to hire men and elect a governing board, which would sit at home in Copenhagen. On the governing board were C. F. Wandel[18] Vice Admiral, chairman; Erik S. Henius[19] Consul, cashier; and co-boardmembers Valdemar Glückstadt[20] Consul-General and V. Ludvigsen[21] Consul. They estimated that the funds required to cover expenses would be 80,000 Danish kroner (kr.), the Carlsberg Foundation[22] provided 30,000 kr., but the rest was given by various individual men, for example, Consul Ludvigsen gave 6,000 kr.

Sixteen Icelandic horses should be purchased and hay and more here home in Iceland. To man the expedition, four men were hired.

1. Johan Peter Koch, Captain, born January 15, 1870, expedition leader and land surveyor, furthermore, he had specialized knowledge in the nature of the ice sheet and its formation.

2. Dr. Alfred Wegener, Lecturer, born November 1, 1880 in Berlin, meteorologist.

3. Andreas Lundager, Botanist. This was later changed and, in his place, came

Lars Larsen, born September 19, 1886 in Himmerland, Denmark; he had passed the lesser master of ships test, but was now a sailor on the Greenland-vessel Godthaab.

4. The author, who is born July 16, 1875 at Gilsbakki in Axarfjörður, Iceland.

Capt. J. P. Koch.

The expedition’s main objective was to cross the country from Danmarkshavn, which is at 76° 46” N. latitude, to Prøven in West-Greenland, at 72° 20” N. latitude, a distance loosely approximated as 1200 kilometers, the surveying and land marking of Queen Louise Land. This mountainous land extends into the ice sheet and men had seen it before but had never been able to explore it. It was even hoped that there would be some animal and plant-life.

The Danish national parliament lent the Greenland-vessel Godthaab to transport us, a three-masted schooner with an assisting engine, the size of 160 metric tons. Captain J. P. Koch intended to first cross Vatnajökull and with that try the horses.

I. The Journey in Iceland

On the 29th of March 1912, I departed from my home, which was then Brekka on Álftanes, to travel to Akureyri. On the 31st of March I sailed on the steamboat “Ingólfur” from Reykjavík to Borgarnes and from there I continued on foot to Akureyri. I arrived on the 7th of April at 2 PM, which was the day after Easter Sunday.

Trips here at home in the midst of winter are for us Icelanders so well known that it is not necessary to describe them. The fickle and harsh nature often makes them dangerous and difficult. I could be called lucky on this trip, which was just as good as I was unfamiliar with the route and alone most of the time. Húnavatns- and Skagafjörður Counties had little snow, which made the change at Öxnadalur heath all the greater, since the whole way from there on was covered with white snow and not a speck of dark could be seen.

Two days after I arrived in Akureyri, I started purchasing horses for the expedition. A week later I had acquired 16 horses and rented stables from Vigfús Sigfússon, proprietor in Akureyri. The horses should get used to eating the high-energy nutritional feed, which was to be used. The nutritional feed consisted of some kind of cakes, made from maize meal, bean meal, sugar seed meal and tallow, baked and broken into bits. Based on the original plan, which was made by Professor Goldschmidt[23] at the Danish Agricultural University,[24] sufficient feed for a horse should be 2 kg of hay and 2 kg of this nutritional feed supplement each day, but later this turned out to be too little.

I was to buy 10,000 kg of hay and bind it into 45 kg bales (in a hay baler), and additionally 1,000 kg, which were to be sent to Copenhagen and from there to Prøven in West-Greenland. Those 1,000 kg should be there for the horses if we brought any of them alive from the ice sheet. I was to have all this hay ready for transport on June 1st, and at the same time I should have readied for ourselves 20 pairs of socks, 12 pairs of mittens, four sweaters, Icelandic shoes and much more. I managed to have all this ready on time, due to the help of good people in Akureyri and nearby. Here I will use the opportunity to thank the many, who gave me a hand in assistance, and also Mr. Sigurður Símonarson, at Barónsstígur 28 in Reykjavík, who hired me for the expedition and was helpful in many things.

To describe each individual horse, would be too long of a listing, but it shall be pointed out right here at the start, that many of them turned out to be fine animals, though none were the likes of Kári (Gráni) from Sigurður Sumarliðason at Bitrugerði farm in Eyjafjörður.

In addition to these 16 horses, I was to have 11 horses rented when Koch arrived, which he had let me know by letter, was to be in early June. I was also to look around for a guide, who was knowledgeable about Sprengisandur and routes through Ódáðahraun, but not hire him until Koch had arrived.

On the 12th of June at 4 PM, the “Flóra” docked at the pier on Torfunef in Akureyri. With her came my prospective companions and preparations for the Vatnajökull trip started immediately. Sigurður Símonarson had arrived a few days earlier from Reykjavík to join that trip. Sigurður farmer Sumarliðason at Bitrugerði was hired as a guide to the ice cap. The trip was to start on the 14th and that morning arrived as clear and beautiful as a summer morning in Eyjafjörður can be at its best, so the outlook was good. We all joined for breakfast at Hotel Akureyri and the 27 horses stood impatient in the courtyard by the building. Etatsråd[25] Hafstein had sent our luggage by sea across the fjord to Veigastaðabás, but we were to cross Eyjafjarðará river, which was horribly flooded due to thaw, with the horses on a ferry at Gil. At noon we had loaded the horses with the luggage and proceeded up Vaðlaheiði heath. The heath is steep but narrow across at the top. There was thick fog on the high heath but men were there laying telephone cables. Soon on the descent on the Fnjóskadalur valley side, the fog disappeared. We crossed Fnjóská river on a stone arch bridge, which had been made two or three years ago. It is one of the most picturesque concrete bridges in this country. —In the evening, we continued to Ljósavatn lake and pitched a tent at Djúpá river, just below the creamery of Suður-Þingeyjarsýsla county, which then was there.

The next morning (Sunday) there were many travelers in the area since a summer celebration was to be held at Ljósavatn and hence we met many from Bárðardalur valley as they rode to the meet. There among the others, was Þórður farmer Flóventsson from Svartárkot farm. He had promised to sell us hay for the trip across Vatnajökull ice cap and we headed to Svartárkot farm in the evening. It was near midnight when we arrived. On the 16th of June we stayed for the day, took hay and prepared to load the horses the following day. Another companion joined. Jón farmer Þorkelsson from Jarlsstaðir farm in Bárðardalur valley (the brother of Rev. Jóhann, pastor of the Reykjavik Cathedral) arrived at Svartárkot that night. He was elderly, near seventy or older, but lively in spirit as if young still. They were few, the travelers who had crossed the wilderness south of Bárðardalur and to Vatnajökull, who Jón had not guided. Of all men, he was the most knowledgeable about this area and Koch took it as his duty to have him with us on this trip. The morning after, as we headed out, he rode in front of us, as could be expected, and every time we stopped Jón said a few rhymes. Unfortunately, I never learned any of Jón’s rhymes but their usual topics were women, wine, and horses. Our route went through Suðurárbotnar, Ódáðahraun and to Dyngjufjöll mountains. We traversed the north side and east around the mountains and made our night camp at Askja. At the end, the route was rough through pumice lava, and the horses frequently sank to the belly. The land was void of pasture. We had to feed them hay and take turns waking over them at night; we all took turns but Jón. He was exempt.

A little creek came from the Askja caldera and carried both mud and pumice down to the sands between Dyngjufjöll and Vaðalda mountains. The land west of the creek was covered with sand drifts making the ride difficult and slow. The horses waded the sand to the fetlock or deeper. We went around Svartá river where it springs from the sand, and there at its source are high precipitous ridges, which occasionally fall into the river. The river emerges from thereunder with a voluminous flow of water, but it is calm. As we got closer to Jökulsá river, the sands gave way to sizeable rocks with gravel on top. We had half-dreaded Jökulsá river, mostly because the burden on some of the horses was large, but when we reached the river it was mostly dry although recently so, since foam and pumice showed how high the water had reached just before.

From Jökulsá river we headed south, to Kverkhnjúkaranar. They are strange, disjointed, cone-shaped knolls, which begin at Kverkfjöll and spread northeast to the sands, where their ranks thin out the farther they get into the sands, until they end at a single knoll. Nearly everywhere between the knolls is lava and an arduous route, but by tracing the sand drifts, which lie in the hollows, one can escape through the lava.

We arrived at Hvannalindir oasis at 3 PM on June 18th. At that point Sigurður Sumarliðason and Jón Þorkelsson left us and returned with the rented horses and two of our own horses. They nearly did not dare to rest, neither themselves nor the horses, before returning because they feared a glacial burst in Jökulsá river. They stayed in Hvannalindir with us until midnight. Hvannalindir are like Eden in a desert. Here was a decent pasture but the withered grass from last summer lay on top. Gray geese lay on eggs, but others had goslings on the pond; angelica and northern dock grew everywhere at the banks.

In the evening we walked over Kreppuhryggur ridge and the view from there was fairly good. East of the ridge runs the river Kreppa, a tributary to Jökulsá. It emerges from a canyon which cuts into the glacier between Kverkfjöll mountains on the west and Brúarjökull outlet glacier on the east. To me, the river looked ferocious at the sandbanks, but it is said there is a ford in the river east of the ridge. While returning to camp we came by the ruins of an outlaw cottage, which are in the lava east of the oasis opposite Lindakeilir hill.

On June 19th in the afternoon, we departed from Hvannalindir, heading south through the gravel dunes towards Brúarjökull glacier and found a good route. Lava flows have run from Kverkfjöll northeast over these gravel dunes but they never connect into a whole lava field and are not an obstacle. However, there was quicksand here and there in the dunes, especially close to the lava flows. We crossed the Kreppa river where it runs in two branches near the glacier and the larger branch was deep enough to reach well up on the belly on the horses. The weather showed its best during the day, southwesterly wind and positive temperature, but it got colder when we approached the glacier. We rode up a steep gravel ridge to the glacier and it was a difficult climb due to wet mud. It was worst for the first horse because when the other horses agreed to follow in its path it was not as hard for them. At 10 PM we had made it up onto the glacier. There was much snow on the ice and it had a frozen crust on top, which was not strong enough to hold the horses, so they broke through it and often sunk to their knees. This injured their legs and after nearly 15 km of riding on the ice, many of them were bloodied. We stopped for the night and set up the tent but the horses had to be tied together in pairs. The frost was 3–4° Celsius. The day after, we could not head out until late in the afternoon because only by then the sun had melted the crust from the snow and the horses could move more lightly. We could easily drive our staves a meter and a half into the snow and diving through the snow was difficult for the leader. American snowshoes, which we had, were not useful because the heels of our boots tore through them and a horse, being led, tended to step on the back of the shoes. One would then trip and fall on the head unless one’s gymnastic skill was that much greater. We took turns to dive through the snow up front and each led his horse by the rains but those that were lightest could ride behind. Then came the packhorses and last in line, Lundager rode the trodden trail.

I will now mention that Lundager was a large man, only missing 11 centimeters from being 2 meters tall, corpulent to match, languorous and slow of movement. There was one thing, which he never parted with while awake. It was a long tobacco pipe. Between him and the pipe appeared to be unbreakable bonds.

The elevation of the ice cap increases slowly to the south up to 1600 meters in altitude. From Kverkfjöll there is a bulge in the ice cap in the direction towards Hágöngur volcano, and this bulge is somewhat higher. There is another bulge in the ice cap extending from Snæfell mountain, southwest onto the ice cap. Otherwise the ice cap is mostly flat, but in hollows there were ponds, slushy with ice.

At 10 PM that evening we set up camp on the middle of the ice cap and the frost had reached 5 degrees Celsius. The morning after brought fog and thaw; we could barely see the sun. We broke camp around noon. The going was no better than before; the ice cap surface was increasingly undulating and at no point did we see any mountains or peaks sticking out of the ice cap plane. At 5 PM we started to note the downward slope of the ice cap. At that time the fog had turned thick so we were unclear about our heading. We dismounted and unloaded the horses to give them a rest and have a bite of food ourselves. We had barely finished our meal when the fog lifted. We saw a black rock straight ahead of us and a little later we saw two others further south and to the east. Koch soon recognized these rocks. They were old acquaintances of his from when he was here doing surveying for the Danish General staff[26] in Skaftafellssýsla county and he surveyed the south edge of Vatnajökull ice cap. We headed to Esjufjöll from the east and below them. We set up camp on dirt mounds, which the glacier had formed. South of these dirt mounds, or hills, were two ponds; a stream had dug its way out of the upper pond to the lower pond and now lay in a three to four-meter-deep gulch. It seemed to me that Esjufjöll were mostly made of tuff and had little vegetation. A few young plant species were there, but a scrubby dwarf willow and clover were the only ones I recognized.

On June 22nd, three of us went to see the eastern part of Breiðamerkurjökull, and we went first to Veðurárrönd moraine. That is a mud ridge, which the glacier has brought with it. The ridge forms a half-circle from Prestfjall mountain to Þverártindsegg mountains, and those mountains form the other half-circle. The ridge was cracked in places and we could see that the layer of mud on the glacier was about 8–10 meters thick. There is a hollow in the glacier west of Veðurárrönd, and in it were large ponds with creeks flowing between them. We crossed one of the creeks on a snow bridge. After Veðurárrönd we went to Prestsfjall mountain and the glacier sloped downwards to its northwest corner. There was a deep gully by the mountain. I could not go to explore it because I had to remain with the horses.

From Prestsfjall we went to Eyjólfsfjall, which is an isolated mountain sticking up out of the ice between Esjufjöll and Prestsfjall. The ice reaches high up on its hills on the north and west sides, but there is a deep valley in the ice to the south and east and a large pond had formed in it. About a half meter thick snow covered the glacier everywhere. We saw signs of crevasses in many places but they were no obstacle.

On Eyjólfsfjall mountain there was one Arctic skua couple with eggs, but young gulls flew in large groups from Máfabyggðir, which are mountains west of Esjufjöll, where they nest. From Breiðamerkurjökull we could see the east side of Öræfajökull, where it rolls down the precipitous mountainside, all cracked and ferocious looking.

We got back to the tent at 12 that night. The weather had turned to the worst; a full gale from the east with precipitation and we were cold, wet and shivering. The two, Lundager and Sigurður, who had remained with the tent all day, felt better than us and were now sound asleep. The horses expressed their discomfort during the night. They were tied together, all shivering due to wind chill and rain, despite being covered by a blanket. Two of the horses broke free later that night and found shelter by standing together up against our tent. But that led to one of them getting tangled in the guy ropes and ripping the tent. We awoke to a bad dream when the poor horse was halfway into the tent.

The morning of June 23rd there was a northeasterly storm with slush and sleet. We had a late start and it was one o’clock in the afternoon when we got going. We backtracked in our own path north of Esjufjöll, but when we reached north of the mountains the weather had turned into a snowstorm from the northeast and the snow filled our tracks. However, we could always see troughs that had formed on both sides of our tracks. We rested for two hours at our previous campsite, midway across the ice cap. Then we continued onwards because we thought it undesirable to set up camp without knowing how long this storm would last, as we were not well stocked with hay if we had to stay here for long. That night the storm let up. Come dawn, the weather had become good and the sky was clear. The slush ponds on the north side of the ice cap had increased in size and occasionally we had to go off the track to avoid them. At 7 in the morning we made it back from the glacier near the source of the river Kreppa. It was then 18 hours since we departed from Esjufjöll mountains, a journey of about 65 km, and we were all tired, men and horses. The horses did not even take time to eat the hay, instead, they lay in the warm sand and bathed in the sun. We, however, cooked ourselves something to eat and then lay down to sleep, some inside the tent, others outside, in whatever way each thought best. Later that day, Koch and Wegener inspected the glacier’s edge while the rest of us rested with the horses.

In the evening we rode to Hvannalindir oasis and arrived around midnight. We left Hvannalindir at midnight of June 26th and headed for Kverkfjöll mountains; no one had hiked them before. We went east along Kverkhnjúkarani ridge and west over it, just below a glacier tongue, which comes between Kverkfjöll mountains. A tributary that flows west into Jökulsá river comes from beneath this glacier tongue. The tributary has dug a deep ravine into the mudflats and it was difficult to find a crossing. We went up the mountains on the northwest side and rode up as high with the horses as was possible with decent conditions. We set up camp on a sandy flat between gravel ridges, fed the horses and tied them together, as was usual, since there was no vegetation here.

The weather was at its best, sunshine and warm. The four of us started our hike up the mountains, but we left our “anoraks” because the weather was so good. “Anorak” is the Greenlandic term for a parka, which is cut like a shirt but with a hood over the head, and it is used over other clothing. Ours were made from wind- and waterproof material. Lundager remained at the tent, he had no interest in hiking the mountains with us.

The ice cap extends to the mountain ridge despite the geothermal activity, which is there. There were mounds of sulfur here and there and many volcanic vents. In them boiled and sputtered a porridge in various colors, in some it was red, in others blue, green or yellow. Fumaroles emitted large amounts of steam which had melted the ice from below. This had formed large ice caves and it took us a long time to explore the area. In some of the caves, the steam was so thick that we could barely see on what we stepped, and before every footstep the ground had to be tested with a staff.

While we explored, the weather turned bad with a slushy blizzard and we could not continue as we would have liked. We regretted leaving the anoraks behind. Further south and to the west, we saw a gully in the mountainside from which arose smoke and sulfuric steam, but we could not investigate that due to the storm. At half past three in the morning, we returned to the tent, cold and bedraggled. In there, Lundager slept soundly and likely felt safe by not having gone anywhere.

The main source of Jökulsá á Fjöllum river is in a cleft in the western part of Kverkfjöll mountains. There the river emerges from under the glacier and it has some difficulties to overcome. The glacier advances over the river, blocks its course, and the river must form a new channel. They are many, the channels which the river has abandoned, and between them remain steep and tall riverbanks of sand and gravel. Nowhere before had I seen such a fractured and cracked glacier as the edge of Vatnajökull was here at Kverkfjöll and from it we heard grating and rumbling sounds.

On the 27th of June we departed from Kverkfjöll and rode straight out over the sands in the direction of Dyngjufjöll mountains. Jökulsá river was easy to cross there. On the sands north of the river, by a little tuff knoll, we stopped to rest and grab a bite. Lundager fell asleep as usual, but now with the pipe in his mouth and Koch took a photograph of him in that position.

Closer to Dyngjufjöll mountains, lava fields appeared, which had probably been formed by lava flows coming from Trölladyngja to the west, but sand dunes were widespread in the lava fields and provided a usable path through the area. We rode towards the top of Dyngjufjöll to the east of a cliffed ravine, which cut into the mountains, and eventually reached the mountaintop where the southwest corner of Askja lake is closest to the mountains and where the mountains are highest. We pitched our tent there for the night. To the south and east of the tent, the mountain slopes were yellowish green from sulfur crust and steam arose from everywhere. In places there were white splotches of clay.

The view from the mountain was grandly imposing, yet beautiful, and I will never forget it. In the south, the ice cap and Kverkfjöll mountains, with Kverkhnjúkarani mountain ridge reaching north into the sands; in the southwest, the ice cap and Kistufell mountain, with uncountable white, glacially colored river branches on the black sands below; further west, Hofsjökull and Tungnafellsjökull ice caps, but in the east, Herðubreið mountain, with a midnight-blue belt of cliffs and a snow white glacial cap on top, which was gilded by the evening sun. In the north was the large expanse of the deep blue lava plain, with Bláfell and Sellandsfjall mountains at the edge of the horizon, and right below my feet, Askja lake, with its beautifully strange light-blue color, and the lava and circle of mountains all around. All this drew the history of Iceland before my eyes and suddenly the words of the noble poet[27] came to mind, who said: “Vitality teach us by fire; fortify us with frost” (In Icelandic: “Fjör kenni oss eldurinn, frostið oss herði”).

The morning after, we went down from the mountains and headed north along them. It was a terrible way due to pumice. We came to the northwest corner of Askja lake and intended to go east around it, but it was impassable with the horses. We never reached the southeast corner of the lake, where the memorial to the late von Knebel[28] had been erected. Knebel drowned in the lake, as is well known, along with another man,[29] his countryman, a German. They were in a canvas boat on the lake, but the cause of the accident is unknown.

From Askja mountain, we traversed the lava in the direction of Jónsskarð pass and it was an arduous way. We traced a path on patches of snow, which crisscrossed the lava; often the snow gave way under the horses which then sunk to their bellies. We crossed the mountains at Jónsskarð and came down to a sandy plain; there flowed a creek, coming down from the pass. Our route went past a tuff knoll, which was said to be called Lock; there at the creek was a large mound of bottles, which travelers had tossed.

We went down a long sandy valley and there we saw numerous paths by travelers from the summer before, who had been here to see Ódáðahraun and the surrounding wasteland. When we came to the north end of the valley, we rested for two hours and fed the horses on hay, the last of our stock. Around midnight we arrived at Suðurárbotnar. There was a good pasture for the horses and we sat there for a while. It was a nice change for the horses, which had completed such a long journey through sparsely vegetated or barren land, to finally arrive in such a pasture that they could not decide where the grazing was best and continuously paced from one spot to another.

We departed from Suðurárbotnar and rode to Svartárkot farm but we were so unlucky that farmer Þórður was not at home. He was separating the lambs from the ewes, north by Svartárvatn lake. However, his wife was at home and we received a wonderful welcome. This evening we ventured on into Bárðardalur valley where there are beautiful pastures for sheep on low ridges and good farmland, consequently the livestock looked well fed. We continued to Jarlsstaðir, to farmer Jón Þorkelsson, and were granted pasture for the horses during the night.

The day after, we went to Háls farm in Fnjóskadalur valley, but we tarried a while at Goðafoss falls when we passed there by. We left Háls so early that we arrived in Akureyri around noon. From the top of Vaðlaheiði heath we saw the beautiful vista over Eyjafjörður and the valleys extending from its bottom. On both sides of the fjord were rows of farms with beautiful fields, and the Eyjafjarðará river meandered in the center of the valley between large and spacious meadows, which it fertilizes each spring. In few other places had I seen such expansive and lush hayfields.

The steamship Godthaab,[30] which was to transport us to Greenland, had arrived and waited for us in the port of Akureyri. The luggage, which we carried, was ferried by tender to the ship from Veigastaðabás, but we crossed Eyjafjarðará river at Vöðlunum, or so they called that ford. We kept the horses in a pasture owned by Sigurjón postman at Ásláksstaðir farm, where they should rest for five days, because we had many things yet to be done in Akureyri before we left for Greenland.

Lundager had had enough of glacier traveling and he and Koch agreed on him receiving release with grace.

II. The Journey to Greenland

In the evening of July 6th, everything was ready. The horses were aboard the ship in a corral prepared for them on the deck. We had gained a new travel companion, a small, yellow dog with a white chest, which went by the name Glói. He did not appear to be much of a role model for dogs but that did not matter in the least, he was only supposed to be there to increase the camaraderie.

It was voiced that Lars Larsen, sailor on the Godthaab, would be added to our group as the fourth man.

A champagne party was held out on the Godthaab and various distinguished people from Akureyri were invited. Upon its conclusion we left port and put out to sea. When we exited the mouth of the fjord, we were hit by fog with a light northeasterly rain and choppy seas. The Godthaab was no clipper, it sailed slowly and heavily with a speed of about four to five miles during the day. The main direction was towards the north-northeast. On the 10th of July we passed the island of Jan Mayen in thick fog; on the 11th of July we entered sea ice but it was not so dense as to noticeably slow our progress and we got through it without much hindrance. On the 12th of July at 2 PM we saw sun. We found, after measurements, that we were sufficiently far north; the heading was changed to west and after a few hours of sailing we came to the pack ice, with no end to the ice in sight.

The route of the ship Godthaab in the Greenland Sea in 1912.

I had heard ugly stories about sailing in sea ice, but the Godthaab was prepared for that. The ship itself was built for this purpose, just as other Greenland vessels, and made of especially strong wood in addition to a strong ice reinforcement. The ice reinforcement is a special cover over the regular hull; on the Godthaab, the hull was double planked with 6 cm thick oak from the keel to above the waterline. The hull was clad in iron sheeting, about 1 cm thick, extending from the bow to the foremast.

Godthaab in the sea ice.

Our progress was slow because we never sailed at more than half speed, and sometimes had to backtrack when the route through the pack ice became impassable. Either the ship’s captain, whose name was Køller, or Capt. Koch were on the lookout in the crow’s nest barrel at nearly all times. There was quite a lot of animal life, birds and seals. Here were large groups of ice gulls, a small, white bird about the size of a kittiwake. They fought mightily over any odd thing which was thrown from the ship and it became our main way to pass the time to play with them. We saw one polar bear, which sat on a large block of ice and watched us with curiosity.

The horses were bored with life at sea and had become restless, they gnawed and damaged everything, edible or inedible. For example, they ripped the sail, which covered the engine room window, to shreds, they gnawed through the lead rope of the halters, with which they were tied, and they completely ate up the wood board from their manger. At this, Capt. Koch remarked that Icelandic horses and Greenlandic dogs had little to blame each other. Later, when I had read Krigen i 1848,[31] I could tell him that Danish horses also had it in them to eat wood when they did not have enough. One of the horses became ill with constipation from these uneatables. We gave him fish oil to drink and he recovered soon enough.

Aside from this, life on board was monotonous. The ship was inhospitable, the horses stood on the main deck and hay was stacked everywhere possible, even if there was only space for one or two bales. On the foredeck was the motorboat and an iron barge (10 meters long), and hay bales were stacked up as high as the floor of the bridge. I was rather bored during these days. There was one man on the ship, who never tired of telling tales of himself and at mealtimes he always had something to say. He sat next to me. There was not much to be gained from his stories but that he was twice or thrice married, had always divorced his wives and of course the blame was never his, or so he said.

This man was the first engineer on the Godthaab, his name was Hofmeier and he was obese and portly. One day I was graced by his invitation to see his cabin, which was rather narrow. He had placed beer bottles all around the mattress on his berth. They were supposed to help quench his thirst between meals. At mealtimes he always made sure the cook served him his beer bottle and a shot glass of liquor. He never took a watch in the engine room but went there once or twice each day. He normally took a seat on a bench up against a bulkhead, slid his arms into sheaths, which were nailed to the bulkhead at a comfortable height and with appropriate spacing. There he could sit without further difficulties, even if the ship heaved or swayed somewhat.

On Sunday, the 21st of July, we arrived at Danmarkshavn, we set foot on land at 5 PM on the spit west of the harbor. The harbor itself was full of ice but the sound between it and Big Koldewey island was ice-free, except for a few icebergs, which stood fast on the seafloor and were thus not permitted to travel.

Up on the spit we were greeted by a fox, with her fur scratched in spots from scraping against the walls of her den. She was obviously not afraid of us. Thostrup, who was the ice navigator on the ship, shot at her twice, at about 12–15 meters of distance. She did not move from her place. When the captain took a stone and threw at her and the stone rolled down a little hill, she ran after it and tested it with her nose to ascertain if this was at all edible. Upon discovering that it was not, she returned and followed us but left after a little while.

In Danmarkshavn there is a cottage, which Mylius Erichsen had built when he was there with his ship, and in which Capt. Koch, Dr. Wegener, and two other men had dwelt in the winters of 1906–1908. The cottage stands east of the harbor. We had to circle the harbor to get to the cottage. In it we found a letter from Capt. Ejnar Mikkelsen[32] who had three years prior been here north in Greenland in search of the diaries of M. Erichsen and H. Hagen, who had perished as I have already described. Capt. E. Mikkelsen had suffered hunger and enormous difficulties. His ship, Alabama, sunk south of here, by an island which is called Shannon, but not until after he and four companions had headed out north to Danmark fjord, where M. Erichsen’s group had stayed the last summer which they lived. Two of Capt. Mikkelsen’s companions had remained on the ship, one suffering from frostbitten feet since the previous November.

During the winter, the two of them succeeded in saving their stock of food from the ship and in getting to the island, where they built a shelter[33] out of timber which they salvaged from the ship. Three of the men, who had traveled north with Capt. Mikkelsen, returned and joined them. They were saved by a sealer ship the following summer and made it to Norway. However, Capt. Mikkelsen and Iversen remained and stayed in various places, Danmarkshavn, Shannon, and Bassrock for three years. It was only a few days before our arrival that they were rescued by another sealer ship.

Bassrock is also an island, a short distance from Shannon, and there are cottages on both islands built by Americans. There had been, until now, a large stock of food stuffs in those cottages, which is now either consumed or spoiled. The letter, just discussed, was dated May 29, 1911, by Capt. Mikkelsen and it stated that he was about to head south to Shannon island. The captain of the Godthaab had orders to attempt to search for him, if we found anything which could suggest where he was. The captain intended, right after putting us ashore, to sail south and attempt to access the island if that were possible due to ice.

We left the cottage towards the northwest and hiked Hare mountain to try and see how the ice lay along the coast. There is a large bay which cuts into the land to the west. This bay is called Dove Bay[34] and is so called because it is always full of ice. The ice never drifts out of the bay because it is blocked by Big Koldewey island. This island is long, but narrow and is about 800 meters over sea level at its highest. There are only narrow sounds to the north and south of this island. I will henceforth call this bay Sleeping Bay.

This region of land, or this part of Greenland, is called Germania Land. It is demarked to the south by Sleeping Bay, to the east by the ocean, to the north by a fjord, which is called Skaer Fjord, and to the west by two large calving ice streams. From the northwest extends Storstrømmen ice stream and from the southwest L. Bistrup Bræ. Storstrømmen is about 100 km long and between 25 and 30 km wide. The Bistrup ice stream is about as large. These two ice streams meet and terminate in the same fjord. From them come all the icebergs which fill Sleeping Bay.

Many fjords extend to the west from Sleeping Bay. From the north are Mørkefjord, Pustervig, Hellefjord, and further south one fjord, which I will discuss later. We wanted to get into one of these fjords and move from there on horses to the inland ice sheet.

From Hare mountain we could see that the bay was ice-free west along the coast to a small inlet called Stormvig. It was about 15 km from us. There was decent anchorage for ships in Stormvig and we moved there with the Godthaab that evening. We went ashore there, I to look for pasture for the horses. To the west of the inlet is a cape, which is called Cape Storm. Capt. Koch said that to the north of the cape were grassy patches, which he thought to be decent pastures. These patches are called Rylekar.[35] However, the pasture was rather poor, the grass was sparse and light and the area was not spacious. But a pasture it was and that was important.

At Cape Storm. The motorboat and the “Can”.

The morning after was to begin by offloading our cargo. During this day it had also been decided for good that Lars Larsen would joins us as the fourth man, instead of Lundager.

On July 22nd, at 5 AM we started to move ashore. We shipped one barge-full of hay and then the horses. But when we approached land, the first mate handled the gear shifter for the screw on the motorboat so wickedly that the screw malfunctioned and could not be repaired otherwise than by us pulling the boat up on land. We quickly released the horses, except three of them, which we kept. The horses enjoyed their freedom more than necessary and ran towards the Rylekars with Thostrup following for a short distance. We who remained, turned to fixing the motorboat. It took two full hours and it was still up on land.

The cargo ferried ashore at Cape Storm.

Thostrup and I headed out to search for the horses. We rode two of the three horses we had kept. When we came to the Rylekars there was no horse to be seen and worse, no trail either because past the Rylekars the terrain was gravel and large rocks. We searched for the horses until two o’clock that night and by then had not even found so much as a trace after them. The horses were completely disappeared.

We were not pleased with the first day and the double stroke of bad luck: The motorboat broken and 13 horses lost. At least we had managed to get the motorboat working again, but the other was worse —.

We knew that we would eventually find the horses, or at least a few of them, but it could cost us 5 or 6 days of searching and for this the ship could not wait. We thought for sure that our relatives and friends back home would learn of this news and be struck by a feeling of dread. Was this supposed to be the last news, which the ship transported home to the civilized world? However, our cargo was not all ashore yet, because in total it was 20 thousand kg, in addition to the 16 horses, the barge, and the motorboat. We had to shoe these three horses, which we at least had, before we could begin the full search for the others.

We awoke late in the morning of July 23rd, and to top it off, a violent storm raged so that it was barely possible to sail to shore with the boat. Shortly before noon, the ship’s boat was manned and sent to ferry me and Thostrup to land, because we had to shoe the horses. We had just about completed that when we saw that the Godthaab had raised its anchor and was steaming towards Danmarkshavn. It had left us behind and taken my three companions. Even if Thostrup and I were to follow, us four companions could not ride just three horses back. We also had to get the motorboat to Danmarkshavn.

We waited for high tide and managed to float the motorboat. It came down to who of us should sail the motorboat and who should take the horses. Thostrup elected to ride. He, however, said he was not experienced at riding; he had ridden a horse only once before. He had borrowed a horse in Eskifjörður, rode it out the valley and fell of its back. He blamed a poorly cinched saddle. If I would now cinch the saddle properly and sail close to the coast in the motorboat, he claimed he would be safe. He thought the motorboat was unreliable and if the engine were to stop, he would likely drift out to sea and then he would not return to Denmark alive. Otherwise, Thostrup was a lively and entertaining fellow, who I came to like more as I spent time with him. He was thirty of age but rather fat and stiff in his movements. The whole crew on the Godthaab was most agreeable and I remember them all as good men.

After this, the two of us went our own ways. But trouble comes in pairs. The Storm River flows into the Stormvig inlet. When Thostrup reached the river, he rode up and down alongside it but did not dare to cross. Eventually, he attempted to cross the river but he decided to wade it with the horses in tow. Soon the water approached the top of his boots and he returned to the same side again. He rode back to Cape Storm, from where we had started, and I had returned there as well with the motorboat. After some discussion between us, we headed out again. This time it was decided that I would take the horses and he would sail the boat. Now we both made it to Danmarkshavn without problems.

The Storm River turned out to be deep, it reached well up to the middle of the flanks on the horses. Dr. Wegener had gone out to search for us, but we missed him. However, I met Capt. Koch by Hare mountain and we soon caught up with Wegener.

The morning after, Wegener and I were supposed to take off on a search for the horses. We planned to prepare ourselves with food and hay for a six-day journey. We should bring sleeping bags with us but not a tent. We were to camp under the sky. Koch and Larsen were to bring the motorboat and the barge, along with the cargo, which was at Danmarkshavn, to Cape Storm and wait there for us.

At 9 AM on the 24th of July, Wegener and I departed from the ship. Thereby we left the known world and started our solitary life, at least for a year, and only god might know for how long it would last and what might happen. Many thoughts flew unintentionally through our heads.

From Danmarkshavn, we went back to Cape Storm and on that route we came upon our first muskox. It was a bull and we shot it, we took of it one thigh, mostly for Glói. The thigh weighed about 40 kilograms.

III. The Search for the Horses and Other Work

Before I begin telling the story of our search for the horses, I will attempt to provide a simple description of the landscape of Germania Land. That description will be inaccurate since I am completely lacking in knowledge of geography and I beg the reader to please take that into account.

As I have stated before, the land is bounded to the south, east, and north by ocean, and to the west by ice. From Danmarkshavn, two ridges extend northwards and merge further north. The western ridge, which is called Varderyggen,[36] reaches about 600 meters above the sea and a deep valley, Vesterdal, separates it from Hare mountain. That valley is grassy, at least considering, and with decent pastures, although we could not make use of them because of the valley’s location. Both in Vesterdal and on Hare mountain there are many hares and they played together in large groups.

To the north along Varderyggen and on its west side is the Stormvig inlet. North of it is an extensive lowland with small hills and hollows. This lowland is bounded on the west by the Muskox mountains, their elevation is a full 600 meters above the sea, on the north by an ice cap which covers these mountains, and the Skaer Fjord which extends west on the north side. This lowland is dotted by many large ponds and a few tufts of grass grow near some of them. All of the grass is, though, rather scraggly and stunted.

The Storm River runs in numerous branches in the northern part of this lowland. Two tributaries emerge from the Muskox mountains. On their banks are strips of grass in places and some pasture. Two tributaries flow from the north and east out of the Varderyggen highlands but there is no vegetation, and there are one or two more tributaries flowing from the north, from the ice cap which I mentioned earlier, and nowhere along them is even a single blade of grass. To the northeast of the tributaries’ confluence, right about in the middle of the lowland, is a unique, cone-shaped hill, which we called Keilir.[37]

South of the Muskox mountains, Snow Ness sticks out into the sea. It is separated from the mountains by a large valley, devoid of vegetation. Jutting out from Muskox mountains to the southwest, is a little promontory, which is partly separated from the mountains. This promontory is called Little Snow Ness. Under the Muskox mountains on the west side are small recessions and most of them with grass and some pasture. Extending to the north of Sleeping Bay, west of Muskox mountains, is Lumskebugten cove. On its eastern flank are several good-sized patches of grass. They are moist with water, which seeps from beneath the mountains. On them are sparse and low grass tufts and cottongrass, which makes these patches appear all white from a distance. To the north and west of Lumskebugten there is a large and vast sand plain. To the west it terminates by a mountainous area, about 800 meters in elevation, which itself extends west to the great ice stream, Storstrommen, and south of it Mørkefjord cuts west into the land. Between Mørkefjord and Pustervig are tall, steep mountains rising from the sea. The mountain, which separates these fjords, is named Denmark’s Monument. It is large and 800 meters high.

Denmark’s Monument Mountain. Pustervig is on the left and Mørkefjord is on the right.

North of the Mørkefjord plateau is a large lake, Seal Lake. It is 60 km long but only 3–4 km wide; from it runs to the sea, Salmon River, demarking the sand plain on the west. The river is 4–5 km in length, with a huge flow of water at a low current. To the north, around the middle of the sand plain, are two mountains, Udkigshøjen[38] at its middle and northwest of it Trekroner. South of the highland is one mountain, Ptarmigan Hill. From it, east to the mouth of the Salmon River are 5 km, from the Salmon River mouth to Cape Storm are 40 km, and from Cape Storm to Danmarkshavn are 15 km. All of this is estimated with a straight line.

We had a vast land area to search for the horses. It should also be noted how mountainous it was and difficult to traverse due to rocky and uneven terrain, and we, of course, completely unfamiliar. We had some hopes that the horses would never venture to cross Salmon River and would perhaps not either cross Storm River, because it was difficult to cross due to boulders and strong current, although it had a lot less water than Salmon River.

Wegener and I left Cape Storm on the morning of July 25th. We headed west to Snow Ness, then north of it to Muskox mountains and north along their middle. These mountains are split by numerous flat and wide valleys. In some of these valleys is a fair amount of vegetation, arctic willow and grass. In these valleys, we found eight of the horses in three separate groups. We continued the search until about 10 PM that evening, when we took our rest at the southern branch of the Storm River, which flows from the Muskox mountains. There was some pasture there. It was a sleepless night because voracious gnats[39] bit us mercilessly, so much so that our faces were swollen and bloody by morning.[40]

We broke camp early and started the search. We went southeast out across the plain and met up at Keilir mountain. We had not noticed more horses. We decided it would be best, because of how difficult it was to move through this area due to boulders and rocky terrain, to take the horses, which we had found, south to the Rylekars at Cape Storm and fasten them there. After that we continued the search for the next three days. We traversed the area back and forth, west to Salmon River, east to Storm River, and finally found one horse. We saw tracks after them in many places but we could never follow those tracks continuously. We found that the horses had even summited the Muskox mountains’ highest peak, which we called Horse Peak.

On the evening of July 31st, we returned to Cape Storm and found two horses had already returned there by themselves. Two were still missing. We met Koch and Larsen there. We told them that at the present, the coastline was free of ice all the way to Ptarmigan Hill, and that from the Muskox mountains we had seen that it seemed ice-free into Pustervig.

Their days had not been successful. The engine on the motorboat had stopped running twice. During one of those times they drifted out to sea, and during the other they tried to put down anchor but ice drifted to them and broke the anchor chain so they lost the anchor. They managed to get the engine running but it did not have enough power to pull the barge against the wind and soon went on strike again. They reached a large iceberg, which stood fast on the seafloor, and tied the boat to it. But everything seemed to go against them this time. The iceberg, which they thought was secure, suddenly started to move. At first it rolled slowly over to one side, and when this process continued, their best option was to cut the rope and make a hasty escape. A little while later, the iceberg burst into countless blocks of ice which were thrown all over the sea.

After this, they finally reached Cape Storm and tied the boat to land. They developed a way to pull themselves from land to the barge because the wind was strong against them towards the shore. Their method was to fasten a rope between the barge and land; they took a large boat stake (5 meter long) and wrapped the remains of the anchor chain around its end and stuck it at an angle into the seafloor, they tied the other end of the stake to the barge’s bulwark, then they fastened a rope on a pulley between the barge and the boat’s stern. They could let themselves drift with the wind to land and pulled themselves back to the barge, whenever they wanted.

It was not only bad fortune that followed them. One day they went out to try and find the anchor and succeeded in dredging it up. The had one visit by a polar bear. It started to harass them and that cost it its life. We had no use of it besides taking from it a small chunk of fat, which we used to coat our wading boots.

We did not want to spend more days searching for the two missing horses,[41] especially since we had yet to make many trips to ferry our cargo inland. It was also possible that wolves or a polar bear had already captured them and it would be a grave sin to not use this opportunity, now that the sea was ice-free so far inside Sleeping Bay.

Capt. Koch and Larsen had to depart right away on the motorboat with the barge in tow but Wegener and I should head out on land the following morning, which was August 1st. We should load 12 horses with cargo, 11 would carry hay and one would carry nutritional feed. We planned to meet at Ptarmigan Hill.

In the evening, Wegener and I tied up the horses and went to sleep. We needed the rest because while we had searched for the horses the gnats had usually ruined our sleep, but now we had a tent to sleep in. We overslept and did not awake until 7 AM and were not ready to depart until 9 AM.

The weather had changed. During the previous days there was sunshine and mild weather, but now a north-eastern storm had arrived with fog and cold. We went west along the coast of Sleeping Bay until Snow Ness, where on its west side the way forward became the worst of ways. At the end we had to go down a precipitous slope between two sheer cliffs. I went first. As I reached the flatland, I saw where two hay bales rolled down the slope. They were from one of Wegener’s horses; he stood perplexed at the top and held the horses. I had to follow the bales, which rolled towards the sea but stopped on a three or four-meter-wide span of ice at the shoreline.

We loaded the hay bales back on the horse and continued. When we had ridden for about 20–30 minutes, we came upon five or six walruses lying on the beach. We stopped to take photographs of them and got as close as 10–12 meters away. They started to flop towards the sea with loud wheezing. They do not find it easy to move about on land. We took two or three photographs.

Walruses on the beach between Cape Storm and Salmon river.

We continued to Little Snow Ness and rested the horses for two hours. We also wanted to eat but when we looked, it turned out that more than half of our packed meals had been left behind at Cape Storm. We had to live sparingly.

We arrived at Salmon River where it exits Seal Lake. Capt. Koch had told us that we could ford there, because he had seen many large stones stand out of the water in the summer of 1907, when he was there with Mylius Erichsen. But when we came to the river we could not see those stones and it was as wide as a fjord. I tried to ride across but had only gone a few horse-lengths into the river when water flowed over the horse, both in front of and behind the saddle. This was not a place to cross with a team of horses carrying hay since the water was so deep. Additionally, I noticed that the horse stumbled on large rocks on the river floor and I could not see through the glacier-colored water.

We rode downriver and searched for a ford but none was found. The river fell between steep bluffs in a torrent with vortexes. We had the idea that it would be possible to ride across the river along the beach at its mouth. We unloaded the horses and lay there by the river during the night.

Vigfús and Kári.

Shortly after we arrived at the river, a blue fox came to the riverbank on the west side and sat on a large stone, straight across from us. When we walked up and down river, she did also or she sat on a stone and gekkered. In that way she made fun of us.

We were so lucky to find by the river, a crate with food leftovers from when Mylius Erichsen’s expedition had been here fishing for salmon and arctic char. Even though the crate had been here for six years, we found one can of beef stew that yielded a satisfactory dinner. The morning after we had mashed meat with brown cabbage which we liked less. The smell before it was heated was worse than the taste after we had it on our plates. One pound of chocolate could not be used and was thrown in the river.

It proved futile to try to ride the river at its mouth. We were blocked from the meeting at Ptarmigan Hill because we judged it unadvisable to swim ride the river in such a strong cold windstorm, with fog and rain. During the night, the sea ice had drifted up against the shoreline everywhere we could see, there was no break in the ice anywhere. We feared for Capt. Koch and Larsen. They could have been pushed ashore by the ice or they could be stuck in the ice somewhere out in Sleeping Bay. How that would end was a mystery. There was a large probability that the ice could flatten the small motorboat and barge and all would sink into the sea. There were many examples of sea ice crushing bigger boats.

Koch and Larsen had taken with them on the barge all clothes and fabrics which we had. We only had what we wore. They had also taken the horseshoes—we only had the nails. We would be in a difficult situation on both those fronts if we were not to meet them within a few days.

We left our cargo here at the mouth of the Salmon River and returned to Cape Storm, but with a detour over the Muskox mountains and northeast to Storm River in hopes of finding the remaining lost horses. That journey was fruitless.

Bales of hay at Salmon River.

We slept that night in the tent at Cape Storm. The morning after (August 3rd) we made a rope and tied cargo on the horses for another trip. We did not leave Cape Storm until August 4th. When we awoke that morning, there was a cold north-eastern storm and both the tent and guy ropes were iced. We made the trip to the mouth of the Salmon River but learned nothing of Capt. Koch and Larsen. In short, we made four trips like this, without news of our companions.

We were restless from not knowing anything about them and we had many ideas. To search for them was inescapable, and that meant crossing the Salmon River. We thought of building a small ferry, which we could use to transport the hay and our cargo across the river. However, the materials were meager. When the Godthaab left Stormvig, they left behind four damaged boards of wood and 30–40 meters of rope. Since that rope was so thick as to tolerate being unbraided, we managed to gain from it (three strands) a 100–120-meter-long line, which was long enough to span the river.

We planned for the boat, or ferry, to be constructed from two and a half of the wooden boards, tied together into a triangle, and a half board sawed into bars fastened on top of the others. To keep this afloat we had four kerosene cans and a crate, which stored our cooking utensils. The crate was not tight, but by filling the cracks with cotton and taping over with band-aids, which we had plenty of in our medical kit, we thought we could make it watertight. We had with us two ski poles, both about two meters long. If we tied them together, we would have a pole that could be used to push us across to the other side in up to three meters of water. However, the idea was to mostly be carried over by the current on the first trip and then pull the ferry across with the line we had made.

We took this material with us on the morning of the 8th of August when we left Cape Storm. This time we took the tent with us, which we had until then always left there. We used the phrase, to go home, when we were on our way there. I asked Wegener one time what it was that we called home, because we were really homeless men. He answered: “Our home is where we keep our long tobacco pipes; there they are filled with good tobacco, there is a sleeping bag, a half-liter of coffee or tea in the tent. This has its own gravity and therefore we call it home.” Had it come to us being no better than Lundager? We had laughed at him on Vatnajökull with his long pipe, but now we called it home, to be able to smoke tobacco from that kind of pipe. —

This change in us had been generated by only one month, how would it be after a year or more? Would we by then be half wild? We walked dirty, we washed ourselves at most on Sunday mornings, our outer clothes were gray from reindeer hairs, and we were to change our underwear every third month. My whole body shivered at this thought.

We reached the mouth of the Salmon River late that evening. The morning after, we started building the ferry. It was ready in the latter part of the day and we could start to test it, first selecting a ferry location where the current was suitable, and then we could attempt to cross the river. Of course, our first and second attempts failed but the third was successful. Wegener reached land on the west side of the river and fastened the line. Thereby our day’s work was done; the rest had to wait until morning.

While we worked at this makeshift ferry by the river, we had heard noises and barking from Glói up on the gravel bluff above us. We had not given ourselves time to look at what he was up to but I walked over there before going to the tent. He sat there proudly and tilted his head over a fox kit, which he had conquered. He watched with pleasure when I lifted it up and carried it with me home to the tent. Of course, a photograph had to be taken of this when I got back to the tent.

Glói.

We kept the horses tied together in pairs, except when they ate hay or nutritional feed. Now that they had to stand for so long, they became bored. Two of them were the worst of the lot, a brown mare (the only mare on this expedition), in daily speak called the Lady, and a red horse from Sumarliði, the mail carrier. We generally called that horse, Wicked. The Lady and Wicked turned especially nasty when brought hay or food and it was not good for the other horses to be anywhere near them. They kicked and bit, and it was impossible to tie the Lady except to one particular horse, which was either called Black or the Cavalier. This night, the Lady’s mood went beyond anything normal; she bit and kicked Black with such viciousness that we had no other solution but to draw a bag over her head. We put one of the bags from the nutritional feed on her head and let her stand with it. When you add pouring rain in a north-eastern storm so that the tent leaked copiously, you can guess that we had little sleep that night. The bottom of the tent was the only thing that held water. We lay with our sleeping bags in a kind of a pond, ourselves also bedraggled from having to be out by the horses every so often. We shivered with cold.

I had to stand over the horses while they ate the hay, and the water poured out of me when I entered the tent. To sit in there in the worst of weathers, which raged on until evening, was more than we thought we could endure. But the day passed, and the morning after, when we awoke, one of us had a headache, and the other had a toothache (Wegener). Hence our mood was low. When we exited the tent, we saw that four horses had disappeared and two stood in the sea with water above mid legs. Although tied together, they had managed to walk in circles down the hill. We felt the horses were out of our control.

A map of Germania Land.

While I retrieved the horses from the sea, Wegener made coffee. After I had enjoyed some of that, I rode off to search for the other four horses and found them after two hours. We loaded up the horses, moved to the ferry and started to ferry our cargo across the river. This was done in the following way: I went first across the river, then Wegener pulled the ferry back, he loaded it with one horse load of hay along with the cargo saddle, I pulled the ferry over to me again. Wegener pulled it back to his side and reloaded, while I carried the hay and saddle up the gravel bluff by the riverbank, which was so steep that there was no possibility to lead a horse up there with cargo. This was rough work.

Vigfús crosses the Salmon River.

It was after three in the afternoon that the cargo was across and we herded the horses to swim the river. Glói chose to swim rather than trust the ferry, so that when Wegener took him aboard the ferry, he jumped into the river and swam back to the same side. He sat howling on the eastern bank until we had completed loading the cargo back on the horses and prepared to leave. Then he swam across the river by his own power.

We rode west to Ptarmigan Hill and set up the tent next to ruins of an Inuit hut. Thereabout was good pasture for the horses. They could for the first time get their fill by grazing. This day, August 12th, there was a north-eastern fog with a drizzle; we were uncomfortable, as wet as we were.

The ruins of an Inuit hut at Ptarmigan Hill.

When we awoke the next morning, there was a north wind and sunshine. Our first task was to bring all our clothes out to dry. The sunshine did not last long, soon we were engulfed in thick fog but the day held dry.

We stayed at Ptarmigan Hill that day; we walked by the sea and checked if there were signs from Capt. Koch and Larsen, a letter in a cairn or anything like that. We found no signs to be sure of, although we thought we might have found a human footprint in the sand, but faint if it was.

After lunch, we dug into one of the Inuit ruins and found both human and dog bones. It was evident that the residents had passed inside the hut; they had probably eaten the dogs and ultimately starved to death. Aside from this, we found nothing of value.

At about 8 PM that evening we headed out to the northwest along Mørkefjord. We had to make two attempts at getting up onto the Mørkefjord plateau; it was a grueling way crossing scree and boulders, the fog prevented us from seeing and selecting good routes up the mountain. When we finally reached the top, we had left the fog below us and we had the best of weathers throughout the night. This highland is about 800 meters above the sea. The way across it was bad, mostly scree and large rocks.

We traversed northwest along Mørkefjord and came at last to a glaciated patch which was easy to cross. The view was splendid towards Queen Louise Land; extremely tall mountain peaks stood up out of the ice sheet and there were many individual mountains as far as the eye could see. We saw that Seal Lake reached in the northwest all the way to the great ice stream, which is named Storstrømmen; we saw large lakes and ponds up against its edge. It looked uneven and deeply cracked.

Mørkefjord is narrow and long, it is shallow near its bottom and not accessible for ships, it is closed in by steep mountains on both sides. From its bottom extends a large and spacious valley[42] and a river[43] runs through it in numerous branches and bends on the way into Mørkefjord. At the midpoint of the valley is a large mountain, a full 500 meters of height over the valley floor; we called it Mylius Erichsen’s Cairn Mountain.[44] There seemed to be vegetation to the north and west of this mountain and we wanted to get there on this trip. However, it appeared that we would have no less trouble getting down from this highland as we had coming up. Still, we made it down with little injuries. We reached M. E. Cairn Mountain and had then been on the move, since departing Ptarmigan Hill, for a half hour short of twenty hours.

The Mørkefjordselv river (sometimes called Vigfuselv after Vigfús).

Numerous patches of vegetation spread widely on the valley floor, arctic willow, blueberry and crowberry shrubs, and some grass. Everywhere we saw trails and signs of muskoxen.[45] We passed two of them as they played with turf and tore it apart with their horns. When they noticed us they stopped playing, stood and stared at these strange creatures, which passed them and undoubtedly evoked great curiosity among them as we would later find out.

We felt the best place for camping was west of Cairn Mountain; the pasture was slightly better for the horses and water was nearby in Mørkefjord river. We fed hay to the horses and hobbled them on a grassy patch. We set up our tent and began cooking food. It had just started boiling in the pot when we noticed from our tent that the muskoxen had returned and were amongst the horses. The horses could not tolerate this intrusion and fled, each in its own direction. If we were to have peace, we had to be rid of the muskoxen and drive them away. We felt it was both a sin and a shame to kill them, if there was any other way, since we had little use of their meat. Even though it was good to cook fresh meat soup occasionally, it took so long to cook that we felt it was not worth the expense. Glói still had a lot left of the thigh, which we took from the muskox bull that we shot at Stormvig. It was interesting that it was still unspoiled, not so much as even the smell of rot, although we had carried it around in a bag between bales on the horses for 18–19 days. This was proof that the putrefaction bacteria did not exist here north in the wilderness of Greenland.

We tried to drive the muskoxen away but first we had to take a photograph of them. With that purpose we approached them, one with a camera, the other with a gun. When we were about 12–15 meters from them, they turned towards us and one of us aimed the camera, the other the gun. The muskoxen carefully looked us over, then looked at each other, then back at us, like they were not sure what they should do. Then they looked at each other for a little while, turned and started making an escape. We followed them for about one kilometer but suddenly thought we could have Glói drive them even further away. He was glad at being given a project to complete and jumped forward with loud barking and followed them. He naturally wanted to make his presence as powerful as possible. When he was close at their heels, they turned against him and let him hear a proud bellow. That was more than enough for Glói. He ran as fast as his legs could move towards us but now with the muskoxen on his tail. We saw that we had to drive the muskoxen away ourselves if it were to last. The muskoxen did not look easy to handle as they approached us at full speed, yet, we started running against them. When there were about 15–20 meters between them and us, both groups stopped. Neither party thought it could fully conquer the other. They looked us over again, most carefully, appeared to confer their decision with each other, and finally turned and ran. We followed and drove them about three kilometers away and thought we had made enough distance to our enemy. We returned home to the tent, continued cooking our meal and ate. We thought it advisable to check on the horses before going to bed.

The horses were by then all gone away, scattered in all directions. Two had gone up to the bottom of the cliffs, which were about midway up the side of Cairn Mountain, and the muskoxen were on the slope below them. This could not go on; the horses had to have peace and we could no longer consider the lives of the muskoxen. There was no avoiding this conclusion since they themselves did not have fortune enough to stay away. The gun was brought but the camera was left behind, and we moved to our meeting with the muskoxen. One of them fell due to our shots but the others ran away and did not return. We herded the horses back together. After that we went back to our tent to sleep, which was much needed because we had been awake for 35 hours straight. We slept for a full 12 hours.

IV. To the Glacier and Pustervig

The day after, we walked west along the Mørkefjordselv river up to the glacier edge. It was about an hour’s walk. It was difficult to get to the glacier because everywhere there were wet muddy flats or flowing water at the glacier wall, which was perpendicular or sheer in most places and about 20–30 meters high. At one place we could get up on the glacier; the surface was uneven, with ridges and hollows running from north to south. These ridges were steep enough to be nearly impassable for men on foot. Water ran along the hollows in many places, to eventually form a stream or even a river, which fell further to the east off the glacier’s edge into a deep and eerie glacier canyon. This was the source of the Mørkefjordselv.

The waterfall off the glacier near Mørkefjordselv river (e. Dark Fjord River). Vigfús is the white speck near the picture’s center.

There was unbelievably much vegetation by the glacier. On all land, not submerged by water, there were arctic willows, thrift, and lamb flowers. The plants were scraggly as could be expected since a cold breeze emanated from the glacier. This day brought clear skies but a north-western storm, so we were chilled. At about 1 PM we returned to the tent, storm-blown and cold. We were in full need of one liter of coffee.

After Wegener and I had drunk the coffee, we divided our duties. He should go to the bottom of Mørkefjord and look if Capt. Koch and Larsen had been there. He rode to there. I remained at the tent and was supposed to repair miscellaneous items which had gone wrong in the previous days, remove the horseshoes from two or three horses so we could shoe other horses, which had gone without horseshoes yesterday. By those means, we could continue for about one more day’s journey. There was little hope that we could make it farther. At that point we would have reached Hellefjord and there we hoped to surely find Capt. Koch and Larsen.

Wegener came back at 10 PM that evening; he had not noticed anything or seen any sign that our companions had been there. I had everything ready, which I was supposed to do, except for shoeing the horses. That was quickly done since their hooves could not be filed, they were so worn down already.

We got going at 12 that midnight, traced along Mørkefjordselv river and searched for a ford. We thought the crossing looked reasonable where the river emerged from a narrow streambed and opened over sand flats. I rode into the river, leading the train, without testing the ford first. This was rash as I quickly found. When just about all the horses I led, 6 of them, were in the river, Kári, which I rode as usual, stepped of a ledge on the river floor and started swimming. He now had to control the course as it was too late to turn back. He swam with me across and the other horses followed. I made it to land without injury and only then did I look back towards Wegener. Yes, the horses swam across, but I saw no man. A moment later, Wegener popped his head up out of the water at the riverbank where I stood. Wegener told me that when the horse he rode stepped off the ledge, he had been submerged and had fallen from the horse but he never let go and hung on to the horse while it swam across. Probably there would have been no harm, even if Wegener had lost his grip on the horse, because he was a proficient swimmer and could just as well have been safe if he was free from the horse as he was hanging on to it.

One of the horses, which Wegener led, had received a large cut on one thigh and bled noticeably. We tried to mend this cut as we could. We wrung most of the water out of our clothes and poured the water out of our boots. We were not looking forward to continuing the journey that night because the frost was enough that all puddles and ponds were iced over, although there was no wind.

We headed southwest from the river towards the glacier. The land was marked by old ice age glacier grooves and ridges, hills and hollows, and sprinkled with large boulders. There was a little vegetation, arctic willows, Ptarmigan leaves, and grass. Here were also legions of hares, so that one could count 40–50 hares at a glance. Glói’s friendship with the hares was like his friendship with the foxes. Neither could he see without challenging them. Against the hares, the game was so uneven that Glói could as well have stood still, instead of running himself winded and tired by chasing them. Right when the running started, Glói lost track of which hare to chase because numerous others had joined the game that instant. He gave up the chase unusually early, as he was without hope of catching any of them and he walked humiliated behind the horses. When we, just to tease him, called to him: “Glói, you watch the hares”, he just lifted his ears but did not move and became even sorrier looking. Never did he feel as poorly beaten as he did now.

We followed the edge of the glacier for about two hours, but it was sheer everywhere and no way up with horses. It was also nearly impossible to get to the glacier wall because of flowing water[46] and wet mud. From a hill, which we climbed, we could see that farther southwest, a tongue extended from the glacier towards the southeast. It seemed low at its terminus and flat on top; we thought it would be easy to walk up to reach the main ice sheet, unless there was some hindrance we could not see from where we stood. We did not want to investigate this further now because we thought it would take too much time. Instead we moved away from the glacier and headed over land towards Hellefjord. On that way, we came to a large and wide riverbed. In it were about six or seven ponds, but otherwise the way was good, only small gravel and glacial silt. A large river had flowed here but had left this riverbed many years ago and made itself a new one, wherever it was.

We followed the riverbed. Even though it had numerous bends, it made an easier passage than we otherwise would have. We were now in a land with high and formidable mountains, 500–700 meters above the sea. Here and there, clefts and crevices cut into the mountains from the riverbed and many of those had grass although the mountains were otherwise precipitous, bare rocks, chiseled by ice, and completely devoid of vegetation. But these small clefts had the most beautiful patches of flora which I had seen in Greenland. They seemed strangely beautiful within this black and desolate wasteland.

In one of these clefts five muskoxen grazed, four adult animals and one calf. They enjoyed the bounty of life and did not notice us, who disturbed the peace of this quiet and awesome wilderness, as we passed them by. They walked so slowly and grazed with such calm and tranquility that everything else seemed forgotten. Although their lot in life appeared among the best at this time, it would be far from this once the long and harsh winter had settled in and it was nearing. Then begins the hard battle for life, which these hardy and powerful animals must fight, as we knew from having seen numerous signs of them having lost their struggle. We had seen especially many skeletons in the area east of the Salmon River onwards to Danmarkshavn, and there up north. Later we would see much more.

The riverbed wound its way through large sands and gravel plains, which extended south between two mountains and ended by the Hellefjord bottom. At the bottom of the fjord, there were vast mud- and sandflats on a low tide. We saw no signs that our companions had ever been here. We were surprised at this. Next we wanted to go east along the north shore of the fjord but had to cancel that plan and return because cliffs extended into the sea. We went back north up the riverbed, until where we had seen a pass between the mountains in an easterly direction. We thought it likely that it would lead to the Pustervig valley. We rested in one of the grassy clefts a short distance from the bottom of Hellefjord. There were 30 hares playing in the hillside above us.

We had breakfast, then lay down to rest and talked. Our conversation was naturally drawn to our companions, who we knew nothing about, and harrowing ideas about what could have happened to them. We discussed how we could survive this winter until next spring, with few clothes and no ammunition as we now were, about wintering at Danmarkshavn, about the probability of how we were most likely to get back home. Our conclusions were same as those of Capt. E. Mikkelsen, to reach Shannon island or Bassrock and to get home from there on a Norwegian sealer. These ideas were uncomfortable and so was this talk. It was difficult for us to get rid of these thoughts which had taken hold of our minds, after our second-to-last but strongest hope had failed, to find our companions here in Hellefjord.

Even if we started to talk about something else, it did not go well, and soon we were back on the same topic. However, it was interesting how little and insignificant an event it took to tear us from this terrible thought.

When we sat down, I had laid down my mittens and the whip, but not farther from my back than about three or four meters. I heard something dragged over the gravel behind me and I looked around. I saw a blue fox; it had taken the whip and dragged it by the leather. She was not farther from me than that I could almost reach for the whip’s handle. She stood there calmly and looked at me, as if we had been partners for a long while; at least she felt she had rights to the whip. We locked eyes for about two minutes or so and neither made a move.

Meanwhile, Glói lay beside Wegener and slept. He had not been his proud self since the night when he felt he lost so badly in the chase with the hares. I do not know how he noticed the fox but something gave her away. He jumped up and instantly his old hatred of foxes was ignited. He intended to pounce her in his first jump but the fox outsmarted him; she let go of the whip and ran in circles around us. As Glói chased her with increasing intensity and viciousness, she enlarged the circle and ran in more and sharper turns. At last the game moved up into the slope of the mountain above us, and there Glói chased her around a large boulder. We stopped paying attention to them. We took the horses and loaded them with the equipment we had with us and took off. Glói reached us about a half hour later.

This little incident with the fox had waken us from our dreadful thoughts about what end our companions could have met and what destiny waited ourselves. It was good to be rid of those thoughts. Even if the situation was in our minds being painted blacker than it should, we could expect any eventuality. We knew many stories like this and they had all come to our minds.

We went north of the mountain, which was at the northwest corner of the bottom of Hellefjord. We called this mountain Four hundred and forty,[47] because that was its elevation over sea level in meters. On its north side was the pass, which I mentioned before. Grass grew up to the middle of the mountain’s slopes. There was a small pond high up in the pass. Above this pond was a crest or a gravel ridge, which I called Gravel Crest. When we came down from it we could see before us a large and wide valley with a deep lake; there were steep gravel banks at this lake and it was easily seen that during the early part of summer a large river would flow from the lake, but now its riverbed was dry. The valley floor was covered with reddish rocks and without any vegetation. The mountains north of the valley also had this red hue. I called this valley Red Valley and the mountains Red Valley Mountains.

We continued east through Red Valley into Pustervig Valley, where they merged and reached south to Hellefjord. After riding about a half hour east in Pustervig Valley, we came to a small stream. On its banks were little patches of pasture and we camped there. We had traveled for 17 hours since Cairn Mountain and could barely continue longer because many of the horses had lost their shoes. We saw that the horses, which we rode, were the only ones on useable shoes. If we intended to continue our search for our companions, we would have to leave the 12 cargo horses behind so they would not walk themselves to injury.

We lay there that night. The morning after, which was August 17, we rode without the cargo to Pustervig and came to the cottage, if it can even be called a cottage, at 12 noon after a four-hour ride. This cottage was ugly and looked miserable from the outside; it was not impressive on the inside either. However, the inside was well treated and clean. Despite it being four years since the last inhabitant, Peter Freuchen,[48] had left, everything bore the signs of order and cleanliness. Every item had been left in its place, the floor cleaned, and in general everything had been left as comfortable as best could be. Outside we saw nothing to suggest anyone had been here recently. When we came inside, we noticed a flask, standing on a high platform which spanned the width of the house and which had been used as a bed for residents.

The cottage in Pustervig.

There was a rolled-up letter in the flask. We soon got it out and unrolled it. The letter was written by Peter Freuchen, dated in the month of May 1908, and loosely translated went as this:

“I, the undersigned, who has been holed up here during the winter of 1907–8, hereby take the liberty to warn everyone, who here may come to settle down or to dwell for either long or short, that, first, this cottage is so poorly built that it can barely keep out the wind and is so cold that no one would survive here for long,

second, here are so many ghosts and mysterious beings, that it is not for Christian men to ever stay here, as they could not keep their senses for a day more,

and third, because here are so many wild animals, polar bears, wolves, muskoxen, and foxes that this place is for that reason uninhabitable.

But, if anyone is so stupid, as to settle down here for a stay, despite this warning of mine, I will let it be known, that the stove from the cottage lies beneath a large rock north and east of the cottage, and the stovepipe is beside it.

On the Denmark expedition of M. L. Erichsen, in the month of May, 1908.

Peter Freuchen.”

Like the signature stated, P. Freuchen was one of the men who were with M. L. Erichsen. The cottage in Pustervig was built in the fall of 1907. There was a weather station here during the winter and it was monitored by P. Freuchen. In later years he has lived in Western Greenland, in the northernmost Inuit settlement, which is named after Cape York, and is married there to an Inuit girl. He was with Knud Rasmussen, the summer of 1912, when he went on his first Thule expedition, that is, when he crossed Greenland to the northeast to Independence Fjord and demonstrated that the Peary Channel did not exist, as I have already mentioned earlier in this book.

I expect the reader may think I have been wordy about this letter by Peter Freuchen or may think this is perhaps a detour. For that I apologize. Mostly I thought the letter was strange, but later I found that it had a tone affected by many of the things, men on such journeys try to do for their amusement and to pass the time, that I thought it best to publish it. Peter Freuchen expected his two friends, who explored the region, would enter the cottage, find the letter and bring it to Danmarkshavn. There it would have brought laughter and joy to the men, who could surely enjoy receiving something new, a diversion from their lonely existence. This type of humor can have an unmeasurably good effect. Nowhere is there as much risk of depression and its consequences as in a place so far from everything, which entertains and awakens, or brings variety to the daily life.

But those men never entered the cottage and the letter remained. We turned the page and saw that a few words were scribbled on the back with a pencil. It brought us no small joy when we saw that it was dated August 10th of this year and signed by J. P. Koch. We looked around in the cottage and found, on the table, a letter to us from Capt. Koch. He writes: “We are stuck in the sea ice and cannot break free until the wind turns from the northwest. We have food in the boat for 20 days and while it lasts, we will not abandon the boat. The current and ice brought us to land at Ram Mountain, west of Calf Island, and we offloaded all cargo from the barge, which we have named the “Can”. The sea ice has pressed so hard up against it in many places, that it has lost its right shape and is all bent, but without noticeable leaks. The rudder is broken on the motorboat and the straw keel has burst, but still hangs fast at stern by the irons, but is otherwise jutting sideways. There is no leak in the motorboat either. We are feeling fine, we took the only book, which we found here, a novel, which must help us pass the time as novels can usually effectuate. I ask you and Vigfús to return to Cape Storm and continue moving our cargo from there to the mouth of Salmon River or Ptarmigan Hill.”

Our joy from knowing that our companions were alive and well cannot be described. This joy was, however, not without concern. We still knew nothing more than that they were stuck in the ice. Based on Koch’s description of the motorboat and the barge (the Can), those could by now not be anything more than poorly floating seashells. But what had they ever been but shells and flimsy at that when considering the powerful nature with which we struggled, both on ice and sea. Their destiny was in the hands of god and good fortune.

We rode back to our luggage and on the way we discussed what we should do next. To return the way we came was a thought we could not complete, but there seemed no other choice. When we were a short distance from the luggage, we saw a large oar sticking up from the pile and a small tin can tied to the top. We retrieved the can to see what it might contain. We celebrated when the contents turned out to be a letter from Koch, dated August 14th. He wrote:

“We are becoming free from the ice and are heading to the Salmon River, Cape Storm, or Danmarkshavn. We are feeling fine. I leave this letter here with little hope that you will stop by, because how must your health and condition be after so much rain and bad weather this past week? I am taking with me some clothes and socks for you and the medicines from the crate, which I think most likely to be useful against hypothermia and other conditions. I ask you to come back to Cape Storm, if you make it here.”

This letter completely changed our plans and the prior orders from Capt. Koch. We agreed we might better explore the land and glacier, west of Hellefjord and south to the next fjord, and try to find out, as best we could, how to organize the transport of our cargo through here, where we could get up on the ice sheet, etc. We expected to spend 2–3 days on this and if the sea ice conditions remained as they were, Capt. Koch and Larsen might already be back here. We had left letters (or mail as we called it) in numerous places, at Cape Storm, at Salmon River, and lastly we built a cairn at Ptarmigan Hill and placed in it a large red tin box. They had to have found those letters and knew our plans. We took with us horseshoe irons, socks and Icelandic shoes, sweaters and hoods for our heads, and reached the tent at midnight.

Meanwhile at the tent, the horses, which we had left behind, had used their liberty without humans in sight. We had left 12 bales of hay in a stack next to the tent and two bags of nutritional feed. The hay bales were, as I have described before, tied in a hay baler with four wire strings and sown into canvas. Each bale weighed about 45 kg. The nutritional feed bags, however, weighed 50 kg each. The horses had toppled the stack and had eaten two bales and one bag of nutritional feed. They had torn the other bales and eaten hay from each of them. By our estimation, they had consumed about 200 kg of hay and 50 kg of feed. If this is divided by 12 horses, it means about 17 kg of hay and roughly 4 kg of feed per horse. Hence, they now stood or lay and made nary a move. We thought this was bad but had small comfort in the thought that at least the horses had their fill for once, even though it was brought about in this way. We drove them away and fed the other two, which we had with us, so plentifully that we could be sure that they were full as well. We took them to the other horses and went to sleep ourselves. This night we had a restful sleep because Glói, which normally lay on the hay bales and kept guard, lay calm until about 7 AM in the morning. Then he jumped up with a roaring bark. The enemies, which he defended against, were three muskoxen, two adults and one calf. They stood 12–15 meters from the tent and considered this new guest, which behaved so badly. When I appeared out of the tent, barefooted in my underwear, they had enough of this and made their escape. This was all for the better because otherwise we probably would have overslept and it was daybreak already. This day, which was a Sunday, we did nothing but shoe eight horses and mend the rips in the hay bale canvas bags. We felt this was a good day’s work.

On August 19th, Wegener and I took off with four horses, two with luggage. We left the others in Pustervig Valley with a stack of hay, which we moved up onto a high hill, so that the horses could not get to it. Our route passed through Red Valley over Gravel Crest to Hellefjord, hence at first through known territory. From the bottom of Hellefjord, we went west through a large valley with cliffed hills, which increased in height as we moved further inland. There was sparse vegetation in places and we saw five muskoxen grazing. When we had made it past these hills, the valley was flat before us. Here was a large lake and cliffs entered it nearly vertically on both the north and south sides. It was quite difficult for us to get around this lake. When we reached the glacier, we came to the glacier tongue, which I mentioned we had seen extending southeast from the glacier. However, when we approached it we found a large glacier river flowing south along the glacier’s edge. It was so deep that we felt no bottom with a three-meter pole, which we had with us. This was probably the river, which before had run southeast through the land and out to Hellefjord, and which I mentioned as having moved from its riverbed.

The glacier lay on the west side of the river, with a moderate slope down to the riverside, flat surfaced and easy to travel. Further west on the glacier, arose large and forbidding glacial peaks. We saw the green-blue walls of crevasses up the glacier. We moved south along the glacier or followed the river. We saw tracks of a polar bear in the wet and soft glacial silt, it had walked up and down by the river. When we had followed the river downstream for about an hour, it bent away from the glacier and ran in two branches through the crests and troughs of an old glacier floor. We found a place to ford the river. It was deep, up to mid-flanks on the horses, and the riverbed was rocky and difficult to cross. We moved back north along the glacier because we had seen a snowbank up against it which seemed to form a steep slope up on the glacier, which otherwise was edged by a sheer glacier wall with no place to ascend. We managed to get up on the glacier using this snowbank, but it would be difficult with cargo-laden horses, if not impossible. We moved a short distance west onto the glacier but its surface was rough everywhere. Long ridges ran from the north to the south with deep and narrow channels between. They were hard to cross with horses, even with snow traction horseshoes, let alone ordinary flat horseshoes like we now used. We clambered with the horses up on the closest ridge, which we saw nearby, and from there we enjoyed a wonderful view over the glacier and Queen Louise Land. The sun was setting behind it and gilded the scene with its golden touch. This was a beautiful and majestic view. A solemn calm and magnificent grandeur ruled so greatly that we stood as if charmed. Many may think this to be false because how can there be beauty where there is nothing but ice and desolate mountains, but that is not how it was, at least to our eyes. As I sit here and write about this, it is as if the memory stands right before my eyes and brings me back to these parts.

We took a few photographs and went back down from the glacier, rode across the river in the same place and went southeast into the land, until we found a grassy recess and tolerable pasture for the horses. We pitched our tent and settled for the night, talked and enjoyed the silly thought, that at least we were the first men to bring Icelandic horses up onto the Greenland ice sheet. From this we fell asleep. We awoke to noise and barking from Glói, who chased hares, which were here by the dozens. The sun had long since risen and we were soon on our way. We turned towards the glacier and continued south alongside it. The river ran up against the glacier wall with a heavy current and great flow. Before it exited into Borgfjorden,[49] it had carved into the glacier and surged through 20–25-meter-deep glacier canyons.

The fjord was enormously wide and the ice stream went down it until stopping at an island in the fjord, “Glacier Island”. The ice terminated everywhere in vertical walls, which seemed to us not nearly as tall as they later would prove to be. Our deduction was that we could land the Can at the glacier edge and offload it onto the glacier, as if at a pier. This deduction was laughable because the glacier wall was, when we later came to it, 35–40 meter high, but in our defense, we saw the glacier edge from a distance of 5–6 km.

We continued southeast along Borgfjord and took note of the sea ice. The fjord seemed to be mostly ice-free until its mouth. This looked viable in our opinion. We turned towards Hellefjord full of hopes for a quick and good journey to the glacier with our cargo in the motorboat and the Can. We certainly thought we were bearers of good news to our companions, whom we believed to have already returned and would be lying and waiting for us at the cargo, which we left in Mørkefjord. Our disappointment was all the greater the following day when we arrived and saw that they had not returned. We stayed there the next day and did nothing.

On August 23rd, just after 3 P.M., we were prepared to return to Cape Storm to obey the orders of Capt. Koch, dejected and despondent from the loss of our wonderful hopes, which we had carried and cared for during the past week. Anyhow, we knew the way but that was far from bringing us joy. To have to go back, especially to cross the Mørkefjord river, which we had to swim with the horses, the way over the highland north of Mørkefjord, and finally, to have to use the kerosene cans again as a raft to cross the Salmon River. We dragged our feet getting started. We walked in and out of the tent, up on the hills above it and back again, we did not speak to each other because we knew that we both thought the same. Lastly, Wegener broke this uncomfortable silence by saying: “Let us leave a letter and depart immediately.” We went into the tent to write the letter and agree on its contents. — — But what was it, which broke the silence and echoed from peak to peak? We could not believe our ears, but there was no mistaking it, we knew this old “putt, putt”, and we both said simultaneously: “They’re coming!”

They return. Capt. Koch and Larsen return to Pustervig on the motorboat with the Can in tow.

This was such a joyous reunion that we naturally hugged each other like brothers. We had been separated for 23 days.

V. Capt. Koch and Larsen Stuck in the Sea Ice

I have for a long while told the story of my and Wegener’s travels, but our companions have barely been named. The reader knows the reason and it requires no further explanation. Next, I want to attempt to tell a little about the travels of Capt. Koch and Larsen, but that tale will likely not be as good as if it were told by one who himself was with them. Perhaps the reader feels my description so far has been too wordy, but hardly needs to worry now because I base this tale on how they told it to us. A long time has passed since, many memories have faded and some are forgotten.

They left Cape Storm shortly after midnight, the night before August 1st. The Can was loaded with the construction materials for our winter residence along with all related gear, two large sleds, which two to four horses were intended to pull and each weighed about 300 kg. They also brought eight barrels of kerosene, intended for the motor, and about 2000 liters of kerosene in cans, intended for cooking during the winter. In addition, they brought hay and nutritional feed, crates with mechanical equipment, food, clothes, and generally everything imaginable, which would be needed on such an expedition. All of this made for a large and tall load. The motorboat with its four horsepower engine had barely enough power to pull this in the lightest of opposing wind, but in headwind, rain, and finally sleet, they managed in 24 hours to sail to Ptarmigan Hill. Yet, ice had delayed them little or nothing. We had, as mentioned before, planned to meet there. To the south and east of the mountain, was a small inlet, which seemed like a possible harbor for this fleet. They thought this inlet could be safe from ice. However, while sailing in, the Can got stuck on a large rock in the inlet’s mouth. They were completely stuck, and the worst was, this accident happened during high tide and all their attempts to free the barge proved futile. To try and protect it from getting punctured, they pushed two eight-meter-long logs, which they had brought, under the barge to form a cross or an X. By using a rope with a pulley and fastened to the ends of the logs, they could relieve pressure on the hull and protect it from damage. During low tide they had the pleasure of being able to walk on dry land in a circle around their boats, but without being able to go ashore. On the next high tide, they managed to escape from the rock but the ice had drifted in and they could not move much, they sailed a little closer to land and put out the anchor. They were finally able to walk up on land and it was tempting because they could not do anything useful. Looking towards Ptarmigan Hill, they saw an angelica-green patch of grassland, they saw the grass sway in the cold eastern breeze. This really was grass, although this was Greenland, and it was worth looking at more closely. Two muskoxen grazed there but occasionally they looked up at this black monster, which floated close to land and bellowed with black and gray smoke. Two foxes, one blue and the other white, walked on the shore. They thought this was even more of a monster, but wanted to approach as closely as possible, without wetting their feet. They were not apprehensive or at least their curiosity was stronger.

The Can aground near Ptarmigan Hill.

The companions walked up to the patch of grass. Here were four or five Inuit winter huts, which Mylius Erichsen had dug into five years ago. There was not much to see. (This was the same location where Wegener and I pitched a tent the night after we crossed Salmon River and where the horses received such fine pasture).

On the August 3rd noonday high tide, they sailed out beyond the spit, but soon became stuck in sea ice. The ice took turns grabbing hold of them and letting them go, while they drifted towards the west into the mouth of Mørkefjord. On August 4th, in the evening, they reached land on the south side of the fjord. The following day, they offloaded the cargo from the Can to shore since they could not get further west by sea. They hoped to be able to sail back to Ptarmigan Hill and the mouth of the Salmon River, but after about four hours of struggling the sea ice still had them locked in. “The next few days, I always had plenty of time to write in my diary,” said Capt. Koch. The currents and the ice carried them either in or out Mørkefjord, twice or thrice even far inner than the Denmark’s Monument mountain, which separates Pustervig from Mørkefjord. The sea ice treated them so harshly that they had little hope of escaping unscathed but at least they expected to survive. I have previously given a brief description of how the motorboat and the Can looked after their battle with the ice so I will let that be enough. Dear reader, we can both imagine how they must have felt in this situation. Their only way to pass the time was to pace back and forth on the bottom of the Can, but those 10 meters were quickly covered. They hoped for a north-westerly wind to push them out of Mørkefjord, but the wind did not turn. They heard how the hulls of the motorboat and the Can creaked and saw how the iron sheathing was bent out of shape. They felt they were like an animal in a cage that paces from side to side without rest. The observers stood outside, spoke together and smiled at them, moved away, but others came to replace them and started the same game. Here the sea ice was the observer, with its icebergs in ever-changing forms, mocking these foolhardy little flies, who intended to overcome the ice’s enormous power in its own world. An animal in a cage receives peace at night from its oppressive observers, but here was no such fortune; the intrusions continued day and night. The night before August 8th, there was so much frost that all open sea between the icebergs was set with fresh ice. They became even more stuck than before. They tried to pass the time by napping, but they only reached a state between waking and sleeping where they could barely determine if they were asleep or awake. Others have endured the same.

The night before August 9th, Capt. Koch was startled awake by the sound of loud wind. He arose in the certain knowledge that the much-desired west-wind had arrived and he woke Larsen up. However, the wind turned out to be from the completely opposite direction, it was still an easterly wind and to add, at nights the frost was 4–5 degrees but about 0 degrees during the day.

In the evening of August 11th, while they had their dinner, they noticed that the ice had started to drift faster than before and to the west. They were also carried faster than usual towards the west. They drifted with the ice into Pustervig and to land. They went ashore and entered the cottage.

“It made me glad to see,” said Capt. Koch, “how nicely kept everything was, boxes of food loaded neatly onto the main platform and a thick canvas sail used for cover.” There they fetched provisions for 20 days, which was just as well, because the food, which they had aboard, was now consumed. At 1 o’clock that night, they boarded the Can. They dwelt there. They had made a shelter at the stern by laying a few rough wooden boards on the top as a roof and made a dividing wall with boards from wooden crates. They could not stand upright, but they could stretch out when lying flat on the deck in this little “cabin”. During the night, the wind turned to the northwest with a downpour. The roof was not too carefully built so the rain found countless gaps to enter and poured copiously on the companions, then onto the floor where it drenched their sleeping bags.

But it was here, the long-awaited west-wind, and the ice started to drift out of Mørkefjord. They accepted the rain so long as the wind held steady because then they were saved. At 2 o’clock the following day, the wind started dying down and a short while later it became calm, then the east-wind returned and they were stuck again.

The weather had changed. Dark storm clouds lay ominously over the bay but the thermometer showed plus four degrees and the new ice, which previously had covered every gap in the sea ice, melted. Thanks be to god that summer was not completely over. Perhaps they could still get to sail through ice-free waters. Capt. Koch described it in this way: “I was unsure how my mind was to handle this. I had hoped every day that there would be a change in this dull incarceration, but each day passed without providing freedom. I did not know this Greenlandic summer. I had spent three summers before on the east coast of Greenland. They stood clear in my mind as one long and beautiful sunny day. But now, 12 days of an eastern wind, usually with fog, rain, snow, and the latest, a torrential downpour. I was for a moment caught by a strong sense of dread. I felt I was abandoned by everyone and everything. What was I seeking here north in cold and desolation, where there was nothing but ice and more ice, barren mountains, sands and gravel? I wanted to get back home, to everything dear to me, where life could give me its true value. Was it my reality, that I had journeyed here to leave my bones? What drew me? Was it a desire for adventure, or what? I wanted home, but only one way led there and it was across Greenland. Homesickness is a strong feeling; it gives you new powers and strengthens the resolve when the need is greatest. It brings peace of mind so that I could sit and read the novel “Een i alle” by madame Gyllenburg Ehrensvärd.[50] You are in good company with madame Gyllenburg, she gives you in an old-fashioned way, old ideas about whitewashed floors and stairways, sprinkled with white sandy shells.”

Finally, on August 15th, the long-awaited westerly wind arrived and with high speed; Mørkefjord spit them out and they reached land south and west of the fjord, where they had left their cargo. They only had time to fetch clothes and shoes and write the letter which they left for us, because this west wind, which they had waited and hoped for every day for two weeks, was more than a wind, it was a storm. The storm brought them east in a twirling dance among the icebergs, past Ptarmigan Hill, where they saw we had left them mail but they could not reach it. They felt that was bad but as things were, they could not leave the boats. They felt the dance with the wind was too lively. Without warning, a walrus stuck its head out of the sea right at the bulwark and showed them its tusks but soon disappeared back into the sea. For the walrus, this storm was unbridled joy, but that was not the case for the companions. When they arrived at Cape Hvalrosodden, they finally escaped the ice and quickly started the motor. Up on the cape, several walruses lay sleeping but a few swam after them as they sailed up the mouth of the Salmon River.

They found the letter from Wegener and me in the haystack, where we told them we were gone to Pustervig with all the horses, that we needed additional horseshoes and dry clothes, had toothache and headache. Oh lord, here they were with the clothes and the shoes but there was no time to worry. There was one boatload of hay and nutritional feed at Cape Storm and they had to get it while they could. They continued to Cape Storm and reached it just after noon on August 17th. They had traveled for 48 hours straight and needed rest.

It was evening when they awoke and made the decision to sail onwards to Danmarkshavn and leave a letter with a detailed description of our expedition so far, in the hope that a ship might arrive next summer and could bring the letter home. We had left about 10 barrels of kerosene there, which we had thought would not be needed, but it would be good to fetch two of them as they might be needed after all.

The way, however, had closed. Stormvig was full of ice with no break in sight. They were stuck again. Luckily, within reach of the cargo. They had much to do. On the way from Hvalrosodden to here, one of them had a full job scooping water out of the motorboat, so that the worst holes in the hull could be blocked. During high tide that night, they pulled the motorboat up on the beach, and the morning after they started to repair it. They fixed the straw keel, they plugged the worst holes with motor cloth, and spread axle grease over. The floated the boat in the evening.

During the night, they moved the last of the cargo over to the Can and were ready to depart at about 4 o’clock in the morning. However, the ice remained calm and the west wind was asleep, so they felt safe to sleep as well.

I had forgotten to mention that on the first trip from Danmarkshavn to Cape Storm, the narrow axle that connects to the screw on the motorboat broke. Unbelievably, they had managed to tie it together with a thin wire, which only held insofar as they did not change the position of the screw blades. Of course, this repair broke many times, but they tied it again and no damage was done. The trouble was that this tended to happen when they least needed it and it took them time to tie the axle again.

When they woke up, the ice allowed a better path east along Stormvig and they saw an opportunity to sail to Danmarkshavn. They nailed the letter to a wooden board in the building, took two barrels of our kerosene and returned to Cape Storm at midnight. From the cape they could see that the ice was more traversible west along the coast and it was best to use the first opportunity. They took the Can in tow and with care and skill managed to get through the ice out into Sleeping Bay. Then the accident happened. The wire-tie on the axle broke and before they could fix it the ice had surrounded them. They were locked in ice again, but this time it was only a 40-hour prison sentence.

At midnight on August 21st, they had made it back to the mouth of the Salmon River. They found nothing written from us Wegener and had no reason to stay for long. They took the 63 bales of hay, which we had transported there, and continued west. At Hvalrosodden were seven sleeping walruses, five of them made their way into the sea but two only moved when they just about received the oil-smoke from the motor straight into their noses. West of this spit, the fjord was covered with new ice, which they had a hard time to break through, “but you can move forward, if you want” was Koch’s common saying. However, these words did not always come true. Often we got nowhere even though we wanted. It took more than will alone. Patience, endurance, and daring were good additions to will, but there had been times when none of this was enough, and there would be more such times. It could be said that we were tied to the place where we stood.

This time they succeeded with patience and will, calm and care, to get past Ptarmigan Hill and across the fjord to an island, which was called “The Calf”. From there they saw with binoculars, the stack of cargo we had made on the beach. What was better, they saw that the way was free of ice and the fjord was flat as a mirror in which the mountains reflected and showed their overwhelming greatness. At that moment, the ice closed the sound right in front of them and they could go no further.

To give up without trying, that was not something fitting the mind and willpower of Koch; yet they had worked for 24 hours straight. They untied the Can and tried to break the new ice with the motorboat alone. It was little better than slamming your head into a wall. After they had broken through about 20 meters of ice in 3–4 hours, the boat started to leak and the motor gave up. They had no option but return to the Can and go to sleep.

When they awoke, the current had brought them to the southwest, in front of Hellefjord, but with the returning tide they were carried back north again and around noon they were at Ptarmigan Hill. As unexpectedly as when the sea ice had closed all avenues the day before, it now opened ice-free seas all the way to the south-western land. They quickly started the motor and moved steadily west. They soon saw our tent and a little later, us Wegener waving our hats. They sailed to shore and threw us a line, which we fastened. There was a great celebration by both groups, as we had not seen each other for 23 days. This was more than enough reason to throw a party in the tent. Coffee, port wine, chocolates, strawberries and fruit (from cans), champagne, and cigars were brought out; and there was plenty to discuss.

VI. Further to the Southwest

The exploration trip by Wegener and me to Daniel Bruun Land[51] had uncovered that:

1. at Glacier Island there could be an easy way to get up onto the ice sheet;

2. the way from the bottom of Hellefjord to Bredebræ (or where it entered Borgfjord) was a decent route, at least it was passable for horses with heavy loads,

3. Borgfjord was mostly free of ice as far as we could see over it.

We based our plans on this information. It was tempting to use a few days to make up for all the time lost to difficulties and hard labor, but many things countered that. Sea ice drifted daily to land, both at Vædderen and Spear Point, and we knew nothing about the ice conditions on the other side of Daniel Bruun Land. If it were impossible to sail around Spear Point, we could always go into Hellefjord and move from there across land to Borgfjord. Our concern was that both the motor and the boat were so damaged that they could not be trusted. It would only take one accident and both would be history. That type of accident could occur at the worst moment and who could know when? To let the ice crush us or to run aground on some islet in Sleeping Bay was nothing to look forward to, but in deciding we placed greater weight on transporting all our cargo to Glacier Island in this month of August. We would then have September and the first part of October to move over the ice stream to Queen Louise Land. It was important to arrive there and construct our homestead “Borg” before darkness fell. It would happen in November and after that we could not do much, let alone travel. Also, the cold, the terrible Greenlandic cold, it could be 40–50 degrees of frost; I still knew nothing of it, I just thought these were rather high numbers. Hence there was not time to sit long with champagne and canned strawberries. We had to carry all our cargo, which was in the Can, to land, and conversely carry the cargo, which was now on land, out to the Can; clean the motor and repair it as we could. That was to be my job.

At 11 o’clock that night everything was ready and with a festive meal this short time we had together was over. At 2 AM that night, Capt. Koch and Larsen sailed south along Vædderen, to meet the ice and new difficulties, but Wegener and I stood on the beach and bid them farewell with our best wishes and shouts of hurrah.

The intended travel plan was like this:

Capt. Koch and Larsen should, if possible, be at Glacier Island on August 26th, but Wegener and I should fetch the horses, which were now (with three exceptions) in pasture in Pustervig Valley. We were to load eight of them with hay bales, three with nutritional feed, and the twelfth with the tent, sleeping bags, food, and cooking equipment. We should ride from here to the glacier’s edge and leave the hay and nutritional feed (at the river crossing) and on the 26th we should arrive in Borgfjord across from Glacier Island. Capt. Koch and Larsen should fetch us there on the motorboat so that we could help offload the cargo from the Can. If they had not arrived in time, Wegener and I should head out Borgfjord and follow the coast as closely as possible around Daniel Bruun Land to Hellefjord and on to where we separated. With this roundtrip of Daniel Bruun Land, we were to acquire as detailed knowledge as we could about the land, its vegetation, etc., and search for Capt. Koch because, as has been explained before, there could be numerous reasons for them not reaching the location of our planned meeting. Wegener and I, however, needed not more than a day and a half to be there at the appointed time. We had several tasks regarding the horses because they were not all in the same place, we were also to make several surveys, and during the night before the 25th of August we arrived in the pasture at the mountain 440. During that day there was a west wind and cold. The morning after, the ice on all ponds was strong enough to hold a horse. When we reached the glacier river, it had much less water than when we crossed it on August 19th. There were, however, hard frozen edges on both sides, which the horses broke with difficulty, making for a perilous crossing. We left the hay bales and four bags of nutritional feed at the glacier’s edge and departed towards southeast. We came upon four muskoxen, three adults and one calf. They continued on their way at about 50-meter distance from us. The horses did not like them much and were hesitant to move. An old bull headed the muskoxen group and appeared to be in a bad mood because he repeatedly postured as if threatening to attack us. The other muskoxen seemed to have their minds on the calf and always kept him between them. Our way passed a high gravel knoll which the muskoxen ascended and stood with their heads pointed to us and the calf behind them. They were silhouetted against the red evening sky. This was the last we saw of them.

We went into a little valley and pitched a tent. There were a few wedges of pasture here for the horses but we had a hard time finding water for cooking. Eventually, we got it from the glacier river. Here was an enormous number of hares; they sat in their holes all around the tent and huddled together against the cold north-western breeze.

It took us longer than usual to get going the following morning, mostly because watering the horses proved difficult. We brought them to the river but had difficulty getting them onto the frozen edge of ice at the riverbank, although it was strong enough to hold them; we had not expected such a hard frost. The horses had flat horseshoes so their footing on the ice was poor, and we had little to assist in breaking the ice.

We rode through familiar territory south to Borgfjord and arrived at the appointed time where we were supposed to meet. We saw no signs indicating our companions had been there or over at Glacier Island. We stopped for a short while before continuing out the fjord. Our path took us over low, undulating gravel ridges with grassy hollows in between, but further out the fjord, the land changed to large and formidable gneiss rocks, bare and windswept, with neither straws nor moss anywhere in sight. Between the rocks were hard fields of grass, which the summer before were good pasture, but the grass had turned white and hard (woody). All around were muskoxen skeletons, in some places 5–7 together, bearing silent witness to the final days of these animals, which had to fight for survival with extreme perseverance until ultimately falling because of the harsh nature. Theirs is a difficult and sad life. It would be good if it were possible to transport some of these lonely creatures home to Iceland,[52] where they could live in better conditions. We can do that if we want and are united, but I will not write about that here, it does not belong in this story.

Farther south out along the fjord, we came to a mountain ridge with sheer gneiss cliffs down to the sea and the way was impassable to horses. We had to change our course from the original plan and rode east over this ridge. We came to a long and wide valley, which lay towards the south. A small mountain hid the view towards south through the mouth of the valley. Later, Capt. Koch named it Blåbærfjeldet,[53] because he found fully grown blueberries there the day after we had passed by.

We went south along the valley until we came to an inlet, which cut north into the land. On the west side of the inlet, the mountain ridge we crossed extended southwards. It formed a long peninsula with peaks and mountains. On its east side, two coves cut into it, about 2 km long, with sheer gneiss cliffs on both sides. At the tip of the peninsula was a cape, about 200–300-meter-high, “Cape Stop”.[54] This ridge blocked all view over to Borgfjord, even though we walked up on the hills to the east of the inlet. It hardly seemed possible to ride horses out this ridge and thereby it would be impossible to inspect Borgfjord on the other side of the cape, to see if there was ice or other hindrances. We had seen only a few isolated icebergs standing on the ocean floor here and there in the fjord. Many of those icebergs were as huge as the largest castles and often with beautiful shapes. Some were flat on top with precipitous sides, just like a cube, others had high towers like ancient forts. I saw one with such a large hole that a high-masted ship could be sailed through. I would not dare anyone to try that because icebergs can suddenly flip over; it is cataclysmic and no nearby ship can survive.

We headed northeast to Strømsund[55] and before we knew it, we had entered the worst impasse imaginable. Steep, slippery cliffside, where neither man nor horse could keep their footing. When it reached a point where we could neither advance nor return, we pitched a tent and settled for the night. There was not a single blade of grass or a snippet of moss anywhere, we saw no life whatsoever. However, there was a freshwater spring flowing from under the flat rock where we placed our tent. The view over Sleeping Bay was on the other hand, that much more beautiful and spectacular. North over Hellefjord and Vædderen, the sky was hidden with thick, dark blue rain clouds, but to the east was Big Koldewey island, with its 800 meter high cliffs; its sides looked strangely similar to a giant Icelandic farmhouse, where stone and turf walls separate the wood-sided house into ridged sections, thereby forming troughs and high gables. This mountain-city was gargantuan and roughhewn, but still beautiful and majestic. In the south were Haystack[56] and Devil’s Cape, both about 900 meters tall. Devil’s Cape looked eerily like the Icelandic mountain queen, Herðubreið, it was only missing the ice cap. In the south stood Vikar mountain,[57] tall and pointed like a giant sugar top. In the southwest, was the peak of Cape Niels, 1200 meter high. To further enhance the view, Soraner Glacier tumbled over the cape’s shoulder. Behind us we saw nothing. The sun sent its last rays out over Sleeping Bay, with its multitude of islands, and colored everything in wondrous crimson and blue hues. I now felt I understood, what it is, that draws men on journeys to these uninhabitable lands. It is evening moments like the one which we enjoyed. People become charmed, bound to the place, and want to relish the beauty for as long as they can. I know, dear reader, that I have not been able to describe this like it deserves, but perhaps you have had some similar evening at home. These moments can also be experienced here in Iceland and they are unforgettable.

Sleep and exhaustion called upon us and we had to obey by taking our rest.

The beauty was gone the morning after. Everything was changed and looked different. A biting cold north wind had taken over and brought fog; everything was colored with the fog’s grim lead-gray, which lay heavy on mind and heart. To wake up to this in such a place, which god and all good seemed to have forsaken, was dreadful, but we could not let our trepidity overpower us, we had to keep the memory of the evening before and let it drive the cold and fog away. We hurriedly gathered our belongings, loaded the horses, and attempted to continue. That meant going further and further into the impasse. Often we had to lead one horse at a time, with one of us supporting the horse in the most hazardous spots, so our progress was slow, but after eight hours of struggle and difficulties we came down the mountain at Port Arthur.[58] From there we entered a large valley, headed to the northwest, towards Hellefjord, but we were nearly blocked because in the middle of the north end of the valley was a large lake, walled in by sky high cliffs on both sides. We managed to ride through the lake around one of those cliffs. Had that not succeeded, we would have had to return all the way whence we came until the little inlet east of Cape Stop. At 12 midnight before August 28th, we reached our campground north of 440, all windblown by storm and cold, and dead tired. This had been our most difficult day so far. We had not seen any signs of Capt. Koch and Larsen, which made us distraught with concern about their situation.

The morning after we went to Pustervig and along it out the fjord. We set up camp that evening at our cargo stack on the beach, west of Calf Island. We were startled awake from deep slumber at 5 AM by loud engine claps. We rushed joyful out of our sleeping bags to greet our companions and to get news of their journey.

As told before, Capt. Koch and Larsen sailed on August 23rd south along Vædderen. It was of crucial importance that their trip would succeed. They had our most valuable cargo in the Can. If they could not get this cargo to land where we could reach it with the horses to carry it further, all our travel plans would collapse. Moreover, all our lives could depend on this. I know that few would have agreed to undertake such a trip using our vessels, the motorboat and the Can, in their condition, but our future depended on this. Of all men, which I have known, have I trusted none better than Capt. Koch to attempt this. His strong will and courage, and exceptional resourcefulness were qualities that should overcome most difficulties. Among men of his position, I have never known anyone who was as altruistic and always ready to carry his full share of any difficulty, and he, who gives so much of himself, must expect that others will give their undivided strength to each task.

The weather was calm with clear skies, the frost was 5°C. The sun came up, pink-red it ascended slowly and the mountains were mirrored in the flat ocean surface. This was a beautiful August morning and everything expressed joy. Seventeen snow-white hares played in one group up on the beach at Vædderen. They jumped from a little bank, ran a half-circle around and up on top of it, then jumped again; always one after the other forming a continuous chain of white. This seemed to be their dance. Eider, long-tailed duck, and tystie swam slowly and calmly, dove under the sea when they felt the boat came too close and surfaced a short distance away. Occasionally, a seal stuck its black head out of the sea, stretched itself so high that its flippers could be seen. He checked what it was, which floated on the ocean and made so much noise. From within Hellefjord came flying, a fulmar and a gray gull. They flew high up in the air, then glided down with outstretched wings in long curves until they circled the boats. None of these creatures had ever known man, this most vicious predator of Earth and the deadliest with a gun in hand and enough ammunition in the pockets. There awoke no feeling within Capt. Koch to murder these unwary innocents, which did not recognize the danger. Capt. Koch and Larsen were both tired when they sailed out. The motor did not break its habit of stalling now and then, but they rarely needed to do more than turn the crank a few times. Then it would start and continue for a while until stalling again, yet their progress was decent. Upon reaching south of Vædderen, they started to find ice on their route. Twice, Koch had to go ashore to look out over the bay to find which way they should go. Right up against Vædderen, there was a narrow ice-free channel but it did not reach further than the middle of Hellefjord. South of there, all the way to Spear Point, the ocean was iced over. From Vædderen east to Vindsel island, there was an ice-free sound and onwards far to the southwest. This seemed like a promising way, but they did not dare to go so far out on Sleeping Bay. It was too large of a risk if the motor were to go on a serious strike and the ice were to lock them in. It could take a month before they could reach us again and then only by one means, if it were possible to take the horses out on the ice. No, they would rather have to try to inch their way forward south along Vædderen and let luck dictate if they could get around Spear Point or would have to enter Hellefjord, for in there it was ice-free. Coughing and spitting, the motorboat tugged the Can south, towards the middle of the mouth of Hellefjord. When they got there, they saw a narrow opening which was not quite ice-free, but only with new ice. They left the Can behind and broke their way forward through the ice with the motorboat alone towards Spear Point, and it worked. “With effort comes victory,” says an old proverb. They fetched the Can, left it behind, fetched it again and finally made it with both vessels to Spear Point.

They hiked the mountain above Spear Point and from there they had a good view over Sleeping Bay. The sea was ice-free from Vindsel Island for as long as could be seen to the southwest, and they thought it would be all the way to Bredebræ. It was a misfortune to not select that route, but because the motor could not be trusted and they were so vexed by that, they did not dare take that route. They thought of the saying that “the bad workman blames the tools”, but now they were here, not east by Vindsel Island. The outlook was not too bad though. In front of Spear Point and southwards, the ice was not so dense and it would have been possible to sail between the icebergs if the sea ice had not connected them together. Why not try to break through here, first with the motorboat and then fetch the Can later? The route was not long, barely more than two kilometers.

There was a long reef extending to the northeast from Spear Point. They had to cross it soon because just then was high tide. They would not be able to float over the reef two hours later. They hurried to the boat. They reached the reef with difficulties but no further, because when they got there, the current took hold of them. It pushed them south but closer to land and into ice; they drifted into the reef no matter how they struggled until the Can got stuck. It was only a small rock jag with deep sea all around. The motor was made to pull with all its horsepower, but it was for naught. The Can was stuck. They managed to turn it but they sailed in a circle and the Can turned like a weathervane on a gable in a slow breeze. The current brought the ice west and large flakes of ice floated by over the reef although the Can was aground. They had almost lost their hopes that they could escape during this high tide. God only knew what would happen to them when the tide would fall. The Can would topple and the cargo would be dumped into the depth beside this skerry.

The Can lay sideways to the current and the motorboat was on the lee side of the rock. A large block of ice drifted from the north straight into the stern of the Can and struck it with strong force. This did more than their motor ever could. The Can was pushed from the skerry and they were free. This was better than they had allowed themselves to hope for and on they went.

After striving in ice for a full two hours, they reached mostly ice-free seas. At 4 o’clock in the afternoon they passed Port Arthur. The wind started picking up strongly from the northwest. The wind caught more hold of the Can than was good, because it was stacked high with cargo. They tried to sail closer to land, where the wind had less power under the sheer cliffs, but before they achieved that goal the motor stopped. They were pushed by a strong offshore wind towards the southeast, in the direction of several small islands and danger loomed again.

They got the motor running for a moment. It was only to show them, that the motor could still run if it were not asked to do anything more than what it could. While they worked feverishly to find out what was wrong with the motor, they drifted ever closer to the islands. They racked their brains inspecting the motor but nothing worked. It suddenly occurred to them that it would be best to let the gas lamp stay lit, because otherwise the motorhead would not remain warm and the oil combustion would not be right. This worked, as was natural, because the motor[59] had more work than it could manage, so it rotated slower than it should, but was made to use more kerosene than it could burn and the gas nozzle became full of soot.

The motor ran better than ever before. They fortunately managed to sail out of the wind into lee near the land. Much to their joy, they found a small cove shielded by cliffs. It worked as a ready-made harbor for them and they could anchor there for the night. They tied the boat with lines across the cove, cooked a meal and went to sleep. They were dead tired after working for 34 hours.

They awoke around noon the following day. The weather was good, only a slow south-westerly breeze. If the motor would allow, it was time to head out. Before they were ready to depart, the tide had fallen so much that the motorboat, which was further inside the cove, sat on a large rock. There was no time to heat the motor to have its assistance in getting free. Every minute counted. They undressed quickly and stepped overboard. It was cold*), but that’s expected, they loosened the boat and that was of most importance. — — Off they went. They reached the narrows of Strømsund, but a current flowed north through it at 4–5 miles of speed. There was no hope for them, at just under 2 miles of speed, to resist or, even more so, move against such a strong current. They tried sailing as close to land as possible on the west side, where the flow was lesser. However, there they were in shallows and risked running aground and getting stuck. In two hours, they had managed to move about two kilometers and had only to escape around the last outcrop, where Strømsund was at its narrowest. South of there, it widened out greatly and the current had to be much lesser.

Around evening time, the weather showed signs of turning for the worse and they were at a bad place. They had to escape. At 8 o’clock that evening, they tried a second time to get around this outcrop. The current was strong but not as before. They just managed to hold their position, but they could not move forward. Still, this gave hope.

They crossed the narrows to the other side, just in case the current was lesser, but it was the same. However, the depth was lesser. They tried helping the boat forward by pushing with poles. Yes, inch by inch they moved forward but ever so slowly. They worked on this for a half hour and the wind started picking up from the north. They only needed a final push to make it through and the north wind came to their rescue. It caught the Can and pushed it. They made it around the outcrop.

When they came west of Strømsund, the wind was from the west and more of a sidewind than was good. The wind caused waves and the sailing became difficult. The best option was to seek shelter near the coast of Daniel Bruun Land and search for a harbor. At 11 o’clock at night, they had found safety in a small cleft and waited for better weather. At three o’clock in the night, Capt. Koch awoke and checked the weather. It was calm but the outlook was ominous. He was fearful of a south-western storm. It is difficult to say if that fear originated because that was the most dangerous wind direction for them as they were. He thought of waking Larsen up and setting out but thankfully he changed his mind and did not, because at 4 AM a powerful storm started from the north and the sea became rough. They tied the boats to the beach in the best way they could and it had to hold.

The storm raged all day and into the night. At half past four in the morning, which was the 26th of August, the wind was still blowing hard. This is the day we had decided to meet in Borgfjord. The sea was passable at the moment but the motor gave them trouble. It was cranky and was always at its worst in storm and cold. It was no longer enough to keep the gas lamp burning. They reached close to land just east of Cape Stop. There the motor stopped and refused further work. They dropped anchor and took the motor apart to inspect it. They found that the gas nozzle was full of soot, no wonder that the motor could not work. They cleaned the cylinder as much as they could but they threw the gas nozzle overboard and installed a new one. When this mechanic’s day was finished the motor was in good order.

They had barely sailed for an hour when new hindrances arose. The mouth of Borgfjord was full of ice. This was not ordinary new sea ice; this was glacier ice. Icebergs from Bredebræ filled the mouth of the fjord so completely that there was no way through. Along the northeast coast of the fjord, there were smaller blocks of ice, such as generated by jokulhlaup, but they were frozen together and impassable. If they had been but one or two weeks earlier, they would have made it through, but now it was too late. “That this was a large, continuous ice field, a few kilometers in each direction, was unknown to us until later. This time we could not see the forest for the trees,” said Capt. Koch. “We came there on a low tide and thought things would be better on the high tide. We wanted to wait and use the time to go ashore and look over the fjord. We towed the Can towards a flat rock and Larsen jumped over to it. When I attempted to jump, my windbreaker was caught on a snag and I barely reached the rock with my feet. When trying to free myself, I inadvertently pushed the Can away, but without coming free. There I was, hanging by my windbreaker, and if it were for too long, it would tear and I would fall into the sea. This was probably an odd sight, because when Larsen came with a boat hook and pulled the Can back to the rock to save me from my predicament, his face had become one large smile, although he normally never smiled.”

At 11 o’clock that night, one hour before high tide, they had started the motor again and intended to make another attempt to pass through the small channel between the icebergs and land. The worst conditions were on a 400-meter-long section, where precipitous cliffs arose straight from the sea, and there was only a narrow chute between the cliffs and the icebergs. There the tide had almost no effect on the ice. The challenge was, that to get to this narrow chute (it was so narrow that from the middle of the boat it was possible to touch both the cliff and the ice wall with the boat hook) they had to get across rocky reefs, which closed the chute on both the south and east sides. The reef was dry during low tide but was just about submerged on the high tide. It was a dangerous undertaking but Capt. Koch wanted to attempt it. They managed to get over the reef, then let the Can go and started to try to break their way through the newly frozen sea with the motorboat alone.

After two hours of fruitless struggle they thought it was best to return across the reef again. They saw that they would not make it to where we were supposed to meet. They also realized that we would never find them in this inaccessible location. It had to be them who would reach Wegener and myself. This is how Capt. Koch told it:

“I decided right then to go myself and hoped to find you before you left our meeting point. It was not for fun that I started to walk these 45 km through unknown mountainous territory. I felt it was my duty. Even if I were not to find you, I could leave a letter where we had planned to meet and you could find it when you returned like we had decided. At that point, I had not slept for 22 hours. It was 2 o’clock past midnight when I started the hike with a double barrel gun on my shoulder, one barrel with a bullet and the other with pellets, 1/8 of a kilogram of chocolate and one box of kola-pills[60] in the pocket.*)

The hike was difficult from the start. The cold north wind and bare gneiss rocks, which I had to either climb up or down, made me apprehensive, but the longer I walked, the lesser the fear. The land changed character and when I had walked 10–15 kilometers, I found myself in valleys with hard packed soil between the gneiss ridges. I was surprised at how grassy they were. I had not seen such expansive and vegetation rich valleys this far north before. They seemed like farmers’ fields. I passed a large number of white hares. They barely moved even if I walked right past them, just looked at me with curiosity. This had such a strange effect on me that it made my walk easier. The longer I went along Borgfjord, the larger these valleys. The sun rose from the northeast. All this made me emotional and warm and eased my walking. I wondered to myself how surprised you and Wegener would be when I entered your tent and woke you by saying “good day” in a friendly voice. I soothed myself by thinking that I would receive from you about one liter of hot coffee and be allowed to get into a warm sleeping bag to sleep, because I was very sleepy. As the sun rose higher in the sky and the weather became warmer, the drowsier I became. I even had small sleeps while walking and then I tripped on a rock which jolted me awake. I took one, two and sometimes three kola-pills to freshen me up.

I approached the place where I expected to meet you, but I noticed horse tracks headed southeast. At first, I thought that the tracks were from horses which got free from a hobble and ran away, but I found a second track. There was no doubt, you had already passed by. I found it was not enough to take these short naps while walking, but I had some 5–7 kilometers left to where I wanted to leave you a letter and then 22–25 km to return to Cape Stop. I started singing, to keep me awake and to try and walk as fast as I could. At 8 o’clock that morning I reached Bredebræ. I made a rock cairn and placed the letter in it, ate the chocolate, which I had in my pocket, and started my return trip.

I followed your tracks, because it was quite possible that I had not seen the tent and the horses when I came here. I intended to find it, if it was on this way. The snow hares were everywhere. I thought it interesting that I saw no living muskox in such a grassy area but I saw more of their skeletons than I had ever seen before, even 6 adults in one location.

Gray geese flew past me in a large team. I found it odd that they would still be here, so late in the summer.

The track led south through the valley at Blåbærfjeldet and from there towards Strømsund. You had been there while I was away but you had not found the Can. You had passed it by about 5–6 km. There was no use for me to continue following your tracks. It would be better to get to Cape Stop as soon as possible and rest because by now I was very tired.

I turned to the southwest and followed the coastline. I found a few blueberry bushes on the side of the mountain, with fully matured berries. I could not resist the temptation, I sat and picked berries. They were neither sweet nor juicy, but it still invigorated me to eat them. At 3 PM I arrived back at the Can, dead tired, with big holes in the soles of my boots. This time I had not slept in 36 hours straight.”

The next night they made a second attempt to get past Cape Stop.[61] This time they left the Can outside the reef, to have more space to ram the ice. For two hours, from 11–1 AM, they tried breaking the ice, but with no success. The third attempt could be done when we were all four together again, whatever the result might be.

They agreed that it would be best to offload the Can here at Cape Stop, return for what was left of the cargo on the beach west of the Calf. They took a two-hour nap and then started carrying the cargo from the Can, without our help and that for the second time. This was a hard job. At four o’clock in the afternoon they had finished. In a hurry, they loosened the motorboat from land, without thinking about warming up the motor first.

That was a mistake. They were taken over by a strange nervousness, which can come over you in certain situations. Men can become so obsessed that they barely know what they are doing, everything ends up in haste and error, thought and will are so paralyzed that correct conclusions cannot be drawn about causes or coincidences or their consequences. Something extraneous must carry you from this and wake your healthy sensibilities. The result of their oversight was that they nearly ran aground on small islets south of Cape Stop. The wind was strong from the north and carried them fast towards the islets. There was but a stone’s throw to land when they finally got the motor warm enough to start it. For once the motor started immediately on the first try and saved them from getting beached there.

On August 29th, Wegener and I were to return to the cargo, which lay on the beach at Mørkefjord. It was important for them to reach us there before we left back to Bredebræ. They continued sailing through the night. Out of fear that the motor would keep up its habit of halting without warning, they kept as close to land as possible. Due to this they ran into rocks twice on the way north along Daniel Bruun Land but they managed both times to get free soon enough. Otherwise their journey went rather well.

They sailed faster than normal when going north Strømsund because both worked together, the motor and the current, and they moved with speed farther north.

At midnight, they reached Hellefjord but there was a strong west wind blowing out the fjord with choppy seas. It took them about two hours to get north of the mouth of the fjord. They were wet from the crashing waves when they succeeded in finding shelter under Vædderen, and then the axle-ties broke, for the tenth time on the trip. If they had broken a short while earlier, even if only by 10–15 minutes, it is uncertain how they would have fared. They would at minimum have drifted east past Vindsel Island, god knows how far, and to get back to Mørkefjord against the western storm could have proved difficult. I will avoid painting a darker picture than is necessary, but this time they were surely saved by luck. They quickly fixed the wire-ties on the axle because they had only a short distance left to go and could make better repairs after arrival.

At five o’clock that morning, which was August 29th, they arrived at the cargo stack and Wegener and I were already there as has been described earlier.

Late that same day, we carried what was left of heavy cargo to the Can and were finished in the evening. We had also built a cairn on the hill above where the cargo had been stacked. We placed a letter in the cairn with a description of how our expedition had gone so far, along with our plans for the continued journey next year and with locations where we would leave letters with additional descriptions of our travels.

Capt. Koch was tired and sore after his hike to Bredebræ and the offloading of the cargo at Cape Stop; he had to mostly sit by while the rest of us did the heaviest work. I point out that I do not say this to belittle him, but rather as an example of his selflessness and how much he could contribute beyond what his endurance and strength would allow under ordinary circumstances. Despite the exhaustion, he and Larsen, departed that evening south along Vædderen on the motorboat with the Can in tow, because for now, it was ice-free as far as we could see, no wind and beautiful weather. The conditions could not be better.

We agreed to meet at the cargo by Cape Stop and wait there for each other; in any case there was not much else we could do. When they had disappeared from view, Wegener and I looked after the horses, which were as usual hobbled together and standing a short span from the tent. We made sure that they could not escape, because if that were to happen, they would return right away along their tracks. When this has happened, we have often had to search far for them because they were nervous at standing for long without having cover or enough to eat. When we had completed this inspection we went to sleep.

The morning after we gathered everything that was left here and loaded it on the horses. This took us longer than usual and we had a late start because there were many things to tend to and nothing could be left behind which was worth keeping and could be of use. We did not get farther that evening than to our campsite at the mountain 440, where we spent the night. When we wanted to head out the morning after, three horses were missing, but we found them after a long search. From there we went around the bottom of Hellefjord, through Henning Valley[62] to Borgfjord. We left 16 bales of hay at the mouth of the valley because we did not feel it necessary to move them with us to Cape Stop. Here they were closer to the glacier’s edge. We went southeast from Henning Valley along Borgfjord, along our own previous tracks into the valley north of Blåbærfjeldet. There we came to new territory in finding a way down the peninsula to Cape Stop. Capt. Koch had drawn a map of the peninsula on the last page in Wegener’s diary, but only by memory. We were to find a route based on this map south across the gneiss ridges on the peninsula.

During the day there was a cold northern storm but it was still bright. However, when evening came the weather turned darker with approaching snow. It was best for us to get as far south the peninsula as we could before it would start to snow. We found a way more easily than we hoped, Capt. Koch had marked it unbelievably correctly on the map.

We found the mound of cargo at 12 midnight at Cape Stop. It had snowed considerably for about one hour in a mild wind from the northwest. We searched for signs of Koch and Larsen having been there and found none. We set up the tent and fed the horses. We returned to the cargo and found a jug with a letter from our companions. Their trip had gone well and they said they were anchored with the Can in a little cleft between two gneiss boulders, west of the cargo. Wegener went to search for them and soon returned with the news that he had found them, but they were so fast asleep that they had not awoken even though he entered their sleep cabin. He felt it would have been a shame to wake them. While he was on this investigative trip, I had searched for shelter for the horses and moved them there because they had become restless due to the bad weather. The hay, 14 kilograms, which they were given (1 kg per horse), disappeared as fast as if thrown into a fire.

VII. Staying at Cape Stop

The morning after, which was September 1st, was a Sunday. It had stopped snowing but the north-western wind ruled the land. Both horses and men were cold. Capt. Koch and Larsen moved from their sleep cabin on the Can into the tent with us. Since we disembarked from the ship Godthaab, we had not spent more than a few hours together at a time. We kept Sunday holy in good company inside the tent and told each other about our days during this summer. We tied unbreakable bonds of friendship, which neither national nor class differences could influence. The only thing, which we did this day, was to search for better shelter for the horses and move them there. To improve their comfort, if possible, we tied a long rope between two rocks and tied the horses to this rope. This allowed them more freedom from each other and they could move without turning in circles, like they had to do when they were hobbled together in pairs. The difficulty was how much they sought to gnaw apart everything within reach. We had to keep a watchful eye on them, both night and day, because if one of them broke free, it would immediately start backtracking the way we came.

Like I have mentioned before, we knew little about how the ice was, which filled the mouth of the fjord. From land it looked as one continuous iceberg field with countless spires. It was possible that somewhere was a way between them, which we could traverse, and we were prepared to try everything. As soon as our morning routines were completed, the motor was started and we all got in the boat but left the Can behind. Our search had no results because each time it ended the same way, even though we found numerous channels and chutes between the icebergs which we tried entering. All routes were closed by an ice mountain. However, often these channels were long and with many twists and turns, the ice walls were either perpendicular or with overhang over the channel. On the whole, this was like traveling in a large city with long and irregular streets, where one giant building after another had been placed in such a disorderly and chaotic fashion as to go beyond extreme. When we had shuttled in and out all these channels and streets for some 4–5 hours, we had moved south towards the middle of Edward’s Island. There we found ourselves in such strong new ice that we could not break our way through with the motorboat and we returned; in any case it was almost high tide. We wanted to make one more attempt further inside the fjord, where Larsen and Capt. Koch had already made two attempts before.

We took the Can in tow and crossed the reef, left it there and started our determined attack on the ice with the motorboat. We drove it at full speed into the ice, backed it up and went forward again, and so forth.

In this way we broke about a 200-meter-long channel. Even though we were unable to break our way through the whole span of ice, we were better off with our cargo stored where this channel ended than where it was because at the channel’s end the beach was flat, and there we could later get on the ice with a sled, when the ice on the fjord had become strong enough to carry horses and equipment. It might not be possible to get onto the ice with a sled from the location where Capt. Koch and Larsen had offloaded the first barge load from the Can. If we could not transport our cargo by sea around the cape, we would have to transport it by land. This was nothing to look forward to because some of the pieces of cargo were heavier than what a horse could carry, about 300 kg. Additionally, the route was rocky and steep on the south side. We wanted to avoid having to move this cargo over the cape. We dragged the Can up on the beach and worked intensely to offload its current cargo. Sooner than we expected, the tide had fallen so much that there was no way to float the Can until high tide that night. We had to leave it and the motorboat on dry land. We walked humiliated back to the tent and went to sleep. We justified our carelessness by thinking we could not have crossed the reef until high tide anyway so this caused no harm.

We arose that night and floated the Can and the motorboat. It was so dark that we could not see enough to find the channel, which we had broken through the ice the day before. Even though it would now be iced over again, the ice would be weaker than elsewhere. We had to return to the tent and we slept the sleep of the righteous until dawn.

At daybreak the three of them, Capt. Koch, Larsen, and Wegener, intended to fetch the boats so that we could load the cargo onto the Can before the day’s high tide. I remained at the tent because the horses were more uneasy from the cold than usual. They shivered and looked uncomfortable. I had just fed the horses when the companions returned and told me of their misfortune. The motorboat was broken and had sunk. They had no sooner started breaking the ice in the channel, when a large hole broke open in the bow of the boat and it flooded. Larsen thought of the great idea to close the cooling water intake on the outside of the boat but open the discharge pipe and then let the motor draw its cooling water from inside the boat which it then discharged out. This did not work for long, the sea water in the boat kept rising, until the flywheels splashed water over both boards. This, however, gave them enough time to get back to land and they escaped from the boat without having to wade too much. From where they left the boat, only the top of the motor and the front of the bow were visible. This was the end of our travels by sea. We had to accept settling down for a while and wait for the ice to become strong enough on the fjord so that we could traverse it with horses and cargo laden sleds.

It was not necessary to sit and do nothing. We had lots of work to do at Cape Stop, namely moving the first cargo load from the Can north over the cape, to where we had put the second load ashore. Also, far north at the glacier tongues of Storstrømmen were 16 bales of hay, which we Wegener had left behind. We had to fetch and bring them to the mouth of Henning Valley, where we had left another 16 bales of hay.

On September 15th, we left to fetch the hay. We had next to no load on the horses and they traced our tracks easily northwards. When we came north to the valley at Blåbærfjeldet we could ride fast in many places. Even though we had a storm blowing against us and 5–6 degrees of frost, we felt good on the horses. Capt. Koch told us how he felt invigorated by getting on horseback after all this back and forth icebreaking with the motorboat. “I think it may have been luck that we broke that board in the boat’s hull, because it gave us an earnest way to get rid of that dam... cough machine,” he said.

At about 5 PM we arrived north in the valley where Wegener and I had camped twice. Here, as before, were many hares. Larsen remained with the tent. He was supposed to pitch the tent, shoot a hare and prepare hare steak for dinner, before we arrived back from the north with the hay. When we returned there lay two dead hares outside the tent and Larsen had just started flaying the third inside the tent. It was then 8 o’clock, so the steak would be served late. We stopped thinking about the steak and ate our ordinary food, pemmican. (Pemmican is about ½ parts meat meal, ¼ tallow, and ¼ pea meal. A dried onion or mixed herbs were added to the pot for flavoring. This is both a tasty food and nutritious, it did not get boring like so much food does if eaten continuously for a long time.)

The day after, on our way home, we came upon a single muskox. The desire for fresh meat awoke in us again and Larsen was sent forth to shoot the bull, which he did quickly. We looked forward to our catch but when we started to flay it, we were surprised. It was toothless with old age and smelled strongly of musk. We still took with us most of the muscles, both from thighs and shoulders, also the heart, but the rest we left for the fox. Capt. Koch was on kitchen duty that day and he fried steaks from the meat when we got back to the campsite. When the steak arrived on our plates it turned out to taste so bad that none of us could eat it. Even Glói, who was not used to luxurious meals, refused it. We gained no more from this ox meat.

On Saturday, Sept. 7, we began transporting our cargo north across the cape and made three trips that day. In the evening we built a stable for the horses. The reader may perhaps feel that we were industrious to build a stable for 14 horses in one evening. But the word stable is not used here for a stable in its full meaning, rather, we made a corral from boards and trees, which we brought with us; outside the corral we stacked crates, hay bales and bags of nutritional feed, and we strung a sail over as a roof. This stable was, of course, cold, yet it was much better for the horses than nothing; here they could be loose yet stand close to each other. However, Brownie, which we nicknamed “The Lady”, wanted to show that she was the one who made the law in this stable. The other horses thought it bad to live under her governance but did not dare to revolt against the dictatorship. Sometimes she stood in the middle of the floor, screamed in anger and kicked with her hind legs out to the sides, while simultaneously turning in a circle. The other horses stood as far away as they could but would regularly get hit by her kicks. She was the woman of the house, that Lady.

On Sunday Sept. 8th, we moved the large sleds across and the heaviest pieces, kerosene barrels and crates. Although it is not fitting, I take the permission to translate here a section from Capt. Koch’s book, which describes this transport:

“I had no ideas for how we should get the large sleds, the kerosene barrels and two heavy crates across the ridge, but Vigfús had no doubts. He had us help to load one barrel and a crate on each of the large sleds, he harnessed four horses to the sled and the horses pulled this so easily that it was astonishing. Yet most of the way, which was no longer than about one kilometer, was steep uphill and rocky. If I had not seen this myself, I could not have thought that this type of driving on snowless ground was possible. I almost think that Vigfús enjoyed showing us what the Icelandic horses could really accomplish, because lastly he placed a barrel, which was between half and full of kerosene, sideways in the pack saddle of one horse and had it carry the barrel north over the ridge. Actually, the horse was calm by nature, and so this went well.”

Cargo on horses at Cape Stop.

Using sleds on snowless ground. Vigfús leads the horses.

Kerosene barrel transported by a horse.

The following day we transported what was left. It was 40 horse loads. The cargo had been so smartly prepared right from the start in Denmark, that most of it was in suitable packs, tied together with iron ties, and mostly ready to be loaded on horses. However, the planks for our home were difficult to transport, due to their length. They must not drag along the ground, like was commonly done back home when we moved timber by horses. Since everything was demarcated and ready to be hooked together, that method was out of the question.

Transporting the winter home.

Later in the evening we walked out onto the ice on the fjord and it had become strong enough to hold us. We hoped to be able to drive sleds on the fjord in about two days, if things went well, that is to say if the frost would increase. It was daily about four degrees. The tasks waiting to be done the next day, were to ready the driving equipment, sleds, harnesses and more.

There was another task, which we all thought bad to complete. We needed to reduce the number of horses.[63] They had started to lose so much weight that it seemed inescapable to give them more feed. If we reduced their number by four, the ten, which were left, could have that much more to eat. It was true here as before, that one’s death is another’s life, and even though numbers look good on paper, they don’t suffice when reality arrives.

On Sept. 11th, we loaded four sleds, so that we could test the ice the day after. That trip began no better than us getting two of the horses into the sea up to their mid sides. One had a pack saddle with two kerosene cans as a load. With the other, we had made it 20 fathoms out onto the ice so it swam in deep sea. Our first task was to rescue it, and we let the other one wait for a while. But when we got to it, it had struggled so much in the water that the caps on the cans had burst off and the horse, where it was not submerged in sea water, was all wet from the kerosene. I mention this because the day after we found that the oil had burnt it everywhere. We could never use the horse after this and a few days later we had to put it down. Nothing more came from this day’s drive.

Later that day, while we sat having coffee inside the tent, we heard Glói barking to announce a guest and it would be more than a common visitor, because since we put the horses down, we had been visited daily. At the horse carcasses were usually 10–20 foxes at once. Yet, Glói tried of all his might to defend the carcasses, but his efforts did not suffice. This time it was easily heard that the guest would be of another kind. We dared not but see what went on, and as soon as the first of us stuck his head out of the tent, the others heard him say: A polar bear has arrived! The guns were fast sought out and the poor bear had little time to look around. This evening the heart and more from the bear were on the frying pan and turned out a most delicious dish.

This failed sled-trip showed us that the ice was not yet strong enough to be traversible with horses. But to sit and do nothing was hardly tolerable. Capt. Koch and Wegener headed out on Sept. 14 towards the glacier. They wanted to explore the glacier edge at the bottom of Borgfjord to find where it would be most approachable to get up onto the glacier. Their next plan was to cross the glacier tongue to Queen Louise Land and they were not expected back until a week later. Meanwhile, Larsen and I were to guard our home. We were greatly surprised on the morning of the 17th of Sept., when we had just risen from bed and saw a man approaching over the ice and walking quite fast. The man moved expediently and we recognized this was Capt. Koch. We immediately thought that an accident would have struck Wegener, and soon we heard the truth of it. Capt. Koch was in such a hurry when he arrived, that he had barely greeted us when he turned to me and said, that I had to quickly harness a horse to a sled and come with him to the glacier’s edge, because Wegener lay with broken ribs in the tent. “And please be quick,” he said as he disappeared into the tent with Larsen to drink coffee, which was boiling hot in the pot. After 10 minutes we departed and first then did I get to hear their journey’s story and how the accident happened.

“The ice was still fragile, so that every caution had to be taken to avoid the horses breaking through. I had to frequently go up ahead and test the way with an iron-spiked staff. The distance to the glacier was about 7 km, but during the last 3 km, the ice was stronger, so that we could both ride the sled and drive it with the Lady. She was the most experienced and best at pulling sleds among the horses.” (Vigfús’s diary entry.)

The day they went inland, the ice was weaker than it was today. They had to be extra cautious to avoid falling through open holes, because everything had such similar colors that they saw no difference, until they were right upon the holes. They went to the southwest coast (Lindhard Island[64]) and alongside it. At Cape Jarner[65] a narrow tongue of ice extended from the main ice stream up onto the island. They took the sled between themselves and carried it ashore south of Cape Jarner. From the cape they could see that west of the glacier tongue there was a fjord extending southwest, along Lindhard Island, and they called it Back Fjord,[66] even though it was nothing but an extension of Borgfjord, which was cut off by this glacier tongue from the Storstrømmen ice stream. Back Fjord was iced over as far as they could see. They carried the sled between them down to it and continued southwest to the edge of the glacier. The edge was sheer everywhere, cracked asunder by crevasses, 20–30 meter tall and impossible to ascend. The farther they traveled southwest, the glacier was more cracked and torn. Bistrup ice stream pushed with all its enormous power, which no human thought can get close to measuring with horse powers. Icebergs stood everywhere out of the fjord and bore witness to recent glacier advances. They felt certain that the glacier had not advanced after frost arrived.

The glacier wall. Koch is in the middle of the picture.

At one of the icebergs, they saw a trail of blood and thought to see what could be the cause, and they saw, about 30 meters further up on the island, where a polar bear feasted on a large seal. A raven and a fox sat on either side of the bear, and wanted to be invited guests at the bear’s table. With a look of his eyes he let them know, that he alone was due what he had earned, and that he could not feed such sneaky beggars with a dear dish such as warm seal meat and blubber. He barely acknowledged Capt. Koch and Wegener, just looked back once and continued dining. They continued their journey farther in along the fjord, which narrowed greatly, but after about one hour they had to return because the fjord was ice-free due to a current, which was there. They headed north again. When they passed the location, where the polar bear was eating, they saw it lying there flat on its legs, with the seal carcass underneath, sound asleep. The raven and the fox were gone, they probably became tired of waiting and figured it would be better to try and catch their own meals for themselves. They said the bear was not hungry when it took its nap.

On the north side of Back Fjord were three small islets. They went there and put up a tent. They were not visited by the bear during the night, although their respective night camps were close to each other. The morning after they continued farther north; they carried the sled over land at Cape Jarner and followed the glacier wall northwards. Its height increased along this way and it was everywhere about 35–40 meters high. Just about one kilometer north of Cape Jarner, a gully, or a tiny valley, cut into the glacier wall. This gully was about 400 meters long and 60 m. wide and lay towards the northwest into the glacier. The gully floor was at the front only about one meter higher than the level of the ice on the fjord, but increased the further up the gully you went, and the last 60–70 meters of the gully were a steep slope. Intersecting the slope was a deep glacier crevasse, about 0.7 m. wide. It lay along the entire southwestern side of the gully and into the sea. Three other glacier crevasses crossed the gully, they were all shallow, but much wider than the uppermost crevasse and there was frozen sea water at their bottoms. Capt. Koch felt that, if there was no other place to choose, it was possible to get up onto the glacier here by bridging the crevasses and hewing a path up the steep ice slope. They left the tent and the sled and continued along the glacier wall. North at Glacier Island they made it up onto the glacier, but it was so cracked and torn asunder that it was impassable. They tried to reach farther onto the glacier, but then the accident occurred to Wegener. He fell backwards and came down on his side, so that his two lowest ribs broke. Capt. Koch had to leave him behind, while he fetched the sled at the gully. This took him at least two hours. He did not dare to leave him unarmed and gave him the rifle, because everywhere you could expect a polar bear or wolves. He himself had a large iron-spiked staff for defense if he were to be attacked. On the way, many worries crossed his mind, and I do not intend to try and describe those. But everything went well. After just over two hours, he had returned with the sled and a sleeping bag and Wegener felt good considering. He got Wegener into the sleeping bag on the sled, headed back and reached the tent in the glacier gully, where they spent the night. “This morning I had to leave him behind, and that without a gun, so he has nothing to defend himself, if a polar bear were to approach him. He is inescapably the bear’s prey,” said Capt. Koch.

We had arrived close to the glacier edge and in a short while we would see the tent in the gully. Wegener was in luck, his condition was beyond hopes in the sleeping bag inside the tent. We lit the primus and had some food. We asked Wegener what he would have done if a polar bear would have come. He pulled up a book of matches from the sleeping bag and said right away: “I was going to do what I had been told, that a Norwegian man had once done, which is to light all the matches on fire and throw them straight in the bear’s face. I was told that this advice had saved the man, the bear ran away. Thankfully, no bear came to me, so I did not need the Norwegian’s advice. I doubt it would have been enough for me, because I am a German, but not a Norwegian.” He fell silent for a little while, but then he said: “I cannot deny that many thoughts have come to me during these 5 hours, which I have lain here and waited for you. But the most uncomfortable weight on my mind, was when I heard something heavy and yet such a high-pitched crunching sound, and lastly, I heard something fall and strike the ice wall on the way down. I felt this had to be west of the tent and I thought the glacier was advancing forth. But it has probably not been that, because it only lasted for one to two minutes. After that I noticed nothing, until I heard you.”

When we came out of the tent, Capt. Koch immediately noticed that the southwestern wall of the gully had cracked from the top edge to the bottom and been split apart, so that the crevasse was about ½ meter wide. This was just about in the middle of the gully. From this originated the sound, which Wegener heard. It was no surprise, that this had woken some apprehension in his mind, when he was helpless and without assistance.

We drove back with Wegener lying in the sleeping bag with us on the sled and at dusk we arrived home at the tent on Cape Stop. When light had come the morning after, he was examined as closely as three non-medically informed men could. He was swollen on the left side of the spine and two ribs were surely broken, according to what Capt. Koch thought. Nothing else could be seen. Koch rubbed him on his entire left side with iodine ointment, placed a good-sized wisp of tar-hemp on top, then cotton wool, and lastly ordinary bandage. This medical treatment had to do, whether it was suitable or not, because here, north in the Greenlandic wilderness, there were no other alternatives. It proved good because Wegener improved sooner than expected. If that can be attributed to this medical procedure or his strong physical health, must be answered by more knowledgeable men, I lead my horse past that point. —

Wegener as our patient.

We had discovered that the ice on the fjord had become strong enough that it could be traversed with horses and cargo. We had lain long enough at Cape Stop in somewhat of a state of inactivity. We loaded up six sleds, two of them with nearly 1000 kg each and the other four with 250 kg each. The morning after (Sept. 15th) was when we would head out with this towards the glacier, but our luck would not allow it. We had traveled about one kilometer from the tent when a blinding blizzard struck and we were thankful for getting back home to the tent and stayed there that day. A short while after we entered the tent, Larsen mentioned that this was his birthday. Capt. Koch left the tent and returned a short time later with one bottle of frozen champagne, 8 cigars and ½ kg of chocolate to celebrate. Of course we placed the pot of chocolate on the primus, but the champagne bottle was hung up in the ridge of the tent to thaw. It had, however, only been there a short while when it expelled its cap. We were quick to cut it down and poured what was left into our coffee mugs, clinked with the birthday child, wished it all the best on its newly begun 27th year and drank to him, emptying our cups. After that came the chocolate and the cigars. —

The morning after brought good weather and we headed out early. But we made slow progress. A thin layer of snow lay on the ice and salty water had seeped through the ice, so it was covered in slush. Due to the saltiness, the sleds sat half stuck in the slush, so we had to settle for bringing three sleds, both of the large sleds, with two horses harnessed to each, and one ski-sled, but even though it only had about ¼ load on it, compared to what was on the large sleds, there were two horses pulling it too and Larsen was their driver. It took us until about half-way through the fifth hour to get to the glacier, and yet the distance was only about 15 km. In some sense it was natural that it would take us long, because both the sleighing conditions could hardly be worse, due to the saltiness, and the ice was so fragile, that it groaned and creaked the whole way. This sounded uncomfortable to our ears, and doubtless this had disturbing effects on the horses. They were, therefore, much more reluctant to continue. About my horses I can say that they were heavy on the reins. I had to walk ahead of them and lead them by the reins, because I had to test the ice with a spiked staff. When we made it to the glacier gully, we bridged the first two crevasses, and continued with the cargo to the third. To bridge it was too much work at this time, so we unloaded the sleds and returned home to Cape Stop.

Driving the sleds from Cape Stop to the glacier gully.

Before we started bridging the two uppermost crevasses and carve a path into the ice slope itself, we wanted to complete moving all our cargo over here to one place, and on the 21st, 22nd, and the 23rd of Sept. we continued taking two sleds with cargo each day to the glacier. On the 24th of Sept. we took 5 sleds, then we brought the tent and Wegener, who was still unwell but on a good way to recovery. We had two sleds remaining on Cape Stop, or about 2000 kilograms of weight. We made a stable for the horses and were fortunate with a location close to our tent where we could mostly carve it out of the ice. We only had to heighten the side-walls by stacking one layer of food crates on top of each wall, but the gable walls were tall enough. The roof was made as before out of sails, and we could make a trough for the horses to eat from, so none of the hay would be spoiled. All holes in the walls were blocked by ice or snow and the horses were comfortable inside despite 10–20 degrees of frost each day.

Two days before, we had taken the horse,[67] which had been burned by the kerosene, up here and shot it at the topmost crevasse. We had the clever idea to let it freeze and roll it into the crevasse, where it would get stuck between the walls and in that way form a base for us to bridge the crevasse. To fill up the entire crevasse was not doable and bringing large chunks of ice from a long distance would be difficult. With the horse we wanted to save us from those hardships. It is possible, that some may find this a strange use of a horse, but it was for important needs and would have surely been of great use, if everything had succeeded as planned.

The stable in the glacier gully.

When the stable construction was done, we made ourselves as comfortable as possible inside the tent and celebrated king Christian X’s[68] birthday with champagne, chocolate and cigars. None of us remembered for sure if he was born on the 24th or the 26th of September, because we had neither an Icelandic nor a Danish calendar with us. However, we had an English sailor’s calendar, but it did of course not reveal when the king had entered this world. On the other hand, it did not matter if we celebrated the king’s birthday one day early or late, but rather that we did so in an appropriate way. It meant everything to us to create variety in our daily life, which otherwise was lonely and monotonous.

Capt. Koch writes in his diary in the tent (Koch, 1919, p. 62).

The morning after, Larsen and I went to Cape Stop to fetch that, which was left, and leave a letter with a description of our travels until now and the plan, until we reached so far, as to have built our house. With this we attached a drafted map of Borgfjord and the ice stream and the location in Queen Louise Land, where we had intended to stay during the winter. We had good hopes of being able to cross the ice stream, since we had found a place, where we could get up onto it.

At our campground at Cape Stop the foxes had held a dance that night, this was best seen from how much the snow was trampled all around. Everything, which they could budge, had been dragged by them. We had left the polar bear fur inside a crate, but an open one. This they had consumed so completely that the only visible remains were a few flecks of hair on the snow. The bear’s legs had also disappeared but the head remained in the crate untouched. They had rolled the crate about and could have given the head the same treatment as the other contents. Somehow, they had thought it best to let the head be. If this was because they were afraid of the bear’s face, despite it being dead, is not easy to tell, but Larsen stood fast on that being the cause.

Us Larsen were to build a cairn on top of the cape and leave the letter there. We simplified the cairn construction. We took an empty kerosene barrel and carried it up onto the cape, broke out of it one of the ends and filled it with rocks, let a boat oar stand up from its middle, and using a steel wire, we tied the tin box to it, but in it was a flask with the papers, which were listed before. After completing this we took what we had left, placed it on the sleds and returned home to the glacier gully.

The message barrel in 1989. Picture taken during an expedition by the then Greenland Geological Survey (d. Grønlands geologiske undersøgelse) (Higgins, 2010, Figure 10).

While we were away, Capt. Koch had started building the road up the glacier slope, but Wegener was in such good form that he could cook food and warm coffee inside the tent.

The following morning, Capt. Koch and I went to Henning Valley to fetch the hay, which was there. It was cold that morning, northern wind and 16-degree frost. We prepared ourselves well, put on reindeer furs over our other clothes, sat on the sled and drove north, because the ice was now so strong that it was safe to travel straightly. When we had come far enough that we saw north to the valley’s mouth, we saw many dark spots on the ice in the fjord, which we did not expect. When we came closer, we saw that these were our hay bales, which were supposed to be stacked high on top of a tall gravel ridge. A polar bear had investigated our property and had entertained himself for a day with the hay bales, because none of them were in the place, where they should have been. Thirteen lay here and there on the gravel ridge, 17 were on the ice, but two were nowhere to be seen, and neither were two bags of nutritional feed (100 kg). Yes, here lay cotton rags from the packaging of the feed, the bear seemed to have enjoyed it and eaten it all, but he must have stored the hay bales elsewhere than in his belly and we should be able to find them. We started tracking the bear’s path on the ice. About 50 meters from land, we found one of the bales. It had been shoved into a hole, which had been in the ice, but now it was frozen and there was no way to retrieve it. About 200 meters further from land was a large iceberg, and the tracks led there. Sometimes the bear had thrown the bale far to the side and jumped onto it, pitched it high into the air and thrown himself at it, like a cat treats a mouse. This game had continued to the iceberg. (The sea was still not frozen around the iceberg itself and that was due to movement caused by the tides). When the bear arrived there, he pulled the bale with him into the sea, brought it back up on the other side of the iceberg, there he dragged the bale, pouring wet, behind him on a short circle back to the iceberg, where he drowned the bale for good. The rope from the bale lay there on the edge of the ice, it was the only thing, which remained.

We were 200 kg poorer in feed for the horses than we had thought. If only the shameless bear had still been here or if he would visit us in the glacier gully, then the criminal should get to pay for the feed with interest and interest on the interest, i.e. with his own meat. Judging by the tracks, the bear was large and evidently 400 kg of heft. We had at this point already taught the horses to eat meat, and they liked no meat more than bear meat with the fat. It never became as hard frozen as ox meat or horsemeat and gave good nutrition. But he would surely take care of himself and not come near the danger, that scoundrel. —

VIII. The Glacier Calves. We abandon wintering in Queen Louise Land

The days of 27th and 28th of September, we worked vigorously at building a drivable road out of the glacier gully and to bridge the glacier crevasses. In the evening of the 28th, Capt. Koch and I walked a short distance onto the glacier. Nearest to the edge, it was cracked and rugged. It was possible to detour around most of the crevasses, but a few would have to be bridged and the surroundings improved to be passable for a sled and we thought the work was not excessive. When we reached farther onto the glacier it was even rougher. Endless meltwater channels cut into the surface. They lay from the northwest to the southeast and were perpendicular to our direction. Even though they were not deep, about a meter and a half, they were a bad hindrance. What was worse, everywhere between these waterways were deep cauldrons formed into the glacier, with an ice lid on top, but completely empty below. If a man or horse were to step on an ice lid, it would break and the man or horse would fall. To note, these cauldrons were not deep, one meter or about that, but they caused discomfort and the horses became so fearful that it was barely possible to urge them onwards.

I cannot give a more detailed description of these holes*) except that they were as if uncountable barrels had been placed here together, upright with a lid placed lightly on top, which fell into the barrel and broke, however slightly it was touched. In his book about the South Pole Expedition,[69] Roald Amundsen mentions that his group entered a region of ice, which was like this, and he says, that it was arduous to traverse it with dogs and sleds, because of how often the dogs fell into these cauldrons, and it is further indicated by the name they gave to this region, “The Devil’s Ballroom”, how burdensome they felt it was to cross.

As we moved farther onto the glacier, these cauldrons disappeared, but they covered a nearly 5 km wide area. Appearing next were deep valleys with steep and tall ridges in between. Upon reaching them we returned. We thought for certain that it would be possible to find a path through them, we also saw that this area was so wide, that it was too late in the day to explore it in detail. We rode to the tent in the glacier gully and when we met our companions, we felt sure that the trip across the glacier to Queen Louise Land would not be as easy as we had thought until now, we had seen enough to know that. We lay down in our sleeping bags less joyful than the evening before. Then our minds had carried us, I think more than half the way, but now it was as if whispered to us that we had many hard difficulties remaining before we arrived in Queen Louise Land, where we had planned to winter. Never had we imagined that the difficulties would be as great as they turned out to be. It was good that it was hidden, what had yet to befall us before we reached there.

The morning after we loaded 6 sleds with the house and various things which went with it, a tent, sleeping bags, cooking equipment and food for us, hay and nutritional feed for the horses for a half-month, because we intended to make our first trip to the glacier. We took the first two ski-sleds up out of the gully. This went acceptably, but we had to harness two horses to each sled. We took one of the large sleds, harnessed four horses to it and started moving up the slope. We made it to the middle or just above the crevasse, where we had used the dead horse as a foundation for the bridge. There the sled fell on its side. We unharnessed the horses, took everything from the sled to set it right, dragged it perpendicular to the slope, constrained it well and loaded it anew. With that we completed one day’s work. The drive had gone worse than we hoped. Was it a premonition for ill?

Gloom hung above us when we walked back to the tent to take a rest after this day’s struggle. The air looked miserable as well, the sky was covered with a thick, dark-gray veil of clouds, there was only a crimson edge by the horizon in the southeast and the moon, which was full, appeared occasionally in the southwest when the northeastern wind tore a gap for it. The frost was 16½ degrees. Since we came to the glacier gully, there had never been such a stormy outlook. Did this foretell a blizzard or something worse? That was for tomorrow to bring to light.

During the day, while we loaded the sleds and got three of them out of the ice gully, it had creaked and crunched in the ice walls on both sides of the gully. We were so used to this, that we did not give it much notice, except we thought it was too prominent that day. Without thinking more about it, we went to bed that night and wore only our underwear in the sleeping bags. We were tired and fell asleep quickly.

During the night I lay as if half-awake in the bag and heard a rumble outside. It was like terrible thunder, as if the air broke apart with an enormous din. I did not realize what was happening, I lay without moving and tried to understand if this was a dream or if I heard this while awake. It was only for a few seconds, which I lay like that, because at this Capt. Koch woke up. He looked at his watch and saw in the moonlight inside the tent that it was half past two. Wegener was also awake and had sat up in the bag, but Larsen was asleep. Koch asked me to open the tent, because I slept that night closest to the tent door. I opened the top three knots on the door and looked out, but I had barely seen out when Capt. Koch had opened the door from below and I half fell through the tent door. My eyes were met with a sight, which I will never forget.

Looking out of the glacier gully before the glacier calving.

Looking up and further into the glacier gully.

Looking out of the glacier gully after the glacier calving.

Half of the ice wall’s front fell and disappeared into the deep, and at the same moment all view out of the gully was blocked. One could only see the ice mountains rolling, each over the other, and the ocean waves rose to appear much higher than all the mountains. A large, black monster came sailing in from the northeast and headed straight for the tent. It seemed to be about 30 meters away. The ice, which the tent stood on, rolled up and down and the sea flooded all the way to the tent’s door. This all occurred simultaneously before our eyes, or at least in a few seconds. Before we knew it, Capt. Koch and I ran at each other’s side up the gully. The bridge over the crevasse, which was just above the tent, was torn asunder when we ran across it, but we paid it no attention, we just continued onwards up the gully until we reached the uppermost crevasse. The bridge was gone and the lower edge of the crevasse was at least one meter lower than the upper edge. We could go no further. We saw the large sled up in the slope above us, on it were a tent, sleeping bags, clothes, primus and more, but I was barefoot in my underwear only. Capt. Koch was also in his underwear but he had brought outer kamiks*) with him, first holding them under his arm, but had put them on. Hellish cold radiated up through my feet, into my body, as could be expected, since that evening the frost had been 16 degrees and was surely not lesser now. But where were Wegener and Larsen? They had been inside the tent when we left, and Wegener, who was not yet healthy after his fall, would surely have needed help to get out of the tent, and Larsen was asleep when we left. But we recalled seeing them both outside the tent when we crossed the crevasse, which was closest to the tent. Why had they not come after us? They did not come, what could cause that? Our thinking was so completely paralyzed that we did not know anything and could not fix our thoughts on anything. Everything ran at untamed speeds through our minds, and no thought could stay still for us to realize what was happening. We only knew that we stood in the middle of a glacier calving. If this would have any deleterious effects on our life or feelings, that did not even enter our thoughts. The only thing, we knew for sure, was that we were at the top of the gully and could continue no farther. We shivered from the cold and our teeth chattered.

The clouds parted for the moon and we saw into the gully. We saw the tent and our companions next to it. We fixated on one thought, to get to the tent, where our clothes were. When we walked into the gully, we found that the movement of the ice reduced, the ice blocks did not roll as terribly, our minds became more at rest and we could start to focus. It became clear to us, how thin of a thread our life had hung by and the chances for us to escape. This did not yet appear in words.

When we arrived at the crevasse, which was right behind the tent and where the bridge was about to be torn asunder when we ran over it, we first realized why Wegener and Larsen had not followed behind us. The bridge was gone and the crevasse had become about 3 meters wide. We stood two and two on each side. I called over to Larsen, asked him to find my kamiks inside the tent and throw them to me, and he did this quickly. Then they threw over to us, a large spiked staff. With it in our hands we managed to get over the crevasse, because many blocks of ice had fallen into it, and we were together again.

The glacier had mostly calmed, only single ice blocks fell and made noise. It was enough to wake within us the thought, what if the glacier would begin working the same calamity, but we hoped it would not. We discussed our options. Wegener wanted to move the tent, but where? There was no way to move it across the crevasse until it was bridged, and tonight that was not possible. “I suggest that,” said Capt. Koch, “we go into the tent, warm up some coffee and drink it.” “I want to first look in on the horses,” I said. “But where is Glói?” asked Larsen. Otherwise he suggested nothing, just remained quiet and calm, as if this commotion had completely passed him by without disturbing his mind in the least.

We called out for Glói, but he did not come. He was, though, used to staying close to us. We called him again. We heard him shrieking from somewhere down in the glacier, but where, we did not know and in the darkness it was not possible to search for him. It had to wait until light, if he were not dead by then.

Larsen and I walked to the stable, but the others went into the tent. The horses stood in a tight group in one corner, as tight as herring in a barrel, and the Lady was calm and quiet as befit the lady of the house. They were frightened but did not otherwise feel ill. Along the southwest wall of the stable, a large crevasse had opened and the stable’s ice wall had fallen into it, but of our seven food crates, which had been stacked highest in the wall, six lay in the trough by the horses, but one was on the floor with them. Here was nothing to be done. We went into the tent to the others and they had lit the primus, so that the coffee arrived soon to remove our shivers. We got in the sleeping bags and slept until daylight, except Larsen went out a few times to call for Glói. Each time, he felt Glói became more distant, and at last he could no longer be heard. When daylight came and we were out of the tent, Glói was there, lying in his usual spot at the tent door. We had gotten our Glói back.

We went to inspect the consequences of the glacier calving. A full third of our cargo had fallen into a crevasse, but we saw that we could get it all back up. A block of ice, which would weigh a few tons, was at the tent’s rear gable. It had fallen from the gully wall and struck a hay bale, otherwise it would have landed on the tent, flattened it onto us, and naturally crushed everything which it hit. About 200-meter length of the gully wall had collapsed and about 400 meters out to both sides. Seventeen new icebergs had broken from the glacier, in addition to an uncountable number of smaller ice blocks. This had all run about one kilometer into the fjord and broken the sea ice in a much larger area, although it was about one meter thick.

Our cargo in the crevasse.

It was evident that a higher hand had been with us, more powerful than the forces of nature, because we stood here, unharmed in every way, with 9 horses and all our cargo. Although some of our cargo had fallen into the crevasse, it was repairable, it just took some time to get it back. The other was more of an amazement, that we with all our belongings did not disappear into the deep, which would never have returned our earthly remains. The power of god was made clear to us, his all-knowing hand spared us from death.

When we had looked over the consequences, we started right away on retrieving the cargo, which had fallen into the crevasse, and it took us about four hours. We started repairing the path out of the gully, where it was damaged, and bridged the crevasses anew. The ice block at our tent gable became useful, we broke it apart into manageable pieces and rolled them into the crevasses. We did not stop work that evening until we had made a drivable path up, and additionally, had transported out of the gully all the materials for our winter home and some of the food, in total about 3000 kg of weight. After that we lay down to rest in the tent in the gully, but we dared not undress at all. Some discomfort passed through us each time we heard a block of ice fall, although it had not had any effect on us before. We added up how many days it would take to move all our cargo up, because we had to sleep equally many nights here in the gully. We sat upright for unusually long in our sleeping bags but the cold drove us to lay down and at last, sleep and fatigue took over and we slept in one stretch until 5 o’clock that morning.

For the next three days, we drove cargo out of the gully and in the evening of Oct. 4, we were finished. Last that night, we moved the tent onto the glacier. We located our cargo and the tent a full 800 meters past the glacier’s edge. However, we had to keep the horses in the gully, because we could not build a stable over them on the glacier and letting them stand out in the open was impossible, since the frost was around or greater than 20 degrees[70] each day.

On the 5th of Oct., we prepared ourselves for heading out the following morning across the ice stream over to Queen Louise Land and we loaded 6 sleds. We departed early in the morning of Oct. 6th. But our day’s trip became shorter than planned because when we had covered a distance of about one kilometer, three of the six sleds were so broken that there was no way to continue further. In a bad mood we unharnessed the horses from the sleds, left the sleds behind, and took the horses back home to the tent and sat workless for the rest of the day. We did not like that the ice stream had arrested us, and everything pointed to the ice stream keeping us imprisoned until next spring. The days shortened at such a rate that we nearly saw the daily difference. There would only be about 20 days left before the blessed sun would stop rising above the horizon. After that the month of November would come with the long night, eternally long, which did not end until sometime in January. God knows that night would be long here on the ice.

When we awoke the morning after, we had accepted this and joyfully headed out to select a place for our home. We chose a location on a small ridge on the ice stream, about 5 km northwest from the gully. With our home location selected, we started transporting the building materials to there and began preparing for the foundation where our house would stand. This took two days, because first and foremost, we dug the house about a half meter into the ice and that was considerable labor, since the building was 6.6 m long and 5 m wide. We could only use two sleds for the transport, because the others were broken. It was first on Oct. 9, that we could erect the house. That day the frost was 24 degrees, and it felt cold while working, but our desire to have a roof over our heads made the labor lighter. We felt tent-life had become tiresome, mostly because how much hoarfrost accumulated on the inside of the tent. However little that we touched the tent, the hoarfrost fell and perhaps landed inside an open sleeping bag. The sleeping bag would become drenched from this, and when to this was added, a large spot of rime on whoever’s back who had caused this unfortune because usually it was whoever had to go out to do his business in the night, it was annoying. During the day, we were more careful about touching the roof of the tent, because none of us had any desire for a shower in weather not warmer than what it was now on a daily basis and where the home was as small and cramped as it was here. There were about 5 feet to the tent’s ridge and the floor-space was just enough for the sleeping bags. Although the bath was perhaps needed for cleanliness sake, regarding that I make no comments, we did not want to have anything to do with it.

“Borg” under construction.

We did not delay using the house, because that night we slept in it, although it was not fully constructed. But we could not put the horses under roof until the following evening, when we had reduced their number by three, so that we had six horses left. Later, one more would follow the same route as the others,[71] when we had completed moving all our cargo to the house, from where we had left it after transporting it out of the gully.

IX. At “Borg”

Our winter home, or the house, which we had brought with us, was named Borg,[72] after Borg á Mýrum, the old estate of the distinguished Mýrar family lineage, who created such a great and famous history, that it will be kept among the nation’s literature as long as the art of literature remains.

Unfortunately, a large and famous family lineage will never arise from this Borg, which would make it as famous as its namesake; this place is not suitable for that, but it has earned a history, not a family story, but the winter story of four men. This story has already been written by two scholars.[73] I will give an overview of the daily life. The others have covered the scientific, but it is so distant from myself that I am but a blank page in that area. It will be difficult enough for me to describe our daily life.

The house was, as I have already explained, 6.6 m long and 5 m wide, separated by two intersecting walls into three sections. In one end was a small storage unit, a living room as our apartment, and in the other end an extension for the horses. We could enter the stable from inside our living room and the storage was used as a anteroom. At the north end of the living room was a small room, where it was possible to develop photographs.

The floorplan of our winter home: “Borg”.

In the stable was to be space for six horses with a trough for 3 and 3, at each end, but empty space in the middle (horse stall) which could be walked around in. Doors were on both ends of the walkway, one into the living room, and the other to the outside. In the living room were four benches, one in each corner, padded mattresses were on top of their lids and angled pillows, to have under the head, because the benches were to be both seats and beds for sleeping. Under the benches was supposed to be storage for various things, but it could never be used, because that space quickly filled up with ice. The house was made in Denmark and was built from panels, which were hooked together, but every two panels were connected on hinges. Each panel was constructed in this way: A wood frame 1x1 m, made of two support beams and four crossbeams with plywood nailed to the frame on both sides; however, on both ends of the building, where there was neither a stable nor storage, these walls were doubled with a 30 cm space in between, a double-paned window was on the south gable. The roof was, like the walls, made from panels and built in the same way; it was held up by two long crossbeams which were fastened together in the middle with a strong hinge, so that they could be folded together while being transported. All this was weak wood and unstable, but we strengthened the house by piling snow walls up against it on the outside, but we had to clear snow from the roof daily. For heating we had a kerosene stove, which stood in the middle of the floor, and for lighting we had two oil lamps, 30-line burners, which hung from the ceiling. The temperature was sufficient when these heaters burned, because often there were 20 degrees[74] inside in the evening, but unfortunately 12 degrees of frost[75] in the morning when we got up.

Wegener in his corner in the living area in Borg.

Larsen in his corner.

Vigfús in his corner.

The time to wake up was at half past five each morning for three of us, the fourth was allowed to lie in the sleeping bag for a half hour more, and we called this to have “husbandry”. The division of duties was such: One should go out, shovel snow from the front door, clear hoarfrost that had formed on the air vents on both our living room and the stable, (this was also necessary every evening before going to bed), shovel manure from the stable, and lastly feed the horses. Another should sweep the floor, clean the kerosene stove and the lamps, fill them with oil, fill a bucket with ice and hang it on a hook over the stove, because that is how we melted ice for cooking. The third should cook oatmeal porridge, warm coffee or tea and have it ready by 6 o’clock, because then we should all be at the table. All this went in sequence because Capt. Koch shoveled the stable during his morning, just like the rest of us. Yet, this would change but I will get to that later.

The weather got worse, blizzards often every other or third day and frost about 20–30 degrees. Most of our cargo lay down by the glacier’s edge and we used every available moment to go there one or two trips. Larsen and I were most often working on that, we took the large sleds with two horses harnessed to each and usually transported about 450 kg on each. The driving conditions were usually difficult except if our tracks remained from day to day. The ski sleds could not be used because all six of them were broken, and there was no time to repair them. On Oct. 26th we had moved all our cargo to the house and were mostly prepared for the wintering, we had installed instruments for weather monitoring, its enclosure, a windspeed meter and a precipitation gauge. That day the frost was 32 degrees.[76]

The weather station. From left: Thermometers, bamboo sticks for wayfinding in a blizzard, precipitation gauge, windspeed meter.

We had weighed all the horse feed, which we had. It was 45 bags of nutritional feed, 49 kg each, or totaling 2205 kg. Of hay, we had 78 bales remaining, which weighed a total of 3238 kg. It was unavoidable to reduce the number of horses and feed only 5, because the feed plan, which had been made originally, could not hold; 2 kg of hay and 2 kg of nutritional feed was insufficient. We had also suffered losses when the bear ate the nutritional feed, as has already been described. Furthermore, after we moved into the house and while our cargo lay by the glacier’s edge, the fox had torn a few nutritional feed bags and eaten from them, although I expect more was lost than what it ate. The fox was a daily guest home at the house and tried to find whatever she thought edible. We tried to block her access to the nutritional feed bags by stacking them up against one side of the house with hay bales both around and on top, and everything covered with kerosene cans. But this did not work perfectly because she dug herself down through the snow under the hay bales.

We also had four carcasses of horsemeat about 100-meters from the house and we had planned to use them as additional feed supplement for the horses. The foxes got to this as well, even though Glói, our dog, tried to put up defenses during the day. That game was unequal, they were many and he was alone, and he also preferred to stay in the warmth with us than be outside in the cold.

October 27. The last day we would see the sun this year. The weather was bright and beautiful, but the frost was 35 degrees. I could not refrain from including a short clause from the diary. It describes my thoughts, despite its limitation:

“The sun never arose high enough for us to see it whole, her lower half was hidden by mountain peaks, and lastly we saw her as a long line of light down by the ice field. We sat at the table and looked out the window for the last 20 minutes, which she said goodbye. It is a time of darkness, which now begins, until the middle of February when she will bring the light again. We celebrate her arrival, we carry the hope of her return in our minds, just like we hold the hope that we will return home to our native lands and friends.”

That day we began preparations for a trip to Queen Louise Land, but not with horses, rather, we three, Capt. Koch, Dr. Wegener, who felt reasonably well after the accident, and I, would drive by ourselves. This trip was to take 5–8 days and we were to start the next morning if weather permitted. Larsen was to remain home and take care of the horses and the weather station. When we came out the following morning, the weather outlook was greatly changed, the cloud cover was thick, the frost had reduced from 35 degrees down to 8 degrees, the barometer had dropped considerably and pointed to a storm. We did not think it was right to start a trip with uncertain weather and remained at home. The weather, however, held good until evening, there was only a 10-degree frost. We felt it was like stepping into summer heat.

The next morning the weather was good and we departed at 8½ AM. On the sled we had about 200 kg of weight. The driving conditions were rather bad, we sank into the snow up to mid calves and the sled was so heavy to pull, that it was like pulling it over snowless ground. After a full 7 hours journey we had only gone 7 kilometers. We came upon a large riverbed, which cut into the ice. It was about 30 meter deep and about 80 m wide and we saw no way of crossing it. Daylight was mostly gone and we pitched our tent. At 8 o’clock the morning after we continued and moved north along the riverbed about one kilometer. There we could cross it, but we had to carve footholds into the ice wall to climb up. When we were up, the conditions did not improve. In our path were steep and tall ice ridges, which lay from the northwest to the southeast and were perpendicular to our direction. We had to carve steps in them to get up and often also to get down. We worked on this until dark and the distance, which we traveled in 8 hours, was barely 3 km. We put up a tent, dead tired, and waited for the next day. We started shortly before 8 o’clock in the morning, but we left the sled and tent and other luggage, and only brought with us an ice axe and rope and a little food, which we kept in our pockets.

The main direction was towards a small mountain peak[77] that seemed to stand out of the glacier, which lay from the west through Queen Louise Land. At first the ice ridges were the same as the day before, but after about two-hour journey we entered a reasonably traversable glacier area. That only lasted for an hour, until an even rougher area began, which we at last managed to cross, and we reached the glacier’s edge. A lake was there, long and narrow, lying up against the glacier.[78] Of course, the lake was frozen and lay up against the mountain, which we had headed for and which had appeared to stand out of the glacier. That glacier extended from Queen Louise Land, but did not merge with the ice streams, which are called Storstrømmen and Bistrup’s glacier, and we had just crossed the former. We walked across the lake and up onto the mountain peak, which was about 250 meters above its surroundings. It seemed to us that the glacier, which extended from Queen Louise Land, was about 200 meters away from the peak. There was a good view from the peak and it appeared that southeast along Bistrup’s glacier, was a narrow glacier plain where it might be possible for us to travel with horses and sleds. We returned to the tent and arrived at about 6½ that evening in complete darkness. The day after, we headed home, mostly after a fruitless journey, but a lot of hardship. It was November 1st and Dr. Wegener’s birthday.

X. New Difficulties and an Accident

While we were away, Larsen shot four foxes, all white. He left them lying outside that night. The morning after he took them inside and hung them over the stove to thaw them, so that he could remove their fur, and went out, but apparently longer than intended. When he came back inside, so much smoke had come from the stove that he could barely see in front of his hands. The foxes had not gone unaffected and had become blue-gray. Probably he did not like this color, or he did not trust it would be durable. In his anger at this mishap, he threw the foxes up on the roof and there they lay for a few days. One night there were unusually many foxes visiting and the morning after, when he looked, the tails of three carcasses had been gnawed off at the trunk and the tails were gone. The next morning after that, the fourth was also without a tail and the tail was gone. Later we found the tails in hollows between the hay bales.

The day became so short that there was not much daylight to speak of and we realized it was impossible to go out on a new long journey from the house. Hence in the morning of Nov. 3rd, we went on a ski trip in the direction of Bistrup’s glacier. When we had gone a 7–8 km distance from the house, we came upon the same riverbed that we had found before, but here the ice wall was even higher and steeper so that we found no place where we could cross. On the other side of the riverbed, the glacier seemed flat and easily traversable. This could not be depended upon because the light at noon was barely more than half twilight, and the glacier could hide crevasses and other hindrances, which would not become apparent until we tried to pass. We had to return, not knowing much more than when we left. On the way home Capt. Koch fell from the skis, he swelled up around the knee joint and did not move about much that day.

In the morning, Nov. 5, the weather outlook was good. Capt. Koch and Larsen went back to the glacier’s edge and intended to measure its exact elevation above sea level. They left at around ½9 o’clock and it was totally dark. Dr. Wegener and I stayed home.

We had until now lived on travel food, where pemmican was the main ingredient. We were about to settle down for a while and we were to start on our winter diet. It was in other boxes, which were marked A, B and C. They weighed 55 kg each and each box should last for one week. In them was a variety of good meals, such as calf steak with green peas for lunch on Sundays. We should fetch three of these boxes, each with its own alphabetical letter, open them and organize our food stock for the week. We were on our hands and knees on the floor and had sorted cans of food all around. Suddenly Larsen stormed inside with the news that Capt. Koch had fallen into a crevasse out by the glacier’s edge, about 5 km away. We responded immediately, dressed in a hurry, took the skis and I took the rope ladder, and with that, Dr. Wegener and I left. Larsen was to follow with a sled and sleeping bag. It took us about half an hour to get to the accident’s location. We slid one end of the rope ladder into the glacier crevasse, drove a spiked staff into the ice and fastened it there. We called to Koch, who sang despite the cold, but the frost was 32 degrees.

A drawing of the glacier crevasse and the position of Capt. Koch.

The crevasse, which Capt. Koch fell into.

I climbed down, but at that moment Larsen arrived and had brought a rope. I took one end of the rope with me. When down there, I tied the rope under Koch’s arms, then Wegener and Larsen pulled him up, but I lifted him from below, while I climbed up the rope ladder, and protected him from getting hit by the ice wall.

Capt. Koch had been in the crevasse for one hour and 20 minutes. We got him into the sleeping bag on the sled and hurried back home to the house. When we arrived home and his clothes were removed, we found that his right leg was broken above the ankle joint, he had a wound on his forehead from striking the ice wall during the fall, furthermore, he had frostbite on his left leg. He eventually escaped well from the frostbite; he only lost the toenail from his big toe. However, we had to tackle the difficult task of splinting the fracture and I did that, following his directions and with the other’s assistance. It was hardest to not have a bed for him to lie in but have to pull him out of a sleeping bag and get him back inside it, whenever he needed anything.

This all worked out better than we could hope, and on the day before Christmas he was with us for the first time at the table, sitting in his seat.

Capt. Koch, a patient at Borg.

This was not the only misfortune from his fall into the crevasse. He had held in his hand an angle meter (theodolite), but it is an instrument that travelers on land use in a similar way as seamen use a sextant to know where they are located. Koch had dropped it in the fall. He himself had landed on a ledge in the glacier crevasse, which we later measured to be at about 12 meters below the surface. It had snowed into the crevasse before its opening became covered by snow, and a lot of snow had fallen down when Capt. Koch fell. The angle meter had landed somewhere in the snow.

For the next three days, that is Nov. 6–8, there was a heavy snowstorm, frost and accumulation of snow so that nothing could be done outside except necessities. In the morning of the 9th of Nov., the weather was bright and we three, Dr. Wegener, Larsen and I, went to the glacier’s edge to try and search in the crevasse. By then a lot of snow had been blown into it. Larsen rappelled down, but the conditions were bad, pitch-black, as could be expected, since now it was dark for 24 hours a day and because the crevasse became narrower the deeper one went. His search brought no results. Dr. Wegener went down into the crevasse, but also without success. The morning after we went there again and brought flashlights with us, so that the darkness should not prove an hindrance. But after a short time in the crevasse, the flashlight died and could not be revived again by any means. The other flashlights, which we had brought, went the same way. We returned home, but a third attempt was made with a carbide-lamp. We brought water in a thermal flask to let it drip on the carbide and the light should glow. But after about a half hour in the crevasse, the light was dead. After coming back up the lamp was checked—oh my, by golly, the water was frozen on the lamp! The frost was 34 degrees. We had struggled hard without success. The theodolite was completely lost and we had no other. We could barely have a worse mishap. We could not even know if our watches ran true, nor could we determine our position on the westerly longitude or northerly latitude. This did not bode well for our intended crossing of the inland ice sheet next spring.

We let neither despair nor idleness get hold of us. Capt. Koch was, though, stuck in bed, or rather in the sleeping bag, so that he could not participate in our labors. Weather observations had been taken since Oct. 26 and more research had to begin.

Like I have mentioned before, we had meat from four horses lying on the ice a short distance from the house. We had thought to use this as supplemental feed for the horses. After the darkness fell upon us, the fox sought it out so aggressively, that we figured it would turn to nothing if we could not save it into a building. I will mention, so that the reader can have some idea of the number of foxes, that Larsen sometimes went out with a rifle and shot into the darkness in the direction of the carcasses, and we reckon he shot four foxes in total, even though it was impossible to aim because, at most, one could see four or five meters out. We started building a snow hut in front of the door to our home and we split it into two sections with a wall in between. One section was a walkway into the house, but the other was storage for the meat and more, and we strung a piece of canvas for a door. Innermost, at the gable of the snow hut walkway, we placed a box in the snow wall, and prepared a place there for Glói with hay and skins, and he should keep guard there at night. During the day he was inside with us.

One of the things, we placed in the snow hut with the meat, was the latest fox, which had been struck by a bullet from Larsen. The second morning after this work was done, one of us found, when he went out (we always walked with a flashlight during the darkness), a fox’s tail in the walkway and when we looked further we found that foxes had managed to get into the meat storage and had gnawed the tail off, despite the canvas strung before the door and Glói on guard. Though, we had noticed earlier that when there was one fox, Glói stood strong, but if there were many, he was not forthcoming. We had also had to save him once from a dangerous encounter. One fox had managed to get its mouth around Glói’s muzzle and did not let go of its bite until Larsen hit it in the head with the stock of the rifle. Of course that caused her death.

One of the things, which we should do, was to measure the frost at various depths in the glacier. For that we had to drill holes into the ice and we brought augers with us for that purpose. They were split into parts, each one-meter long and they were screwed together. Every day, weather permitting, Larsen and I performed these ice drillings; we drilled 8 holes, from one meter to eight meters of depth. This was both time-consuming and strenuous in darkness and cold. It was worst, how hard it was to get the swarf up out of the holes when they started to get deep. In each of these 8 holes was a frost-meter, but a cap was plugged into the hole at the top to minimize atmospheric influence. Twice a day the meters were read, at 8 o’clock in the morning and at 8 o’clock in the evening.

I include here only what I have written in my diary for December 8. Meter in the snow on top of the ice 34°,[79] at 1 m depth 27°, 2 m depth 25.6°, 3 m depth 18.6°, 4 m depth 15.9°, but air temperature that day was 32°. On that day we had only completed these four holes, because we had continuous difficulties with retrieving the swarf up from the holes. I engaged in various experiments with changing the augers, but the equipment for machining was poor. A motor lamp for heating the iron, a large hammer instead of an anvil, another smaller for hammering and a small screwdriver. These experiments were numerous, and at last I managed to change one auger so that it resembled an open cornet, which accumulated the snow inside itself while drilling. It just had to be removed often enough from the hole to be emptied.

We started digging a hollow into the glacier and the plan was for it to become three meters of depth. We were to drill down from its bottom, but have a plank lying across it to stand on. In this way, we did not have to unscrew the whole auger into parts as often when we pulled it out. But in the morning of Dec. 10th, there was a blizzard with large snow accumulation, so that all outside work was impossible. We cut a trapdoor into the floor in our living room and started drilling down. We drilled one hole there, 6 m deep. Meanwhile, the storm raged outside for three days straight. Finally, when the snowing stopped, our hollow outside had become full of snow, and not only that, it was completely disappeared. After that we focused our efforts on digging a hole in the ice under the house, which was 1.20×0.90 m. We worked on this daily until it had become 8 meter deep. We drilled three holes from its bottom, one 4 m, another 8 m and the third 16 m measured from the bottom, or 12, 16 and 24 meters from the surface. All this was, however, not completed until in January.

We drill into the ice inside the house.

XI. Christmas and the New Year

There is not much festivity in these reflections of mine and the reader must forgive how poor they are.

The preparation and changes for the holiday celebration were that we melted so much ice that we could wash our middle shirts, which were made from dark blue cloth, and which we had worn since we departed for our Vatnajökull trip from Akureyri around the middle of June. However, we normally did little laundry. Our practice was to wear underwear for three months, then throw it out and put on new. We made this an exception, by washing our middle shirts. We also washed our faces and hands, which we had not done since October that fall.

The horses were fed more hay than usual, same for the nutritional feed, and we melted some ice for them so they could have water to drink, but we gained little joy from that work because they did not even look at our water, and rather chose ice as they were used to. We could have spared ourselves that work. Glói also received a Christmas present, good food and so much of it that he had leftovers.

When this was finished, we started thinking about our own physical nutrition. It was a calf steak with green peas and Swedish rye crispbread and some other things, such as one shot glass of cognac and cocoa liqueur. When the stomach had been thus taken care of, two or three boxes were fetched, which we had brought with us and were marked “Jul” (Christmas). From them came, among other things, a gramophone with twelve records. It malfunctioned a little, but not more so that I could repair it. Since it was the evening before Christmas, we felt it was not proper to bring it into use until tomorrow. There were also more things in the boxes, which were worth inspecting. From a box to Wegener came a nice collection of German entertainment stories, a box of cigars, various kinds of home-baked coffee breads and also letters from his father, mother and fiancé. They were old, dated in May that spring and did not bring news.

The same held for the box to Capt. Koch from his wife. In it were also cigars, home-baked cakes and other candies, letters from the misses and his friends, a photograph of the king and artificial flowers. Of course it was the same for his letters, they contained no news, since we had brought these boxes with us, but this did bring them some diversion, and actually all of us. We had more to talk about than everyday work. The cigar boxes were immediately turned into collective property; there was strict enforcement of everything being equally distributed, not only cigars and smoking tobacco, but also candies and cakes. He, who was the cook on this or that day, would evenly split it between us. At last I want to mention that from the box, which had contained the gramophone, and was from the expedition’s supervisory committee, came four parcels. On each was written an expeditioner’s name: Capt. Koch, Dr. Wegener, A. Lundager, but now Larsen had taken his place and should receive that parcel. On the fourth was written “Islændingen” (The Icelander). Each of the three first parcels contained one book, only a novel, translated or authored in Danish. These were entertainment books. But in the parcel, which the wretched Icelander received, was only a small pamphlet, three or four pages, which contained a guide for how to make pictures or letters out of matchsticks.

“You will not take this book home,” said Capt. Koch. I did not reply. But after Christmas this book was gone and I never knew what happened to it. This day the weather was calm and bright, frost 44°C.

On Christmas day we arose like usual, at ½6 o’clock, did our ordinary work, weather observations at 8 o’clock, cared for the horses, etc. When the ordinary work was completed, I repaired the gramophone. After that echoed in the living room at Borg, Christmas psalms and Danish anthems, song by Herold[80] and Helge Nissen.[81] We did various other things to pass the time.

On the day after Christmas, after ordinary duties, we started reading. Capt. Koch and Dr. Wegener read scientific writings, but we Larsen thrillers. The worst for me was that I had already just about finished reading everything in the library, which was suited for me. Scientific writings were not for me and the library, which Wegener received, was in German, and I did not understand that language. We never played cards; Wegener and Larsen both pretended not to know how, on the other hand Capt. Koch and Wegener occasionally played chess.

During the days between Christmas and the New Year, we worked at regular duties, such as ice drilling etc. However, all outdoor work was difficult because December bid farewell with tremendous cold. The last day brought 48° frost and a storm, wind force of 6. It bit us a little in the nose if we stayed out for more than a moment. We bid farewell to the old year with good food, one shot-glass of cognac, cocoa liqueur and cigars, we thanked each other for the old year, with best wishes for the new, and went to sleep.

New Year’s morning was considerably cool, frost 48°C and much windier than the evening before, or a wind force of 8. It was chilly to stand outside with a flashlight, pull the frost meters out of the holes, take the reading and stick the meters back down, write the numbers temporarily, which would later be recorded in the logbook, and go to the weather station cabinet, which stood on tall poles, so that we had to use a ladder to take readings from the instruments, which were there. It was Wednesday, then we had to take the automatic instruments inside, crank them up, insert new reams of paper and get them back to the cabinet. We could not take them inside into the heat, because they would get frosted over when they were returned out to the cold. We had to complete this work in the snow hut. To state, this is not a big job, and does not take much time, but it is too difficult when you can barely control yourself due to wind and frost. That much better one felt back in the warmth. Now was a holiday and no other work until 8 o’clock that night, with the same procedure outside by the instruments. I was the cook for the day and they demanded pancakes for celebration. The baking succeeded better than hoped and my companions reckoned the pancakes were good. I had lost my appetite when the work was finished. I am not sure if they were completely honest in their praise and I let it pass by.

January 2nd. The same weather, wind lesser. January 3rd, frost 50.5°C,[82] but calm, Larsen and I were outside drilling into the ice, but the work progressed slowly. On January 4th we were still drilling and drilled the deepest hole, to 8 meters, and with that, ice drilling outside was over. Larsen was also sick, with a fever, cough and a soreness in the chest. He likely became cold on January 3rd.

XII. New Tasks

Like I have mentioned before, we broke all our sleds on the 6th of October, when we attempted to continue our journey across the ice stream. Since the ice drilling was completed, we took them in for repairs. They were 5, so-called Nansen-sleds,[83] about 4 m long and 60 cm wide, made from ash, mostly tied together with pigskin. However, there were four iron braces on each side, which were tied with a wire to the runners and supports, and the wire wrappings were soldered together with tin. Each sled weighed 38 kg. Many of these braces were broken and the skin-ties torn. On the front of the sleds was a bow, shaped like the letter U, it was cut longwise down the center to make it easier to bend and when it was bent, it was tightly wrapped with a strong rope. This bow was broken on all the sleds, on some in two places. To repair them, we unraveled the rope wrappings, placed doubled-up iron from barrel hoops across the fractures and wrapped with the rope again. The braces had to be made anew. I have already described the equipment for iron working so I will not repeat that description. We had soldering irons and tin, and plenty of cut strips of pigskin. The work had to be done inside the living room, but because of the length of the sleds, we had to let them lie diagonally from corner to corner. At night, or when we were not working on them, we stored them in the hole, which we had dug into the ice under the house and which we called in daily conversation, “the well”. Larsen and I worked on the repairs for a half third hour before noon and for an equally long time in the afternoon, unless the weather was calm enough that we thought it possible to let the horses outside. We always exercised them for one hour twice a week, when weather permitted. The sled repairs progressed slowly, but there was no hurry, the whole day was still completely dark. We were, though, already counting the days until we would first see signs of daylight in the sky, but we thought that would be on the 15th or 16th of January.

In the evening of January 13, we had repaired the sleds. We had also not been outside for the last three days, except for meteorological observations. Because snow had piled up in calm weather, everything was covered with a thick layer of snow, up to your mid-calves or even to the garter, so evenly that no protrusion was seen. Even the fox had not visited us, we gathered that it felt it was too difficult to swim through this snow. We had not let the horses out. We expected bad conditions when the wind would pick up.

That indeed came to be, since in the evening of Jan. 13 a windstorm arrived and with it so thick a snowdrift, that it was considered impossible to reach the instrument cabinet and other weather observation stations. The morning after the weather was no better. Wegener, however, went out to the instrument cabinet, and we had him on a line so that we could pull him back to us; he was to pull the line if he needed assistance, but it did not come to that. We measured the windspeed at 25 m per second and it raged on until the evening of the 14th. The frost was, though, not greater than 24°. In the morning of the 15th there was the best of weathers, and the foxes arrived and started gnawing the skin-ties on the sleds, which we had just finished repairing. We found a thick mound of snow, dug a hole in it for the sleds, placed them in it and shoveled back over, if by chance that would suffice against the fox’s advances.

This was an important day in another way, because we saw a slim line of light out by the horizon in the east, which indicated a new day, more light. The long Arctic night was over. It had lasted for 52 days. This was also Capt. Koch’s birthday. This was cause for celebration, with good food, home-baked cakes, confections, cognac, champagne, two extra cigars, in addition to the ordinary midday cigar, and gramophone music with Christmas psalms and Danish hymns. With that ended the day. But of course, neither meteorological observations nor care for the horses had been neglected.

The storm had blown away the cap of snow, which we had placed over some of the drill holes outside. Snow had accumulated in them and they no longer had full depth; we had to get the snow out and Larsen and I worked on that for two days.

The foxes became more aggressive than before. They had not yet dug down to the sleds but they had eaten all the bindings of our skis; if we had not had extra bindings, we would have been in trouble. It seemed their pickings were slim since they resorted to eating such inedibles.

The most pressing work was done, but daylight advanced slowly and sitting idle every day was eventually tiring. We began work on drilling the holes down from the well even deeper; the one, which extended 16 m from the well’s bottom, was deepened to 18 m and this took many days. We also took the horses out onto the ice every other day, to exercise them as much as possible, in preparation for new travels when the sun returned. We never went far from the house because we were fearful of hidden crevasses under the snow. To us, the ice stream seemed to move very little and the whole of nature appeared dead or sleeping during this long Arctic night.

The same held for our own life. In my diary, Sunday January 19, I wrote: “The silence and the stillness, which rule at Borg, especially on Sundays, are close to lifelessness. Each sits in his corner and reads. Only during cooking or the daily tasks, meteorological observations and horse care, is there any movement, otherwise no one speaks more words than he must. It sometimes occurs now after Christmas, that this grave-like silence on Sunday nights is broken by gramophone song. Koch and Wegener have quit playing chess. They often did that earlier this winter, but they did that once again today. Larsen and I took our skis and walked for a half other hour out onto the ice stream towards the southwest, that was the heading we hoped would become our route across the ice stream. The weather was calm and good, the frost only 27 degrees.”

For January 25th: “No work outside, only weather observations. The frost 45.5 degrees.”

January said farewell with thick clouds and a hurl of snow, the frost only 21°, but the month’s average was 32.4°.

February 1. A blinding blizzard and the walkway out of the house was so full of snow, that we could not get out and had to dig ourselves out through the stable. Capt. Koch and Wegener went together to the instrument cabinet and tied themselves to a wire line, to be certain of finding the house again. The windspeed was about 17 m per second. The day after had the same weather, but a little less wind, 14 m per second. The weather was decent enough that we dug out our usual walkway into the house. Borg was so completely buried in snow that outside was flat everywhere. The manure pile alone stood like a nunatak[84] out of this great white plain. We also dug away from the window, but we had not done that since before Christmas. We enjoyed getting the daylight inside. We thought that in 11 or 12 days, we would see the sun.

Borg mostly buried in snow.

On February the 8th, the frost was 47° outside and 12° inside our room when we woke up. When we went to sleep the night before, the temperature was +20°, a difference of 32°, and we felt cold while dressing. Actually, we had noticed this before, but that the difference was so large had not crossed our minds. We had to find a way to control this and we managed it by letting one of the lamps burn at night. We did not dare to let the oil stove burn because of how likely it was to smoke and the air could get deadly inside. These February days were the coldest so far, 47, 48 and 50 degrees. It was undeniably somewhat cold outside and March was still to come.

In the morning of Feb. 14, I awoke at 5, like I was used to. I heard such a strange and heavy moan that I could not determine from where it came. I lay still in the bag and listened. Suddenly I realized that these heavy moans came from the stable and that the horses were suffocating due to lack of air. I bolted out of the bag, opened the door—and the air, which engulfed me, was indescribable. It was an overpowering stench and heat and I felt as if I would collapse. I had strength to go between the horses and open the outdoor to the cold, refreshing outside air. I returned inside to my companions, fetched a light and we went back to the stable. We were shocked when we got there. Four of the horses lay flat in their stalls, but one was standing. Every muscle in them trembled and sweat poured from every hair. I cannot describe in other ways how they felt. But they arose surprisingly quickly again and the day after they seemed recovered because they ate with full appetite. What the consequences would have been, if they had all suffocated, is not clear to me; I only know it would have been dire for the expedition.

Upon inspection, the air vent in the roof had become clogged with rime.

Something else occurred this day, much more joyful than what I have just described. We saw half the sun come up over the horizon. It led to us rushing out and up on top of the nearest hill for many kilometers around, which was the stable manure pile, and we watched the sun for the short moment it could be seen, but it soon disappeared behind a tall mountain in the south. We went inside, warmed extra coffee, cognac, smoked cigars and spoke of how much higher she would rise the next day. Then the mountain would not hide her. Glorious days with sun and light were on their way. What did cold matter when the sun started to shine? There would be new tasks, it was necessary to make a new navigation device to replace the theodolite, which was lost when Capt. Koch fell into the glacier crevasse, and to search for a passable way onto the ice sheet etc. The extended sedentariness had passed.

Our first task was to dig up the hay from the snow and weigh it. We had 42 bales left, which weighed a total of 1717 kg and that was more than we had hoped for. We could feed the horses ½3 kg per day with hay for 137 days, or until the end of June. Of nutritional feed, we had 26 bags, 49 kg each, a total of 1284 kg or 2 kg per horse per day for 128 days. We were well stocked in that as well and could give the horses more generously when we took them on trips, and it would do them good. Capt. Koch estimated how much cargo we would have to bring when we started our journey across the ice sheet, and that was 1800 kg. We would have to make two or even three transport trips up all slopes. But what were we deliberating? We had not yet found a passable way across the ice stream to Queen Louise Land and were already planning much more.

I started constructing a navigation device, called a Jakob’s staff. It was made from a regular level; I placed a standing piece on each end of it, 35 cm high and a bar between them, I drilled a hole in one of the standing pieces at 30 cm from the surface of the level. I made the hole funnel shaped, wide on the outside, and placed a brass plate on the inside with a narrow hole. I removed the bubble vial, which was on the level, and installed a much more accurate bubble vial, I took the marking line from a slide rule and installed it on the edge of the level and up the standing piece, as far as it went. This instrument proved most useful, as later will be explained.

The Jakob’s staff.

On February 21st, we started searching for a passable way for sleds through the roughest part of the ice stream. We searched almost daily when it was possible due to bad weather or cold. It was our practice to never go away from the house if the frost was greater than 40 degrees, but the result was, during the last days of February, that in the evening when we returned, the frost was greater, some days 44–45°. The average for February was 34.8 degrees.

Rough ice southwest of Borg.

On the 28th of February, we had thoroughly explored this glacial lava field and found a way through it, which we thought workable for sleds and horses. We came upon the great ice riverbed or canyon, which we had twice before, in October and November, had to give up on finding a way to cross. The remarkable thing was, that when we had gone alongside it to the west for about 200–300 meters, we came to a place where snow had drifted into a ridge across it. However, it was steep getting down to this snow-ridge and its top was no wider than a meter and a half, but by putting some effort into reducing the slope and leveling the ridge on top, nature herself had built for us a well passable bridge. Of course, we would have to maintain good control of both horses and sleds when going down the slope and also along the snow-ridge, because there was a steep drop on both sides into the ice canyon. It was 28–38 m deep and about 80 m wide. We would have to pass through with extreme caution. But luck seemed to be with us for once. We went a short distance onto Bistrup’s glacier, in total about 15 km from Borg, or about half of the way to Queen Louise Land. We decided to go there in the next few days and fully explore the route, but we had to shoe the horses. They had been without horseshoes since we settled at Borg.

The deep glacial riverbed, or canyon, and the snow-ridge that we traversed.

The day after, that is the 1st of March, the sleds were dug out of the snow, the harnesses retrieved, carried into the living room and hung there, so they could thaw and dry, roughshoes fetched, and preparations made for shoeing the horses. That should happen the next day, even though it was Sunday. That fell through, however, despite good plans. There the old saying could fit:

The merchant claimed to sail today,

but Winter said tomorrow.

Outside was a blizzard, which rendered that work impossible. Luckily, the weather had turned good the morning after, so it was possible to shoe the horses, even though the frost was 39 degrees.

At 6 o’clock in the morning of March 4th, we departed and, different from usual, we all went together. Weather observations were neglected. We had saddles on four horses, a pack saddle on the fifth, with hay, nutritional feed, snacks for us and various other small items. We proudly rode the way we were familiar with, but when it ended, we walked and led the horses. The way and conditions proved reasonable to the lake at the glacier’s edge, but when we got there the way became more difficult, first and foremost because Bistrup’s glacier had a short while earlier calved forward into the lake and broken the ice, which had by our reckoning been about three meters thick. This was now all frozen together, uneven and hard to traverse. Having passed that we reached powder snow, of depth from about the knees and up to the belly of the horses, and the distance which we moved through those conditions was about four km. We reached the top of Gundahl Peak at about 12 noon, gave the horses some hay and nutritional feed and ate our snacks.

The horses after winter. From left: Vigfús on Kári (Gray). The Lady (Brownie). Koch on Lazy-Red (Red from Hvassafell). Cavalier. Larsen on Koch’s-Gray (Polaris).

Vigfús with the horse Koch’s Gráni. Glói follows.

Vigfús with Kári. Glói resting.

The shoes used on the trip. From left: Lappshoes (kumager), Larsen in kamiks (Inuit sealskin shoes), Icelandic lambskin shoes, Vigfús in kamiks, reed shoes, Wegener in kamiks, Finnish shoes.

When we had looked about and rested for three quarters of an hour, we returned home along our tracks. The trip went better, we were home at 6 o’clock and had been away for 12 hours. We felt we had completed a milestone because we thought the long-sought route to Queen Louise Land was found and that we could begin transporting our cargo for the crossing of Greenland’s ice sheet when we wanted. We did not realize the many struggles we had yet to deal with and we were blind regarding so many things, I want to say it was for the better. This day had good weather, calm and bright. The frost in the evening was about 44°.

There was no delay in beginning work since the day after we started preparing for heading out the following day. We loaded both large sleds, which had proven most useful for us the previous fall, 400 kg on each, and intended to harness two horses to each. On one ski sled, we placed 200 kg and one horse should pull it. When this work was completed, we sat inside and spoke of new projects and our changed views towards our journey. We saw everything in bright light.

XIII. Sled Trips and Other Activities

The day after, which was March 6th, we departed at ½7 in the morning. The trip went decently while the ice was flat, but when we got into the lava-like ice field, everything went worse. The snow in the hollows was not dense enough to hold the large sleds. We often had to dig them out of the snow. Sometimes we harnessed four horses to the back of the sleds and let them pull the sleds backwards out of the piles of snow. We managed to get through the worst of the ice-lava, or about 8 km from Borg, and it took 7½ hours. We saw that this was far too difficult for the horses. The large sleds were unusable;[85] however, the ski sleds would be of better use. We released the horses from the sleds and returned.

One of the expedition’s large sleds on Sled Island (d. Slædeøen) (Higgins, 2010, Figure 80).

When we were close to the middle of the ice-lava field, we saw that a bear had walked across our trail and would be somewhere close to us, and we were unarmed. The way was unsafe on the ice and we hurried home. We vowed to not be so careless to travel unarmed again.

The following day, we loaded four ski sleds, 200 kg on each, and prepared for a trip the next morning. All four went and everything worked well. We even added one hay bale on each sled, when we reached the large sleds, and took the ski sled, which was there. We continued onwards, along the snow-ridge in the glacier canyon and to the southwest onto Bistrup’s glacier, or about 15 km away from Borg; unloaded the sleds and returned home. In the evening, we put only one hay bale on each sled, because we intended to pick up the cargo from the large sleds, which we did the day after and that trip went just as well as the day before. The cargo was left in the same place.

On the 10th of March we loaded only two sleds, we brought a tent, sleeping bags, cooking equipment and more things for camping. Larsen and I took this to where the large sleds were left. We loaded the bottom and side planks from the large sleds on our ski sleds. We would have to make snow huts for the horses and the plan was to use these as a roof. When we finished this work, we left the sleds behind and returned home.

The morning after, we three, Capt. Koch, Larsen, and I, left for Queen Louise Land. We were to build a stable out of snow, camp there and fetch the cargo, which lay on Bistrup’s glacier, and hopefully move it further along if weather permitted. We left from Borg at 5¾ o’clock and kept to our usual route. When we went down onto the snow ridge, which formed the bridge over the glacier canyon, Larsen lost control of the sled he drove and the sled rolled over on its side off the ridge. The horse, which was exceptionally well-behaved, stood calm, but Larsen rolled down the snow slope, all the way to the bottom of the canyon. Capt. Koch and I dared not but first save the horse and the sled. We found that the sled had broken and was not usable as it was. We removed the rope-ties from it and one other sled, that yielded a long enough rope to reach Larsen. We quickly succeeded in getting him back up. He had injured one leg and limped. Because of this, Capt. Koch wanted us to return home right away but Larsen would not have it. The trip across the ice stream was continued, and it went reasonably well, but when we arrived by the lake, the conditions were worse; the snow reached to the horses’ knees, and Larsen’s leg pained him so much that we had to add him on top of the last sled. We managed to cross the lake and headed for the Borg Glacier.[86] On our left-hand side was a ravine extending to the lake, but when we reached up onto the plain the conditions were such that the horses were literally buried in snow. We made it at most 200 m onto the plain, there we had to return along our own trail to the lake and up onto a gravel ridge south of the ravine. We noticed that down below the gravel ridge, there was a small pond on top of the ice on the lake. We wanted to use this opportunity to get a drink for ourselves and for the horses, but when we tasted this, it was salty ocean water. The Borgfjord reached all the way here under the glacier and the crevasses next to the land were caused by tidal effects.

We offloaded the sleds on the gravel ridge and collected our cargo together, due to Larsen’s leg injury we had no option but return home. We wrapped him up on one of the sleds, headed back and arrived at Borg at 9 o’clock that evening, after 16 hours of continuous toils, both for us and the horses. We had, though, been lucky with the weather, it was mild and good, the frost was only 32 degrees.

The day after, I repaired the sleds and Larsen could help me a little with that, sitting from his seat. Next when we would go out, he would have to remain home and perform the weather observations and more. The rest of us prepared for heading out on an expedition the following day. That did not happen. The clouds were dark and the snow drifted, but the frost was little, 20 degrees in the morning, 18 in the evening. The morning after brought clear weather, the frost was 30°, and we departed from home at 6 o’clock with light loads, but this time I dared not but control all the sleds across the snow-ridge in the canyon. Everything went well. We loaded the sleds from the cargo, which was on Bistrup’s Glacier, about 200 kg on three of them, 250 kg on one. When we arrived at the lake, we had two horses pulling the heaviest sled and let them walk in line, one in front of the other, so that they could both make use of our trail. We went up onto the gravel ridge to our cargo. Wegener volunteered to pitch the tent and prepare food for dinner, but Capt. Koch and I planned stable construction for the horses. In the northern corner of the ravine, the snow was so thick that we could dig straight into it and had such a high ceiling that it was easily our height, and still the snow base was a full meter of thickness. The horses could stand there all 5 in a row at a trough, which of course was made from snow. This job took us three hours, and for the last hour Wegener led the horses around so that they would not get very cold. They were obviously pleased when they were allowed to enter this white and fine home. The bottom from one of the sleds was raised up and used as a door.

After this we walked to the tent, had some food and went out to search for a way onto Borg Glacier. We had in the previous fall, when we walked first onto Gundahl Peak, estimated this distance to be 5 km, but it turned out to be at least 10 km. We did not go but half the way and then returned, but we had seen enough to be sure that the snow conditions would be difficult, although we could get through it. We also saw tracks after two muskoxen, but their pasture was poor. When we got back to the tent, we crawled into the bags, because we were fast getting cold, after being warm and sweaty from walking and arduous work, we were even white from rime between layers of clothes when we removed our outer wear and had to brush each other before getting into the bags. We felt bad in the bags due to cold and other discomforts and slept rather little. At 3–4 o’clock, the wind had become so strong that we expected the tent to blow away at any moment from on top of us, or rather with us, because it was one continuous unit, the bottom, walls and gables. Thankfully, that did not happen.

We had planned, when we went to rest, to head out at four o’clock that morning and fetch more from where the cargo lay on Bistrup’s Glacier. We heard the raging wind and knew there would be no way to do that. We remained lying in the bags until 6 o’clock, when we went out to inspect the weather. The wind was from the northwest, of force 8–9, and thick snowdrift, but we could see up to the sky. We foresaw that we could go in the wind direction with empty sleds, but that there was no way to go against the wind with heavily loaded sleds. We fed the horses and got back into the sleeping bags. At 10 o’clock we felt the wind lessened, and we departed in the hope that the wind would reduce as the day passed. But this only resulted in a long retreat that ended home at Borg at four o’clock in the afternoon.

March 16. Palm Sunday. The same weather until evening when it became quite good, although the cloud cover was thick and some drifting snow, but the frost was little, 18 degrees. We readied ourselves for leaving at four o’clock in the morning, the same three. Larsen still limped, walked with a cane and had to stay home with the same duties as before. We, however, could not get going until nearly 6 o’clock. The weather had become good, the sky was bright, a slow northwest breeze and 31° frost. On the sleds we took loads, 200–250 kg from Bistrup’s Glacier, and we reached the tent at Gundahl Peak at 1 o’clock. The trip had gone well. We rested at the tent for a half second hour, cooked some food and took elevation measurements with a cooking thermometer. Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius at sea level but at 2500-meter elevation it boils at 80 degrees. It may be that these numbers are not exactly correct but I mention this only to aid understanding.

After this rest, we continued to Borg Glacier with our loaded sleds and went on the south side of the ravine, which I mentioned before. The snow conditions were difficult, we made a clean plough trail in the snow with the sleds, but worse was that when we reached the edge of the glacier we came to a vertical glacier wall, about 8 meters high. We had to go north of the ravine, because there the glacier edge had a passable slope. However, it was steep, but we could zigzag our way up. The snow conditions were good up there, the horses just barely left tracks. We continued all the way up onto the glacier, where most of the slope had levelled off, offloaded the sleds and returned. But when we got to the steep glacier edge, we made the mistake of letting go of the sleds and having them slide down ahead of us. We could not have them pulled behind the horses going down because they were fastened with harness ropes with brakes, like on a plough, but not wagon shafts. Wegener and I took the sleds a few steps off our trail, I with three but he with one. I fastened the brake and ropes well up on the sled and let the first one go, then waited to see how it would fare. It slid down well. I let the others slide behind it. I turned to look at the sled that Wegener had. He had let it go but had fastened the brake and drive ropes so poorly that the brake rope fell from the sled, got pulled under it and the sled swerved in another direction than intended. I thought to run to the sled before it went any further and fix this, but before I knew it, I was out on the icy and slippery glacier slope. I found no footing and started sliding while standing, but soon I fell backwards onto my bottom and slid down the glacier at tremendous speed, sliding straight to the glacier cliff, 8 meters high, and fell into the snow below. Fortunately, the snow was soft, so that I disappeared into it and soon I crawled back out.

It is difficult for me to describe how I felt in the body. It was as if my whole body was out of order, I looked around and saw that Capt. Koch had left the horses and was on his way to me, but returned when he saw that I had stood up. Not far on my right-hand side, I saw the sled which had caused this. I staggered over there. It was mostly destroyed. I pulled it behind me back to the trail and waited for the others. Capt. Koch arrived with the horses. He looked first at me and then at the sled and said: “Oh, the sled is like this, Vigfús, we have to go home tonight, so that we can repair it.” How I felt, he did not ask. I answered with one yes. It was already evening; we and the horses had had a difficult day. The wind was of the northwest, wind force of 5–6, frost about 40°.

We tied the wretched sled onto one of the others, hitched the horses and went to the tent; we fed the horses with hay and nutritional feed, cooked food and headed back home. We arrived at Borg at ½4 o’clock that night and had traveled with little rest for 21½ hours. When I took my clothes off, I found that I was bruised on both knees, blood had seeped out of my skin and the nails from both my big toes were loose inside the socks.

The following day after coming home, Capt. Koch said to me: “Vigfús, why did you answer so quickly with a yes, I expected a no.” “That is readily answered,” I said, “I could not think of having to lie in the tent that night like I felt in my body and even get the so-called polar cramp.”

I did not leave the bag that day and Larsen had to take care of the horses. On the Wednesday before Holy Thursday, I arose and went to the glacier’s edge. We had transported cargo there in the fall and lying there still, was a broken sled that we had found at Storm Cape and was from the Denmark Expedition.[87] I planned to use it for repairing the newly broken sled, in other words to make one sled out of two. I worked on this repair on Holy Thursday and had completed it in the evening and was ready to head out the morning after. Then the frost had become much greater, over 40°, and we did not think that was weather for traveling. Hence, we sat home over Easter, except that on both holidays we, Capt. Koch and I, went widely about our nearby surroundings to take photographs, because there was joyous sun and brightness, although the frost was daily over 40 degrees. The days were used for photography, measurements and various scientific research. It had also been long intended to make a research trip to Lindhard Island, because it has not been visited and is inaccurately placed on the map.

On Wednesday March 26, we got up at four o’clock in the morning, because we thought the cold had reduced, but the thermometers said otherwise and it was not considered traveling weather. The day after, the frost was not greater than 31° and it looked better for making a trip the following morning. We went to bed early but got up at three o’clock that night and prepared for our trip to Lindhard Island. We had four horses, three with saddles and one with a pack saddle. On it we had hay, nutritional feed, camera, rifle and some other things. We went our usual route along the glacier, down to Borgfjord, west along the glacier wall and onto the island, where the ice goes up onto the tail end of Cape Jarner. On the island, the snow conditions were terrible for the horses, but in most places the snow could carry us. It was difficult for the horses to get through the snow mounds.

We thought the conditions would be better on Back Fjord and went there, but when we arrived at the fjord, we had gone from the frying pan into the fire. We returned to the island and broke our way forward. But after a while, one of the horses, the one we had carrying the pack saddle, did not want to continue no matter what. We stopped to rest and gave them hay. He ate that with a best of appetites, so he did not seem to be ill, but when we continued again, he soon was back to the same behavior. We removed the pack saddle from him, and covered him with a blanket, put a bag over his head with some nutritional feed, and left him.

The conditions improved somewhat and we moved faster than before. We looked back and saw that the horse, which we had left behind, was gone. Some time later we saw him appear again, where he was on his way back home. He soon tired of the walk and stood still in the tracks. We now moved easily forward and found a new fjord, which extended from the east into the island and almost cut it in two; it is reckoned to be 6–7 km long, but narrow and crooked.

When we came across the fjord, the conditions got so much worse that the horses, which we had with us, were submerged in snow. We gave them the hay, which we had left, and left them. We wanted to try and get to the highest peak of the island, to see over the area and measure some angles, which could be used to map the island. This turned out difficult, because low in the mountainside the snow was up to our waist in many places. After much toiling and sweat, we finally stood on the peak. Although it was not but a shade under 500 m high, the cold storm was so strong up there, that it was only with much exertion that we managed to hold on while we performed the most necessary tasks. At four o’clock we went back down and it was easier, both downhill and in our tracks. The horses stood still when we came to them and were eager to return in the tracks.

When we came across the fjord, which was given the name Kavaler Fjord[88] (Cavalier is the name we had given the horse that was most stubborn), we could ride in many places and that expedited our trip considerably. However, we had to place the pack saddle on one of the riding horses, when we got to where we had left it. The moment Cavalier saw us coming, he started walking, but he moved slowly with the bag on his head and we quickly caught up with him. We put the pack saddle onto him and now he was most willing to go first along the tracks back home. After a 16-hour absence we came to Borg.

Of living animals, we had seen two ravens and one seal, but tracks after a female bear with a cub. The small one had been joyful, jumping and dancing in circles around his mama, but the old lady had to rebuke the child. We also saw tracks from a fox, a hare, a ptarmigan, a lemming and a weasel.

In one way, Cavalier’s stubbornness had done us good. Usually we had blankets over the horses, but we had taken the blanket off Cavalier and we noticed that he had lice, and it turned out, so did all the others, more or less. It was our first task the day after, to make a bath and wash them all. We melted snow to fill a large wash tub, which we had brought with us, put in it a quarter and a half of creolin, 20 small cans of bath powder, ½ kg of salt, two liters of rubbing alcohol and 5 bars of salammoniac-terpentine soap. We drenched them with this liquid, even their heads and feet, only their tail was not much wet. This bath worked well, we found no lice on them afterwards, but the smell of rubbing alcohol and creolin lingered for many days at Borg.

In my diary[89] on March 31st I have written: “The month of March is ending and it has been the coldest, the greatest frost 52°, average 37°. There is nothing to hold us at Borg but the warmth inside. Here we have feed for the horses for only 5 days and food for us for about as long, the rest we have transported away.”

A sample from Vigfús’s diary (enlarged).

On the 1st of April, we all four departed at ½8 o’clock. We took with us an instrument, which was supposed to measure our travel distance exactly in kilometers and it was tied behind the last sled. It was a wheel with a one-meter diameter and a counter, which counted in units, tens and hundreds as it turned. We, however, first looked at it when we arrived at our cargo on Bistrup’s Glacier. By then its axle had broken and it was thereby ruined. It had counted 9 km and 300 m. It was untied from the sled and left behind.

We loaded the remaining cargo onto the sleds, continued and arrived at the tent by Gundahl Peak at 2 o’clock PM. We rested for one hour, had some food, and fed the horses with hay, took one more load on the sleds and continued to Borg Glacier. We followed our former track, and although it was filled with snow in many places, the trip went all right. We went the same way onto the glacier and to where we had left our cargo behind on March 17. We offloaded the sleds and returned. This time we did not let go of the sleds but let them hang from the horses by the drive rope, so that the sleds were almost ahead of the horses. When we got further down the slope this went better and we arrived at the tent by Gundahl Peak at ½7 o’clock. We were there during the night and kept the horses in the snow hut stable. The weather was good that day, only a mild breeze, frost 25°at 2 o’clock PM.

We slept little that night. We were not cold, though, but one does not feel comfort while unused to sleeping in thick clothing. At first, when one begins tent life in great cold, one is overtaken by such strong cramps that when one has lain down in the bag, one gets pulled into a hard knot, and it is a bad feeling. This disappears after a few nights, but while it lasts, it causes immense discomfort. Capt. Koch called this the polar cramp (Arctic cramp). We arose at four o’clock that night, fed the horses and loaded the sleds with most of the cargo, which was there. Furthermore, we took with us the side planks from both sleds and one of the bottoms (the bottoms were one meter wide by two of length). With this we went to Borg Glacier, offloaded the sleds in the same place as the day before, and returned to the tent at Gundahl Peak. We put the horses into the snow hut and fed them, and cooked us some food, which now was pemmican twice a day, about a liter per person, half of a rye hardtack, and coffee or tea after. Also, whoever had cooking duty on this or that day, gave out 6 pieces of chocolate and 6 tablets of hard lemon candy to each person. Each put it in his pocket and ate when he desired. This portion was intended to provide enough nutritional value (calories) that we would maintain full strength.

When the dining was done, Koch and Wegener went to Bistrup’s Glacier, beside Cape A. Bertelsen[90] and more widely, for research and photography, but Larsen and I remained at the tent and were to guard the horses. They had pushed the door out the previous night, but fortunately they had not gone out. We dared not but keep a watch on them. We knew that the Lady’s moods were awakening. Larsen and I heated up the tent with a primus and made ourselves as comfortable as possible. The weather was good, the sun was shining, but the frost was 32 degrees.

The morning after we took everything, which was here, including the tent with all belongings; we left only a half hay bale. When we arrived where the cargo lay, we added on the sleds until we had about 200 kg on each, but they were 5, and then we continued up along Borg Glacier. It was easily traversable, with a mild upwards slope, and as we got higher up, the lesser the fresh snow. After a 5-hour journey from where we added onto the sleds, we thought we had gone about 18–20 km. We started looking for a place to camp, especially a place where we could make a snow hut for the horses. But the glacier was mostly barren and rock hard; there was no way to dig into it. At last we found a snow mound, where we could carve out clumps of snow. We had to stack up snow walls, so thick that they would not break if the horses hit them. Now came in handy, the side planks and the bottom from the big sled, which we had taken with us to use as a roof over the snow walls. On top of this, we shoveled loose snow for cover. This construction took 5 hours. When the horses were in the hut, we pitched the tent and had a meal. We called this campsite “the Pass”. When measuring elevation that evening, we found that we were about 250 m over sea level.

Since we were in a new environment, I must describe it a little. To the north was a large mountain area, about 700–800 m above the glacier, which Capt. Koch gave the name Himmerland Heath.[91] Borg Glacier seemed to turn first to the northwest and, further away, towards the north along this great range of mountains, and at the furthest we could see, were tall sheer cliffs standing by the glacier. In the southwest was a long mountain range with many peaks and passes, which ended in the southeast with Cape A. Bertelsen. How long this mountain range extended to the northwest or even to the north, was not visible from the tent. If it reached far in that direction, the direction of the glacier was unfortunate for us. It was best to put off thinking about that, we were tired after the day’s labor and needed rest. The weather had been good, sunshine and calm, frost 20 degrees.

There was good weather the morning after, thick cloud cover, mild wind and frost only 15 degrees. We returned down Borg Glacier to the cargo and loaded all five sleds, 200–250 kg on each, because the next morning we would explore new ground. There had been good weather this day, only 12-degree frost in the evening, and we felt it was warm. We left the Pass a short while after 5 o’clock and headed up along the glacier; it turned more and more towards the north. After a two-hour journey, we saw that the mountain range on the left-hand side terminated with a mountain peak, which the glacier seemed to surround, and was not in reality connected to the mountain ridge. When we reached the northwest corner of this mountain, which we named Horse Mountain,[92] we saw that Borg Glacier lay northwards, by Himmerland Heath, about 30 km, or as far as we saw. In the southwest, a valley opened up with high mountains on both sides, and in it was a large lake. West of Horse Mountain was a glacier tongue extending into the lake and several icebergs were frozen in the ice on the lake. The mountains on the right side of the valley were called Dannebrog Mountains[93] by Capt. Koch. They are about 800–1000 meters higher than the valley floor. The northernmost mountain, which we saw in the mountain range, was by far the highest, about 1200–1400 m, and he named it Mt. St. Vitus.[94] Two glacier tongues fell down to the valley floor from the southwest. It seemed as if one of them came from the west. If we could reach it, it would lead in the right direction for us. The other seemed to point towards southeast. We selected the way down to the lake, which Capt. Koch named Farimag Lake and the valley Farimag Valley,[95] because it was tempting to travel along the western side of the lake on the snow-free and flat-as-mirror ice. The route down the glacier tongue was difficult, yet it was mostly free from crevasses. But we thought nothing of it once we reached the lake, which was about 6 km long. We went about one km onto the land southwest of the lake; that way was uphill but not too difficult. The time was then ½3 o’clock and a long way back to the Pass. We unloaded the sleds and returned, and we went a shorter route, we went inside of Horse Mountain. That way was not possible with sleds, because Horse Mountain was connected to the mountain range with a snow-free gravel ridge, also, it was so steep up onto Borg Glacier that it was not passable with sleds. We came to the Pass a quarter before 7 o’clock and had traveled for about 14 hours. The weather was good during the day but now there was a northwest storm with snowdrift, the frost was only 15 degrees. The horses were pleased to get into the hut and we were in need of rest; we felt good getting into the sleeping bags.

I will give a brief description of how we organized tasks in the tent. We cooked the meals, each on his day, and changed places in the tent so that he, who was at the front, always had the cooking duties, but he, who was at the back next to the gable, was the one who most recently had completed those duties. The order was always correct. I, however, always arose one hour earlier than the others, because my duty was to feed the horses, both with hay and nutritional feed. But if it was not my turn to cook, I usually went back into the sleeping bag. There was never any change regarding this.

The next morning, Sunday April 6th, there was still a strong wind and snowdrift, but we headed out anyway, because the frost was 25 degrees. We fetched the cargo, which remained at Borg Glacier, but we caught a difficult route up the glacier back to the Pass. It went well because both men and horses were eager to get home. We were about 5 hours on the way up the glacier, yet we tried to make haste and get to cover as soon as possible. When we arrived at the Pass, the weather was at its worst. There was no traveling weather at four o’clock that night, when I came first out, and there was no option but return to the bag again. The horses felt fine in the snow hut, it was warm there, but it snowed on us in a way. The tent had about an inch-thick layer of rime on the inside and when storm gusts hit, the rime shook down on us. We were bored with the stay. Around evening time, the weather started letting up and at two o’clock that night, the weather had become good. We left and took with us the tent and everything, even the roof from the stable. We had heavy loads on the sleds, over 300 kg per sled, but the conditions were good, the glacier slope was mild and our trip went well. We selected a different way down the glacier tongue at Horse Mountain to Farimag Lake, which was both flatter and better, and at 11 o’clock AM we reached the cargo, which we had left there. We fed the horses on hay and grabbed a bite for ourselves, unloaded the sleds but reloaded them with the cargo, which was here, and started on the steep uphill path.

The train was usually in this order: I was first on Kári (a gray horse from Bitrugerði farm). Next came Koch’s Gray, without a rider, (sometimes called Polaris); he was from Hvammur farm in Eyjafjörður, a fine horse but tired himself out because he was without a rider. If he thought the slope was hard, he was apt to turn off the track, straight down hill, but when Capt. Koch, who was next on Lazy-Red (from Hvassafell farm), left his horse and ran to block Koch’s Gray and when Gray saw him coming, Gray turned around and went straight uphill, and struggled until he reached me and Kári. When he had these spats, Koch could never catch him. After Capt. Koch came Larsen with Cavalier (a brown horse from Sigurjón postman at Ásláksstaðir farm) and last was Wegener with the Lady (a brown mare from Hvassafell farm). This was our normal order while enroute.

I tried to side-cut the slope as much as possible. The main direction was towards a gravel ridge, which seemed to come from under the glacier tongue tail, but as I reached higher in the slope, I felt I saw something unsafe at the glacier tail. I stopped and waited until Capt. Koch approached closer, I walked to him and told him that I was afraid the route was impassable. He said that I could go and inspect the route, he would supervise the horses while I went. When I got up to the gravel ridge, I was surprised. Behind it was a rock canyon, where the glacier rolled down in a sheer fall. The way was completely blocked and we had worn out the strength of the horses needlessly. I returned and told Capt. Koch the situation. We had to return down these slopes and search for another way. If it could not be found, we would have to return and continue north along Borg Glacier and use the first opportunity to turn to the southwest. The trip downhill went decently but it took a long time. We had to be three in front of each sled and it was laborious. When we came down, we went straight across the valley. Under the mountain on the east side of the valley, we found a thick snow mound, where we could for the most part dig a snow hut into the snow, but we had to add a little snow on top of the walls. For the roof, we used the sled bottom and side planks like before.

When the horses had been sheltered and fed, we started thinking about our own nutrition. Wegener had pitched the tent because he never participated in building stables. The rest of us were tired and unhappy because of the mistake, or at least that was true for us Capt. Koch. Larsen never contributed to the discussion, just stayed quiet. We felt we had behaved like idiots by not checking the route first, but it would be worse if it turned out that the route through here was closed, as appeared most likely. When we had eaten, each crawled into his bag and we let it be for the next day to decipher this glyph. The weather had been good, a slow wind from the northwest, frost 32 degrees.

We arose late the next day, fed the horses, cooked food and headed out a short while before noon, three together, Capt. Koch, Wegener and I, to inspect the route and try and find a way forward. But all routes seemed closed. Out from the rock canyon, a short distance below where the glacier fall came down, was a gulch. Up it to the south lay a steep slope, about 130 m high. The glacier was hard as stone, snow-free, and it was difficult to find footing. At the top was a flat strip of ice and a mildly sloping hill up to the glacier, where we wanted to reach. When we got up onto the glacier, we saw that it was much larger than it had seemed at first. It appeared to have a west-southwesterly heading and to be in a suitable direction for us. On the right-hand side (north) was a long and tall mountain, steep on both ends, and also the side towards the glacier. (Larsen and I called this mountain the Ryebread,[96] but that name never entered the map). On the left-hand side (south) was another mountain, taller and larger, but not with as steep slopes. Capt. Koch named it Queen’s Throne[97] and the glacier Direction Glacier (Kursbræen).[98] Further to the northwest, we saw two even higher glacier bulges. We then returned and inspected the route better. We saw that if we were to get up the lowest slope in the gulch at the rock canyon, the rest of the way was easily passable, and even if we had to lighten the load on the sleds by more than half, it would be faster than returning to Borg Glacier and not knowing, how far north we would have to go before we could again achieve the right direction towards southwest. We could foresee that this would always be a two-day trip, and it could easily become longer. We walked across a few snow-free gravel ridges to investigate vegetation and found one sea thrift, which had, though, never fully bloomed before everything was frozen. Moreover, we saw tracks by a fox, which lay so close to the tent that I rather expect she was on the lookout for some food from us. My companions maintained that there would be wonderful summer heat here and considerable vegetation, although we could not see it; it would be under snow and hiding from us. I did not place much faith in this, I thought everything here exuded cold and wretchedness.

We returned to the tent, ate and went to sleep. The morning after we awoke at four o’clock. The first thing to be done, after the horses had eaten their feed, was that I took the nails out of the two frontmost holes on each horseshoe on all legs on all horses and inserted a protruding spiked nail instead. After that, we left and went into the rock canyon and into the gulch. I hitched four horses, two and two, each in front of the other, to one sled and went up the hill. This worked well, and in this way we got the sleds up, all 5. Along the strip of ice, each horse pulled its own sled, but on Direction Glacier we hitched two horses to every sled. We went inland along it, so far that we thought we were 90–95 km away from Borg and, after measuring, 1000 m above sea level.

We offloaded the sleds, returned and came to the tent at 12 o’clock, rested the horses for two hours, loaded the sleds and made another trip up in the same way as the first. It went just as well. We offloaded the sleds in the same place as before. After that we went back to the tent in Farimag Valley and arrived there at ½10 that evening. The weather was good, mostly calm, frost 30 degrees.

When we had put the horses in the stable and fed them, we placed the majority of what was left of cargo on the sleds, had a meal and went to bed. The morning after, we awoke yet again at 4 o’clock, and after ordinary morning duties we departed with the sleds up onto Direction Glacier, in the same way as the day before. This trip also went well. We offloaded the sleds in the same place as before. Now we had there all the cargo, which we needed to have for the journey across Greenland, and some more. We returned to the tent, rested for only an hour, then left for home to Borg to rest up before the ice sheet crossing, dry our sleeping bags, and mend our clothes and socks.

XIV. Onto the Ice Sheet

Saturday April 12. Home at Borg. We had left the Farimag Valley campsite at two o’clock in the night, rested a half hour at the Pass and given nutritional feed to the horses. At Gundahl Peak, we had rested for an hour and a half, given the horses hay and cooked food. Arrived here at 7 o’clock PM and the trip had taken 17 hours, 15 hours while traveling, but the total travel distance, which we covered, is said to have been exactly 75 km. The weather had been good, joyous sunshine and bright, frost at home 34°.

Bistrup’s Glacier had calved since we were there on April 1st, and it was strange to see our old tracks on the icebergs, which stood on end at various angles and positions.

April 13th, 14th, 15th, blizzard, wind force at about 8, frost 25–21 degrees. We were especially lucky to have made it home already, it would have been tedious to lie in a tent for such a long time. Capt. Koch drew a map of our journey so far and wrote a summary of a travelogue. In the next days, when weather permitted, it would be taken to Cape Stop and placed in the cairn, which Larsen and I had built earlier and where we had placed a description of our travels and travel plan. That plan had completely changed when we could not reach Queen Louise Land in the fall. We wanted to leave behind a true and correct description of our journey before we departed for the ice sheet. Because what could happen on that 1200 km journey? We could disappear and that without any trail. But we always assumed the best when the crossing of the inland ice was discussed.

The weather was fine the day after but the outlook was ominous. Wegener and Larsen went to Cape Stop with the map and travel description, but we Capt. Koch went to Lindhard Island to take measurements. We all walked on skis, because there was a lot of snow. We hurried as much as we could because the weather outlook was bad. We had returned home at one P.M., and at two o’clock a blizzard had struck. Capt. Koch was concerned about Wegener and Larsen, he stood outside and stared into the dark storm, but shortly thereafter, Glói came out of the storm and they followed behind. During the evening, the weather raged on and became one of the worst snowstorms, which we had experienced so far.

April 17th, 18th and 19th. Still a snowstorm but less windy. In the evening of the 19th we gave out the last hay and the last nutritional feed, and we ate the last we had of food.

The last evening at Borg.

There was no option but to leave. At 12 o’clock midnight, we raised the flag to the top of the flagpole at Borg. The inside was decorated as was possible, small flags were hung up, the gramophone played and Danish hymns and Christmas psalms were heard. Four cigars had been stored and nearly four drinks of cognac. They were brought out. The sleds were ready outside. They were empty, so nothing needed to be done but hitch them, the horses stood in the harnesses at the trough and ate the last hay.

On Sunday April 20th, at two o’clock AM we left. There had been such snow accumulation that our previous track was mostly disappeared, it was only visible occasionally. We moved slowly through the snow. It was still snowing but there was little frost, 8 degrees. Borg soon disappeared in the snowfall, with the flag at the top, fluttering in the northwest wind, but we headed to the southwest; at first through familiar territory, but later through the unknown and into uncertainty. A long way was ahead, only that much was clear; great difficulties. However, at the beginning of a journey, nobody should magnify those, but rather look to the approaching time with optimism and never dread the coming day.

The expedition’s route through Queen Louise Land.

The snow conditions became worse, the closer we got to Queen Louise Land. On the lake, the snow was widely up to our mid thighs. The clock was at ½11 when we came to our old campsite by Gundahl Peak. We rested for one hour and kept the horses inside, because the hut, which we Capt. Koch had dug into the snow mound, was still standing. The horses received both hay and nutritional feed. For us, we could only warm tea, and with it we had a little flour biscuit.

After this, we gathered what little that we had of things, and continued. The snow conditions to Borg Glacier were like they had been on the lake, but on the glacier it was snow-free. The weather had gotten worse at noon, the wind was strong and against us; our advance up the glacier was slow. We did not arrive at the Pass until at 7 o’clock PM. There we had both hay and nutritional feed for the horses and food for us. The stable was, however, without a roof, but we had with us a sail, which was three by three meters of size, with bamboo poles fastened on two ends, and we strung this over the walls as a roof. The horses had shelter and were fed. After that, we pitched a tent and cooked food. We had labored continuously for 18 hours and were tired.

The following morning at ½9 o’clock, we left the Pass and went our usual route up along Borg Glacier. The wind blew stiffly against us with snowdrift, but the frost was only 9.7 degrees. It was hard to advance against the weather, but the snow conditions were good and next to nothing loaded on the sleds. Right after we turned towards southwest at Horse Mountain into Farimag Valley; the wind was more at our backs. We had some difficulties with the sleds when we arrived on the mirror-flat ice on Farimag Lake. Because of how light the sleds were, the wind blew them sideways and sometimes almost ahead of the horses. At three PM we arrived at the campsite in Farimag Valley. There the stable stood undamaged and we could immediately move the horses inside and feed them. Afterwards, we put up our tent, cooked us a meal and soon we crawled into the bags.

The campsite in Farimag valley. Picture taken towards Dannebrog mountains to the west.

The day after we stayed put due to violent weather and snowdrift, but the frost was only 10 degrees. We were surprised at how mild the frost was. The morning after had the same weather, except visibly windier. Around evening time, the storm lessened. We thought these were long hours while waiting without tasks for more than two days, only feeding the horses and cooking meals for ourselves.

At two o’clock after midnight, the wind was mostly calm, but a blinding fog rolled in, so that it was barely possible to see one fathom away. At about 6-ish we hurried out of the bags and started preparing to depart. It was, though, delayed until at 10 o’clock A.M., but then the weather was at its best with bright sunshine.

We left everything not considered of utmost necessity, to lighten our cargo as much as possible. Among other things left were one of the rifles, our fur coats, Wegener even went so far as to take off a good and warm Icelandic woolen sweater. Protests from the rest of us were for naught.

Having finished this, we departed and went along the gulch as before. So much snow had drifted into the gulch, that in many places the horses had to break through, but the steep slope up was snowless as before. Since all the sleds were almost empty, the trip went well and at half-one o’clock we came to our stack of cargo on Direction Glacier. We loaded the sleds, about 300 kg on each, because the glacier seemed quite flat to us and so far there was little snow and it was easy to travel. This did not hold when we got further up onto the glacier; there the snow was widely up to the mid-leg on the horses. The sleds were heavy to pull and we hardly made it more than 4 km per hour. At 9 o’clock PM, we thought we had gone about ½13 km and we decided to set up camp and make a hut for the horses. That work took us three hours and the clock was two after midnight when we went to rest

We have made it up the bad slope.

The morning after, which was April 24th, we departed at 10 o’clock, but left behind the tent, sleeping bags, cooking equipment, one hay bale and one box of nutritional feed, along with the roof of the stable, so that the sleds were much lighter. Ahead was a small glacier dune and when we crested it, we saw over to the southwest, mountains with steep slopes and deep valleys, where glacier tongues fell from the inland ice sheet and were impassable, both for men and horses. There was nothing for us to do but to turn further towards the north-northwest, so that we could get around this. That way took us into dips with ice and up onto ice covered ridges. This trip went tolerably; we moved nearly four km per hour, and at four o’clock PM we figured we had traveled 20 km. We offloaded the sleds. We called this Gefion Peak-storage.

Colorful glacier wall foliation with entrained sediment layers in the ice.

We returned. The weather had turned to the worst, a northwest storm with snowdrift and snowfall, frost 20.5 degrees. The trip back went well, we could for the most part travel downwind and came to the tent at 10 o’clock in the evening. That was a convenient time because shortly afterwards, the wind doubled up and so much so, that we had to enter the tent snow-covered as we were. The weather remained like that all night and until evening the day after. At 9 o’clock PM, the weather had become good. We started by removing everything from the tent and brushing off the snow. We brushed the whole tent, its floor and walls and managed to get it mostly free of snow and rime. We then moved everything back into the tent.

Upon completing this, we prepared ourselves for a trip to fetch what we had left of cargo on Direction Glacier. Those were not heavy loads, 200 kg per sled. The weather was wonderfully good, or so we felt; we enjoyed bright sunshine in the middle of the night. On the way back to the tent, the wind picked up from the northwest and the snow drifted in a low, thin veil along the glacier. In the sparkling rays of the sun, everything appeared draped in a magical white silk veil. Arrival at the tent was at 8 o’clock AM and we had been just under four hours on the way. The frost was 15 degrees. We led the horses into the stable and fed them, ate our food and went to sleep.

During the night, the wind strengthened so forcefully that the next morning it was nearly impossible to stand due to the gale and snowdrift. I had to take care of the horses as usual. Otherwise, everyone lay in their bag and tried to sleep as much as possible. Around evening, the wind calmed and at 9 o’clock the weather had turned good, frost 16 degrees. We took off on a mountain hike, we hiked the mountain Queen’s Throne, to gain an overview of the land. The Queen’s Throne turned out to be 1900-meter-high above sea level and provided wide views. In every direction, which we looked, we saw tall and rugged mountains, where snow and ice could not remain because of how steep they were. Between them rolled glacier tongues forward from the inland ice sheet and joined Bistrup’s Glacier in the southeast and in the north, the Storstrømmen. Further to the southwest, we saw a few single mountains standing out of the ice, but behind them began the ice sheet plateau, cold, unchangeable. One of those mountains, which seemed higher than all the others and covered with ice except the top peak, received the name Gefion Peak.[99] When measured later it, turned out to be 3000 meter high. Another mountain, further away, which would be on our route, with a ice cap on top and sheer cliffed sides, received the name Kaldbakur.[100] It was measured 2400 m high. Capt. Koch measured a few angles in various directions, but Wegener took photographs. After completing that, we walked back to the tent, warmed coffee, collected our belongings and placed them on the sleds.

The mountain Kaldbakur.

We took the roof of the stable with us and departed. The time was half-three at night. The trip was easy along our track, the horses were willing and the sleds not heavy; we got to the Gefion Peak-storage in just under 6 hours. We rested for one hour and continued in the direction of Kaldbakur. We came upon a few ice crevasses, but they caused little delay in our trip, and at two o’clock PM we arrived at the southeast corner of Kaldbakur. We had traveled a total of 40 km. This was one of the hardest places to construct a stable; there was so little fresh snow that we could not find a thick enough snow mound to even dig out a lump of snow, and digging into the old snow was difficult because of how hard it was. It was about 10 in the evening when we could go to bed. The weather had been good, a light wind from the northwest, frost 17.8 degrees.

When we awoke the morning after, there was a thick fog and it snowed, but a short while later the wind picked up from the northwest and lighted the fog, however, it was no traveling weather due to storm and snowfall. At 6 o’clock that evening, the weather had become good enough that we thought it was possible to fetch the Gefion Peak-storage. But the result was that when we got there, the storm hit again. We hurried when loading the sleds, and of course we had to trust, that we could follow our tracks back. We moved as fast as possible, but the weather powered up as well, so that one could barely see down to one’s feet. Eventually we lost our tracks, but it must not have been more than one kilometer left to the tent, from where we were. We fastened our train together and Capt. Koch took the rains and led my horse; I walked loose up ahead, but the others were to make sure that none of the horses broke free in the back. I only had the direction of the wind to go by. We continued forward like that. Capt. Koch was right at my heels. After a while, I felt from the lay of the snow and estimated distance, that I had to be close to the tent, but I saw nothing due to the maelstrom. Glói had disappeared. I called, and he came right away, straight downwind. I walked a few steps in the direction, which he came from, and stood by the tent. We were saved, men and horses, because in this weather none of us would have lived one day, not to mention any longer. We got the horses into the stable and they received feed. After that we crawled into the tent, had something to eat and went into the bags.

When we woke later that day, it was the same weather and none could be outside. I had, though, to feed the horses. Nothing else was done and the sleeping bags kept us. We were not too happy with the trip. April had passed and the first day of May was tomorrow. And we, who had hoped to be somewhere out on the inland ice sheet, were still lying at Kaldbakur.

May 1st. The same weather, a little less intense. There was no option but stay put. At two PM, the intensity had dropped enough that three of us left, Capt. Koch, Wegener and I, and tried to hike onto Kaldbakur. It turned out to be impossible and we had to give up. But the weather had improved while we were on that trip, so that we wanted to try and move our cargo further ahead. We left at ½8 o’clock that evening, headed to the southwest in the direction of a small rock, which stood out of the ice sheet plateau. We called this rock Punktum.[101] We had only been enroute for one hour when the wind strengthened from the northwest. There was no snow, only snowdrift and we could easily see our way. We covered a twenty-two-kilometer distance and had only a short distance left to Punktum. We offloaded the sleds and returned.

The wind came at us from the side and due to that we moved slower with empty sleds than before with them loaded. After 12 hours away, we got back to the tent. When we arrived, everything which could be moved by wind had blown away, even the box with our food preparation and cooking equipment. We led the horses into the stable. When they had been cared for, we searched for what had blown away, and it did not take a long time to find it. We measured the power of the wind and it turned out to be a wind force of perfect 10, the frost was 25.5 degrees. It was almost impossible to even stay inside the tent due to the power of the storm. This time I was supposed to sleep at the tent gable, which was windward, and I did not expect I could sleep much. I went out again, pulled a few hay bales to the tent and stacked them up against the gable, shoveled some snow around them and packed it with my hands and feet as best I could, so that it would not get blown by the wind. After this I got back into the tent, we felt it was now better inside and went to sleep.

May 2nd. Same weather, a little lesser. Wind force 8, frost 24°. Stayed put.

May 3rd. Same weather. Wind force 8, frost 20°. Stayed put.

May 4th. Less intense, wind force 5. We packed up and prepared to leave, but when we were ready to go, the weather raged, wind force 9 and snowdrift, frost 18°. We had to pitch the tent again, put the roof back on the stable, feed the horses and get back in the bags.

Capt. Koch said: “What is this? Is this wizardry or is Queen Louise Land holding us prisoners? This weather day after day, May has begun and always storm and blizzard. Or has luck abandoned me? No, we must not lose courage. We do not worry. Better days will come and we can move forward.”

May 5th. Snowdrift, wind force 6. We prepared to leave and departed shortly before noon. Arrived at the Punktum-storage after 5 hours. We rested for one hour and continued onwards. Were at 10 o’clock in the evening about 45 km away from Kaldbakur at 2100 m elevation above sea level. The ice sheet seemed flat in front of us but with a mild upward slope. The making of the stable took us about half of the third hour, and given how that work had gone so far, we thought it went well. The weather was reasonable, the wind more of the west and some snowdrift, the frost 22°.

May 6th. We went back and fetched the Punktum-storage. This was the last time that we had to go back to get cargo, because tomorrow we planned to take everything on the sleds at once. Although the loads would be somewhat heavy, we rather wanted to move slower and have shorter distances. The weather was tolerable, wind force 7, snowdrift, and the frost 20 degrees.

May 7th. We placed the entire cargo on the sleds, on three of them 325 kg on each; those sleds were to be pulled by Kári, Koch’s Gray and Lazy-Red. On the sled with Brownie we loaded 300 kg, but with the Cavalier 250 kg. Nothing else was done. Larsen was sick from snow-blindness. The weather was the same as before, storm and snowdrift, frost 20.5°.

May 8th. We were just getting going at 8 o’clock P.M., despite unfavorable weather, storm and snowdrift with 20-degree frost. We had the wind diagonally against us and the route was rather uphill. Things went well to begin with, but after a four-hour journey, tiredness started showing in some of the horses. It was mainly Koch’s Gray and the Cavalier. We lightened their sleds and added to the other sleds. In that way we could continue until at 8 o’clock AM on the 9th of May. We had traveled 24 km. A snow hut was made for the horses and the tent was pitched.

We left at 7 o’clock PM in the same weather, storm and snowdrift, but it went rather worse than the day before and we made it only 12 km. We had to camp due to raging storm and because of how tired the horses were. We made a hut for them and after a four-hour rest the wind had calmed somewhat. We departed yet again and went 10 km. We made, as before, a snow hut over the horses. We stayed until 12 o’clock noon on the 10th of May. We departed and continued for four hours. Then we had to stop and camp.

May 11. Continued onwards for four hours.

May 12. Departed at 7 o’clock AM and continued until 10 o’clock. Made a hut for the horses and rested until 5 o’clock PM. We headed out again and continued for two hours. The weather made things difficult for us, continuous wind and snowdrift, wind force 8 at its most, 5 at its least, frost 20 degrees. In total, we had traveled 80 km since we took the whole cargo onto the sleds at once.

May 13. Started at 7 o’clock AM and continued until 10 o’clock AM. Dug a hut for the horses into the ice and rested until 3 o’clock PM. Departed and continued for three hours and, yet again, dug a hut over the horses.

Digging stables for 5 horses. Blankets were placed on their backs for cover and a sail was used as a roof.

May 14. We stayed and rested the horses. The weather was on the better side, slow wind from the southwest and a low snowdrift along the ice, frost 18°. The snow is looser with every day, but the conditions are not too bad for the horses, just about to their fetlock. Where we dug into new snow, it was nowhere deeper than 3–4 decimeters. The old snow was also not as hard and seemed layered, with a thin crust between layers, probably from year to year. A barometric measurement showed 2278 m over sea level. For the last two days, the altitude difference has been about 23 m per day and one does not notice that slope much. During the three previous days, one poor snow bunting flew around us. I do not know, what it sought in this eternal wasteland, except death. But could the same not have been asked of us?

Layering or foliation in the ice.

May 15. We departed at half-eight o’clock in the morning. The weather was good, frost 21.5 degrees, slow wind from the northwest, fog in the air and a sputtering of snow drizzle from the fog. We continued until at half-twelve o’clock, and rested until three o’clock PM. We departed again. After about three-hour journey, Koch’s Gray started getting noticeably tired, but in these 7 hours we had gone about 20 kilometers. It was considerably laborious to dig a hut for the horses into the ice twice per day. It always fell to us, Larsen and myself. Capt. Koch had to watch the horses while we dug, because otherwise they gave us no peace; the moment they saw that a hole had formed in the ice, they were right on top of us if they were not held back. Before we started digging, we raised the sail, which we used as a roof. It was, as I have previously stated, three meters on each side, with bamboo poles on two edges; the horses were kept in a shelter by it while we dug the hut.

Wegener suffered constantly from cold and could only blame himself for having thrown away the Icelandic woolen sweater, like mentioned before. We took Icelandic woolen socks, cut off the end for the toes and pulled them up on his arms, all the way up to the shoulders, and placed one sock around his neck for cover. Despite this, he felt bad and was at his worst early in the morning. He could not keep up with us and we had to wait for him, so that he would not fall too far behind; during the latter part of the day he kept up better.

This evening, Koch’s Gray was shot. He seemed devoid of strength, and he had lost a lot of weight in the last few days. We did not like to have to do this, but there was nothing else to do. He had until this been one of our best horses. Tomorrow, May 16, we planned to stay put and rest the other horses, feed them as well as we could afford, 8 kg of hay and 5 kg of nutritional feed. May 16th became a rest day on purpose.

May 17. Remained in place due to raging weather, storm and blizzard.

May 18. The same weather.

May 19. Blizzard and storm. The snow accumulation reached up to the middle of the tent’s roof. Even though we got out and cleared it away, the snow was blown right back and just as high on the tent. This kind of day passed slowly, we tried to spend them by sleeping, smoking and talking.

May 20th. We left the campsite at 8 o’clock AM. The weather was a southwestern wind and snowdrift, wind force at four, frost 19.7 degrees. Things went reasonably for the first hour, but then Cavalier started falling behind. It was clear that he would not last much longer. At 11 o’clock he had fallen so far back, that after every 20 minutes, which we moved forward, we had to wait 15 minutes. And if we stopped for that long, the other horses would start shivering from cold. He had to go the same way as Koch’s Gray. His sled load, which was about 200 kg, was distributed evenly onto the other three sleds. There were about, or over, 350 kg on each sled. At half-one o’clock we continued our journey for three more hours; the weather had become good, no wind, sunshine, frost only 15°. We made a snow hut at the campsite, as usual, but now it took us not more than about a half second hour.

May 21. Departed at half-eight o’clock AM and continued until half-twelve o’clock, rested for three hours, after that continued until half-six o’clock and then we had traveled twenty-two km. The weather was a southwestern wind and snowdrift, straight against us, the frost was 20° in the morning, 26° in the evening. The snow conditions were the same, to the horses’ fetlock, and could not be considered bad. Capt. Koch went first, leading Brownie, but us Wegener pulled the sled with her. Next was Kári with his large load, and it was a special joy to see how lightly he pulled it, but it was obvious that he felt insulted by not being allowed to be first, like he was usually. Last was Larsen with Red.

May 22. Left the campsite at 7 o’clock AM. There was a light breeze from the southwest and the frost was 27°, but it had been 32° two hours earlier when we woke up. We continued onwards until half-twelve o’clock, rested for only one hour, but the horses received, like normally, both hay and nutritional feed. The latitude was measured. After that, we continued onwards until half-four o’clock PM and had gone 25 km. We organized the trip like the day before.

May 23. Left the campsite at 6.40. The weather was a southwestern wind and snowdrift (wind force 4). Frost 27.5°. Continued until 11 o’clock A.M., rested for one hour, continued for a half third hour. We noticed that we had lost a sleeping bag from the last sled. It took a half hour to return to fetch it. The time was at half-four when we got to a campsite. The snow hut construction took two hours and the time was half-six when we could start to think about nutrition for ourselves. This day we traveled 25 km.

May 24. We stayed put to rest the horses. Measured longitude yielded 34°10 minutes west. We had gone 89 km in the last four days. Elevation above sea level was 2550 m. The horses and Glói were pained in their eyes due to snow-blindness; I think, though, that it was more because of the constant storm and snowdrift, which punched and scraped us in the face. The snow-blindness maybe had its part. The snow bunting was still following us. If it happened, that we woke up and there was sunshine and now wind, he sat on the ridge of the tent and sang. Today there was little snowdrift but the frost was 29 degrees.

Breakfast rest on the ice sheet, showing Glói, Larsen, Vigfús, and Koch.

May 25.

My hope owns a hobbly ship,

her weather is malaise;

she many times a wasted trip

took in all her days,

says Þorsteinn Erlingsson.[102] How often do our hopes not fail? Mine, though, never more than today. During the previous days, we fed the horses as well as was possible, rested them, and yesterday basically lavished them with feed. But this day it seemed that both Red from Hvassafell and Brownie had lost their strength, especially Red. Wegener and I had pulled with Brownie, and for my part I can say that I did as much as I could and my strength allowed. I became so warm from exertion, that I walked both bare headed and barehanded, despite the cold. Red was, however, lazy by nature, but I was more concerned about tiredness. We could not add more load to Kári. He had 350 kg on his sled and pulled it as lightly as before, but we could expect that his strength would run out sooner or later. The weather was good, southwestern air and no snowdrift, but the frost was 29.4°. Bright sunshine. This day, we traveled in 11 hours, with many rests, 20 kilometers.

May 26. We left the campsite at 7 o’clock AM. We had lighted Red’s sled by about 65 kg; some things we had used at the campsite, but the rest we placed on Brownie’s sled and we were to help her, Wegener and I. We moved slowly, about three km per hour, but after a four-hour journey we rested for two hours. We fed the horses so well that they could not finish, because there was no use having leftover hay if all the horses were gone. After the rest, we continued for a half third hour. Then came our usual duties, digging a hut for the horses and other things. The weather was good, almost no wind, sunshine, but fog on the ice sheet around the whole horizon. The frost was 27 degrees. We supposedly approached the calm belt, which Koch and Wegener talked about being inland on the ice, and when it ended, we would have the wind at our backs. Wegener complained both about being out of breath and lack of strength, which he thought was because of the thin air (high mountain sickness). We approached 3000-meter elevation.

May 27. We left at 7 o’clock AM from the camp. We continued onwards for four hours and moved slowly. Both Red and Brownie were tired, so we rested for two hours. After that, we continued for two hours. We all felt out of breath and unwell, dizziness in our head and lack of strength, which we thought was caused by too thin air. We had reached a 3000-meter elevation. We thought this could also influence the horses. The weather had been good, only a southwestern breeze, frost 25 degrees. The snow bunting followed us; he sat on the tent’s ridge this morning, when we woke up, and sang, and it was most remarkable that there was no tone of cold in his voice. I was surprised. How could he sing of sun and summer in this eternal ice wasteland? These two days, we have gone 32 km in total.

May 28. We left the campsite at 7 o’clock AM and continued onwards for a half fourth hour, rested for two hours, continued for a half third hour and covered 16 km. The weather was decent, a southwest wind of wind force 4, snowdrift, it calmed down at noon, fog by the horizon, frost 28 degrees. The route was always a little uphill, but the snow conditions were the same, on average at the fetlock.

May 29. Continued onwards for 6 hours, like before, but with the change that Kári was first and for the first time his sled was made lighter by a few kilograms. Tomorrow, it would be possible to lighten his sled by about 50 kg. After this 6-hour journey, we camped, dug a stable like usual and pitched the tent. The elevation difference seemed to steadily become smaller, because in the last few days we had only gained a few meters of elevation. The snow lay more evenly and was looser, this day it was up to the mid leg on the horses and the conditions worse. The old snow was also looser and seemed to be layered. It was more difficult to determine that because the hard shell, which used to be between layers, had disappeared. It was as if the sun had no influence on the surface of the ice, hence the shell could not form. This day, it often appeared as if there was air between the layers in the snow; the layers collapsed when we moved forward and we heard a swish and a din in the snow, which could last 5 seconds or more. Glói was afraid of this and wanted most to stay on top of one of the sleds. When we shooed him down, he walked behind the last sled and tilted his head so that one ear was directed straight down. The snow bunting followed us and we discovered how he survived. We saw him pecking at the horse manure around the campsite. The weather was good, no wind, fog at the horizon, frost 26 degrees.

May 30. Remained in place and rested the horses. Worked little. Dug a few holes into the ice to try to determine the thickness of the snow layers, but because the shell was missing, we could not reach a conclusion. We cooked extra oatmeal and put some butter in it. Those were the greatest qualities of life, which could be enjoyed in this place, when one had to otherwise live on a fixed daily portion, which only included enough calories for us to maintain strength and work endurance. That night, Glói was expelled from the tent; he behaved so unwisely inside that he would have to stay out in the cold, poor wretch. Since we last took a rest day, 5 days ago, we had traveled 92 kilometers and were on the 37th degree of westerly longitude. The weather was a slow wind from the west, a sliding snowdrift in spots, frost 25.8 degrees.

May 31. Left the campsite at 7 o’clock AM and traveled for 7 hours, which we divided into three sections with two one-hour rest breaks, fed the horses hay in one of the rest breaks, nutritional feed in the other, and things went well considering. The weather was a northwestern storm with a sputtering of a blizzard (wind force 6), frost 29.9 degrees. If the wind had been against us, this would not have been traveling weather. We were reckoned to have gone 22 km. With this day May was over. We felt we owed it little thanks for the weather.

June 1. We left the campsite at 7 o’clock AM and traveled in the same way as yesterday, rested twice, one hour each time, and made it 18 km in a half eighth hour. There was fog. At first in the morning we could not see the sun, but it got brighter, and now it was sunshine, clear skies and no wind. Frost 24.5 degrees.

June 2.

Often Ingunn made some trouble

and never like tonight,

says in an old ditty.[103] The same could be said about our trip on this day. We barely made it 9 km in 5 hours and Larsen and I pulled with Red the whole time. Brownie was light on her feet. Kári did well like usual, pulled the heaviest sled, 325 kg, and seemed as strong as at the beginning of the trip. Weather: Fog in the air, light breeze from the southwest, frost 31.2 degrees.

June 3. The journey went no better than yesterday, only 9 kilometers traveled. Both Brownie and Red were tired, and Brownie’s time of misery was shortened one hour before we camped. In the previous days, we had fed them with so much hay and nutritional feed, that soon we could not but keep Kári alone. Tonight we threw away everything, which we thought we could lose, perhaps we went a touch too far with that; each kept only one pair of socks beyond the one each wore on his feet. The weather was foggy, light breeze from the southwest, frost 32 degrees.

June 4. Only went 9 km. Have gone 435 km from Kaldbakur, but we still have about 500 km left on the ice sheet. The snow bunting was with us both yesterday and today. It was our companion. Frost 31.5 degrees.

June 5. We stayed put. We honored Denmark’s Constitution Day, hung a flag on the tent’s front gable pole and hung four small flags inside the tent, ate extra oatmeal, biscuit and sardines, and each could eat as much as he wanted. Again we left those items, which we thought we could be without. Larsen and I had shod Kári with horseshoes, under which we could screw snowshoes, and we would see the day after how he would walk with those. We also installed masts on the sleds, so we could put up a sail when the wind was more at our backs, because we hoped this would start soon. Capt. Koch and Wegener dug a 7-meter-deep hole into the ice, both to see the snow layers and to measure the frost at various depths. It was not until at the bottom of that hole that they came down to what we here at home would call firn. Our cargo was now about 525 kg in total. Thereof was hay 140 kg, nutritional feed 80 kg, food for 33 days weighing with packaging 120 kg. There was also a box with instruments, photography plates, etc. at 45 kg, three cameras, one rifle, 20 liters of kerosene, one primus, two pots, four dishes, four coffee mugs, four dinner spoons, a tent with poles, two reindeer skins, four sleeping bags, four snowshoes, four pairs of skis, one shovel and one spade. The tools were two hammers, one pair of pincers, one saw, one pipe wrench, one chisel and flat-nose pliers. The weather was good, sunshine, breeze from the southwest, frost 20.6 degrees. The snow bunting was with us all day.

The cross-section of a 7-meter excavated hole.

June 6. Left the camp at 8 o’clock AM and continued until at half-two o’clock, rested for a half third hour. The rest became so long because we shoed Red, so that he could also wear snowshoes. It was cold being barehanded while shoeing. We continued onwards until at half-seven o’clock at night and had traveled 19 km. The trip went well given conditions. The snowshoes on the horses seemed to be of good help. The weather was foggy with rime in the air, but calm. The fog lifted and the sun could be seen. Frost 27°.

June 7. Left camp at 6.40 AM. Made it 15 km with two long breaks. We pulled the sled with Red; he was slow as usual. The there was fog, but the sun was visible. Frost 26°. The snow bunting was almost always around us.

June 8. Left the camp at 6.25 AM and continued onwards until at 10 o’clock, rested for one hour and continued anew. Completed a total of 16 km. Red was at his best. Three of us also pulled with him. Larsen, who was up front and led Kári, said he had seen a bird fly over, but did not recognize it. He said it was about the size of a falcon. That seemed almost incomprehensible; what bird could it be, which flew over this vast ice desolation. The ice sheet was flat and the horizon was wide, when it was not hidden by fog. But there was almost always fog down on the ice wasteland itself, even though it was otherwise sunny. It was also like that today. The breeze, which was sometimes felt, did not seem to come from any particular direction, but from all directions. The frost was 23.9 degrees. We have traveled 475 km from Kaldbakur, or about half of the width of the ice sheet. In celebration, we cooked extra oatmeal with milk and butter, and had coffee with biscuit afterwards. We were all, more or less, with chapped lips and damaged faces, and we were brown from the rays of the sun, despite the cold. Our appearance was like that of wild men.

June 9. Left the camp at 5.30 AM and continued with two breaks, like usual. But this is not completely correct, because the daily journey went like this: Kári was led for 11 minutes, rested for 5 minutes, moved for 11 minutes, rested for 5 minutes, and this repeated 13 times. After this we took a one-hour rest and gave the horses nutritional feed. We repeated the same journey again, but with seven periods of short rest, followed by giving hay. Onwards again but for 5 periods. Then we camped and ordinary work began, we dug a hut for the horses, which was much less work than before, since they were only two. In this way, the journey continued for a while. The snow conditions were better for the horses than previously and the snowshoes seemed to be of good use but could have been larger without hindering the horses. The weather was the same, fog at the horizon, breeze as before but it seemed to emanate from all directions when it was felt. The frost was 34.6°. Bright sunshine. We went 18 kilometers.

June 10. Left the camp at 4.30 AM. The trip was the same as before, went 19 km. Kári was as vigorous as before. The weather was the same as yesterday. Frost 33.7 degrees.

June 11. Departed from the camp at 3.30 AM and continued with 11 times 25 periods, which was among the longest, and with two extended rest breaks, like usual. Three of us pulled with Red, like in recent days, but when we camped, his end was the same as the others’, who had gone before him. Kári was the only one left. We really wanted to bring him alive off the ice, but we only had 90 kg of hay; by giving him 5 kg per day, it would last for 18 days. We also had 23 kg of nutritional feed. We all agreed to save all our bread, so that he could have it as extra feed. We placed all our things on one sled and that must have been about 400 kg. It was a heavy pull, but we intended to pull it with Kári as best we could. We put all our effort on bringing him alive to civilization. The weather was good, among the least foggy, light breeze from the southwest, frost 33.4°. The snow bunting flew joyful around us all day.

Kári and the expeditioners pull the sled, Glói follows happily (Koch, 1919, p. 216). Notice Kári’s snowshoes.

Kári alone in the stable.

June 12. We stayed still today. However, we dug a hole to a depth of seven meters, to measure the frost at various depths in the ice. The weather was good, calm and bright sunshine, frost 30.2 degrees.

June 13. This morning we left the camp at 4.30 A.M., continued in the same fashion for 8 hours and made it 20 km. Kári seemed to be as strong, but of course we tried to pull with him as best we could. The weather was not good, southwestern wind, wind force 6, snowdrift and blowing snowfall, frost 30°. We saw a fox’s trail, newly walked, the fox had come from the west and ran to the east. That was unbelievable, this was 385 kilometers from ice-free land. Glói, which for a long time had not dared but stay in our tracks due to his fear at the sound that was always heard from below in the snow when we moved, awoke and ran to the fox’s trail, but of course to the west, in the direction from where the fox came. He soon disappeared from sight and did not return to us until four hours later.

There are myths, told after Inuits from Cape York, that at this latitude there is supposed to be ice-free land and that reindeers from there sometimes come to sea at Melville Bay. These reindeer, they say, are from another species than the reindeer in West Greenland. That is of course a complete fantasy and nonsense, but I tell the tale as I was told it.

June 14. We left the camp at 5.30 AM. There was bad weather during the latter part of the night, so our departure was delayed for that reason. When we left, there was a usable traveling weather, but thick fog. Two hours later, the air lightened and the sun became visible. We saw a special natural phenomenon, which they, Capt. Koch and Wegener, did not know if had been seen at such a cold temperature. There was not a single sun,[104] but rather, they were five; one below the true sun, one above it and then two, on each side. We stopped for a moment, while they took some measurements to all these 5 suns. They barely had time enough for that before fog arrived with a snowfall, which continued until evening. Frost 26°. The trip went as before, completed 20 km. The barometer said we had gone down by 30 meters, but we had not noticed that slope. Yesterday we measured the absolute minimum air weight, 498 mm. It was not certain if that marked the highest elevation above sea level, because the two instruments, which we had, did not agree on the elevation.

June 15. This morning we departed the camp at 8.20 and traveled 19 km. The weather was foggy with a sputtering of snowfall, yet the sun was visible. The frost was 20°. The barometer showed we had moved down by 20 m. We celebrated that with oatmeal, milk and butter, in addition to the usual food portion. This was almost too much for the stomach because we had lived on a small portion for a long time, so that the stomach had shrunk and it was unclear, if it could tolerate this overload.

June 16. Left the camp at 3.30 AM. Received the wind at our backs for the first time and had the sail up. Went 18 km. The weather was foggy until 8 o’clock when it brightened up, but there was a cloud bank in the northwest which remained the whole day. The frost was 26°. A latitude measurement at 12 o’clock yielded 73° of northerly latitude. A longitude measurement at 6 o’clock in the evening resulted in 45° 10 minutes of westerly longitude. Based on that, we had traveled 80.5 km in the last four days.

Measuring the solar height with the Jacob’s staff to determine the latitude.

June 17. Lay still due to a southwestern storm and blizzard, the frost was 22.4°, and no option but to remain in the bags for the most part of the day. Doubtless there was more going on at home in Iceland, on the birthday of Jón Sigurðsson. Poor Glói lay under the side of the tent and expressed his misery. Same day at 6 o’clock PM. We felt sorry for poor Glói and let him into the tent. He even received 1/8 kg of chocolate when he came inside, he lay between Wegener and Larsen, at their feet, and enjoyed the warmth.

June 18. We left the camp at 8 o’clock AM. The wind had turned to a south-easterly direction, with snowfall and snowdrift. We headed towards the west, so that we could make use of the sails, but we were carried from our route. Went 25 km, wind force 6, frost 13 degrees.

June 19. Went from the campsite at 7 o’clock AM. South-eastern storm, wind force 7–8, blizzard and snowdrift, frost 10 degrees. Went 27 km. Kári showed signs of tiredness for the first time.

Kári pulls the sled alone.

June 20. Left the camp at 6.30 AM. Went 23 km. Kári’s steps were slower each day and it was sad, but as could be expected, given everything which he had been offered to endure, hard labor and meager feed. The snow conditions were rather better and I hoped that I could, within about two days, free him from the snowshoes. They served a purpose, in that he sunk less into the snow, but on the other hand they had to cause him discomfort. This day we first noticed the downhill slope, and the barometer showed a 100-meter drop in elevation. The weather was a south-easterly wind, wind force 5, thick cloud cover, blowing snowfall and snowdrift, frost 9 degrees.

June 21. Left the camp at 5 o’clock AM. The weather was reasonable, slow wind from the southeast, but soon got worse, turned into a storm, wind force 8, blizzard and snowdrift. We went with the wind straight at our backs using sails and our own power, because we let Kári stay behind the sled. We had to stop that because how hard it was for him to keep up. Eventually, the weather was so bad, that there was nothing to do but settle down, pitch a tent and dig Kári into the ice. The frost was 12.2 degrees.

June 22. Left from the camp at 9.40 AM. Went only 10 km because Kári was so powerless and we did not want to force him at all. I removed his snowshoes and that obviously made him happy. The snow conditions were on the worse side, but only because it had snowed yesterday and last night. It was even bad for skiing. The weather was good, wind breeze from the southeast, frost 7 degrees.

June 23. Departed from the camp at 11 o’clock AM. Traveled only 9 km because Kári was weak, yet we pulled the sled ourselves every day. We thought we had about 200 km left on the ice and we intended to, if possible, get him across. We planned to stay put tomorrow if it could give him added strength. The weather was good, only a south-eastern breath of air, frost 10 degrees.

June 24. We remained in place to give Kári a rest, if it could help. Last night we awoke at Glói barking and making noises outside, so that Larsen looked out. Two ravens were there visiting, but they flew immediately to the southwest, in the direction of land. The weather was good, wind breeze from the southeast, frost 5.5 degrees.

June 25. We were gone from the camp at 12 midnight and continued onwards for 8 hours, with two one-hour rest breaks. Went 27 km. We saw a bird come flying from the northwest and it flew high in a curve above us and to the southwest. We could not agree on what bird it was. My companions maintained it was a pewit, but I thought it was a skua. Larsen though it was the same species as the bird that he had seen on June 8th. The weather was good, wind breeze from the southeast, frost 13.9 degrees.

June 26. Departed from the camp a half hour after midnight, continued until 5 o’clock AM. Rested for a half second hour, continued onwards for three hours, went 20 km. We were at 2400-meter elevation above sea level and the slope downhill was small. The snow from last winter seemed to be much greater on this side of the ice sheet than on its east side. At our two last campsites, it was over one meter thick, but here it was 80 cm. The snow conditions were a little better, to Kári’s fetlock, but in some locations it held him completely. Like in the previous days, we pulled the sled and let Kári walk free along with us. The weather was good, a south-eastern breeze, frost 8.5 degrees.

June 27. Left from the campsite at 2 o’clock after midnight, continued onwards for 8 hours in two periods with a four-hour rest break. Traveled 20 kilometers. The weather was a south-eastern wind, wind force 4–5, and snowdrift, frost 11 degrees. A thin veil of clouds covered the western sky, but a beautiful strip of blue was by the horizon in the southeast. I have forgotten to mention our travel companion, the snow bunting; he was always now and then on the ridge of the tent in the morning and we had become so used to him, that he had stopped to cause discussion.

June 28. Left from the campsite at half-three o’clock at night and continued until 8 o’clock, rested until 11 o’clock. When we departed, we took Kári on the sled and prepared a place for him; we had three sleeping bags under him, and one rolled up under his head, we covered him with two reindeer skins and the tent and tied everything down. We continued for four hours, went a total of 25–27 km. This evening the new snow was 70 cm thick and the firn under it so hard, that it was difficult for us to dig a deep enough hut for Kári. A skua flew around the tent, then flew further to the northeast inland over the ice sheet and disappeared in the distance. The weather was a south-eastern wind, wind force three or four, and snowdrift, frost 10 degrees.

June 29. Left from the camp at 3 o’clock AM and continued in the same way as yesterday, with Kári on the sled, for a half sixth hour. We sat down for a rest just after 8 o’clock AM. There was a south-eastern storm, wind force 7, snowdrift and bad traveling weather. The frost was 13 degrees. We were 2162 m above sea level.

June 30. We left the camp at 10 o’clock PM. Could first continue for 5 hours, rested for four hours and then onwards for a half third hour. Kári had to walk. The weather was without wind, but there was a thick, wet snowfall and the sled was so heavy that we had difficulty pulling it. We were both tired and bedraggled when we camped. We did not have more hay than enough to feed Kári three times. As a feed supplement, he received three kg of hardtack, peameal and chocolate. He lost weight day by day and was no more than skin and bones. We never saw the sun this day, frost at 0 degrees.

July 1. We woke up late tonight, compared to what we had intended, and really, nothing else could be expected because we were dead tired when we went to bed, and probably hunger could be added, since we had reduced our meager portions to give Kári everything which we thought could be nutritious for him. The time was half-two at night when we woke up. The weather outlook had not improved much. The snowfall had stopped but there was a fog, and we saw little beyond us. We were heavy of mind when we packed and tied our cargo to the sled. Kári had to carry himself. For the first 25 minutes we made little progress, the sled was as heavy to pull as the day before. We felt it was like nailed to the snow. I expect it was a rather dreadful sight to see these six living creatures inch their way over the vast white plain. But there was no onlooker and I do not want to paint a darker picture than is necessary. When these 25 minutes had passed, it started lighting up in the southwest, a short while later the fog was mostly disappeared and we could see the sun. This worked to refresh us, the gloom was gone, we became sharper in our movements and added to that, the downhill slope started getting greater than before. We managed 10 periods, 25 minutes each. Rested, pitched the tent and cooked the last oatmeal, which we had.

After three hours we headed out again and now with Kári on top of the sled. There was a strong breeze from the southeast and it filled the sail. We made good progress; in this way we continued for 5 hours, because we had set our minds on seeing clear land this day. Twice or thrice, we felt we saw mountains out by the horizon in the south-westerly direction, but they did not want to be clearly seen. If these were mirages, clouds or just our own visions, we did not know. We were a little disappointed when we settled down, also because ahead of us was a glacier ridge and not a small slope uphill. We did not dare to try and tackle this slope, as tired as we were, and when we tried to dig a hut for Kári, it was not possible. Under the layer of snow, which was 60 cm, there was rock-hard ice, which could not be worked. Using the sail from the sled, we made a tent over him in front of our tent door and cared for him as best we could, with his head and neck inside our tent. After that we went to rest and planned to sleep for three hours. The weather had been good, no frost and somewhat of a snow slush. We were wet on our feet and more widely. We had not rarely made the mistake, of lying down in the snow during the day, when we rested.

July 2. We left the campsite a half hour after midnight. The wind was from the southeast, wind force 4, frost 13 degrees. We felt it was cold, we were tired and lacked strength. The Greenlandic shoes froze hard on our feet and the cold seemed to reach into our hearts. We attempted the slope and it took us over a half hour to get up on top, then we saw that in the south there were glacially crowned mountains. I am not able to describe the effect this had on us. It was like we were different men, who stood here and looked with eagle eyes towards the mountains far in the south, rather than those, who had a short while ago started climbing this hill, bedraggled and downtrodden. We agreed that even though these mountains were far out of our way, we should change our course to see from what they were made. As the reader perhaps knows, the central part of Greenland is made of basalt, but to the north and south the land is formed by gneiss (ancient rock). We were to come down from the ice sheet at the border of these two rock types, basalt and gneiss, if our course was correct. We could well expect that there would be some error in our measurements with such poor equipment, as our Jacob’s staff was. Kári was taken in a hurry and placed on top of the sled, because the frost had formed a hard shell on the snow and both ski and sled conditions were so good, that we could not wish for better. After a 5-hour trip, we had come so close to these mountains, that we could with certainty see that they were from basalt. Far to the northwest, we saw a mountain with a giant ice cap helmet, furthermore, three smaller to the west with little or no ice cover. We decided to wait until noon, so that we could take a latitude measurement and see its result.

But while we wait, I will go back in time, notably one whole year, but that is to explain some things, which later will occur.

In the spring of 1911, a man was sent from Denmark to Greenland. It was Andreas Lundager, the one and same who was to be with us on this trip, but who was left in Akureyri. Capt. Koch had tasked him with purchasing food, which would be enough for four men for eight days; moreover, a primus and various equipment for cooking, because we might well have had to leave all those kinds of equipment behind, if we faced difficulties. We would always be low on food supplies so it was necessary to have supplies waiting when we came down from the ice sheet. He was instructed to have 10 poles made, three-meter-long, topped with triangular tin cans, painted in strong colors, black, red and green. On the sides should also be painted white arrows, which showed the direction from one pole to the next. These poles should be raised with at least a half km separation, in a direction from the place where he left the supplies, by the glacier’s edge. He should bring drills, so that he could drill holes for the poles into the ice. He should prepare them in such a way that they could not fall. He was to make a drawing of a distinctive mountain in the vicinity of the supplies, but from a viewpoint of at least 10 km up onto the ice sheet. To complete all this, the Danish government had ordered the colony governor in the village of Prøven in the Upernavik area to render him all assistance, which he needed. The location had for the most part already been decided; it was in an area, where Inuits from Prøven went reindeer hunting every summer. In the fall of 1911, A. Lundager came home after the work was well done and said he had completed everything, which he had been tasked with doing. Capt. Koch had the drawing of the mountain, which was supposed to be a short distance northwest from the supplies. This mountain was called Pingut[105]in Greenlandic.

At noon the latitude measurement was taken and our location was 72° 32 minutes of northerly latitude. We were too far south, because this morning we had traveled at least 25–30 km straight south. We could safely head some distance north instead of straight west. We continued once more with Kári on the sled. The sled and ski conditions were good, due to the hard shell on the snow, and we made good progress. At 8 o’clock PM we stopped, and had traveled 20–25 km on this section. We saw ice-free land from the northwest to the southwest and many singular mountains in that area, but none that looked like Lundager’s drawing of Pingut. The most prominent was the large mountain far in the northwest, with its lily-white ice cap. It was, though, as distant as when we saw it first; we saw it was formed from gneiss, because it was missing all straight lines. The weather was good, a slow wind and bright sunshine, but it got cooler with the evening.

July 3. Started a half hour after midnight. There was bright sunshine, but a four-degree frost, the sled and ski conditions were fine. Kári was, as before, on top of the sled. Our trip this day was reckless. On our way, there were many downhill slopes and without knowing what would continue below the hill, my companions sat on the sled with Kári, but I skied down. We had gone about 40 km at 12 o’clock noon, when we came upon a crevasse, full of water, which raged down a considerable slope. We could not see how deep it was because of the water, but where we were, it was reckoned to be 6–8 meters wide. There was no way for us to get across. We pitched the tent and settled down. We hoped that in the evening there would be frost and that the water would lower in the crevasse. In one place, we saw a ledge under the water at the western bank, where our sled, which was four meters long, could reach across, if the water lowered enough for this ledge to emerge. The weather was wonderful, sunshine and heat, the wind more southerly, and did not come as directly down from the inland ice as it had before. It was like we had fallen from the winter of the ice and into a calm and sunny summer. We used the heat from the sun and laid out to dry, our sleeping bags and those other things, which needed drying, which was actually little else but what we wore daily, the rest had been thrown away.

For Kári, we had a little nutrition for two–three portions and food for us about as often. We had not tasted bread and flour biscuit for several days, Kári had those alone. And poor Glói had for long had little, he who had been so fat when we set forth onto the ice sheet, that he had difficulty walking and was now the only one, who could be considered of decent weight.

At 9–10 o’clock in the evening there was frost and the water lowered in the crevasse. It was not until 12 o’clock midnight, that the water had lowered enough for the ledge to emerge. We took the sled, brought it to the edge and tried to get one end of it onto the ledge. This succeeded so that we could walk freely across. We pulled our baggage over using a rope between us. But we had to push Kári into the hell-cold water and pull him across with a rope. Immediately when he was out of the water, we covered him with two reindeer skins and a blanket.

Capt. Koch left right away, but the rest of us collected our things and placed them on the sled. By then, Capt. Koch had disappeared from sight. Two hours later we caught up with him. He stood on a gravel knoll, which poked out of a glacier ridge. The ice-free land was visible at a 7–8 km distance. Yet, we saw no mountain, which had any similarity with Lundager’s Pingut. We saw only two small peaks, so insignificant in our eyes, that we thought they were not worth a look. They were formed from basalt, but what did that matter? The whole land ahead of us was that as well, except for the great mountain with the white helmet. It was still a long distance away and had to be near the sea in the northern Upernavik region. Below the glacier ridge, on which we stood, started a rough glacier, each steep ridge following the next and countless crevasses. We saw that there were snow-bridges on the nearest ones. But nowhere did we see any of the poles with the painted tin cans. We had, despite all our measurements, to be in a different location than intended. What of it, the land ahead of us was ice-free and it beckoned us, we wanted to escape the ice as soon as we could. We stood up and continued onwards. When we reached the rough ice, we first had to climb up onto each ice ridge and pull the sled up to us. It took us three hours to cross the worst part, which was about one kilometer.

We were dead tired and saw that the best choice was to put up the tent and cook us a meal. We divided what we had into two meals and warmed tea afterwards; there was no more coffee. We had given Kári the last bite of hay, hardtack and biscuit. Everything was finished except this one little meal for us, as we were also a half month behind schedule. We agreed, while sitting inside the tent, to leave the sled behind, with the tent and all our equipment, and go all four with Kári down to the land below the glacier and find if the supplies were indeed nowhere to be found, like everything suggested, based on Lundager’s drawing. On the other hand, we did not want to believe that our measurements were totally wrong. Whatever waited us, we celebrated that the ice sheet trip was nearly over. We stood up and went out of the tent.

We were surprised when we came out. Kári had barely touched the little, which he had been given, and when I took his harness and intended to lead him along, he stood still, did not budge. His strength was gone. The last walk, across the steep glacier ridges, had used it up. I let go of his harness and walked away from him. I am not going to describe my emotions at this moment. This was the animal, which had been dearest to me, and which had on this difficult journey suffered with me through good and bad. The vigor had left him, 5–6 km from land and perhaps green pasture. Often we had spoken of what to do with Kári, if he made it across. In Prøven waited 500 kg of Icelandic hay, intended as feed for a horse, which, if perhaps, could come alive from the ice sheet, and which would be enough for the journey from Greenland to Copenhagen. But when arriving there, what then? Capt. Koch said he wanted to place him in the zoo, there he could be comfortable. I, however, maintained that he would be most happy back home in his birth region, Bakki in Öxnadal. Neither of these could ever be. These had been fantasies.

We walked quiet away and mainly headed for the two peaks, which were closest to the glacier edge. The route was slow, glacier ridges with sags and crevasses, but they were not as steep as before, rounder and lower. It took us about two hours to cross these 5–6 kilometers. When we had about 200 meters left to the glacier’s edge, we suddenly noticed, that the peaks, which we were headed for, appeared joined and now seemed to be one small mountain. When this was compared with Lundager’s drawing every line fit perfectly. A short while later, we saw where the poles with the tin cans lay spread all over, all flat. We walked straight to the glacier’s edge; it was vertical and 10–12 meter high. Below it was a lake, a full kilometer long, but about half wide. On the north-western banks of the lake were two reindeer grazing. They ran away when they noticed us.

About 200 meters to the left-hand side was a gravel hill next to the glacier. On it was a cairn, made from rocks. There would be our supply storage. “Now we walk there,” said Capt. Koch, “and see, how Lundager has prepared this. He is a gourmet and had free reign.” It took us only a few minutes to walk down onto the gravel hill. The ice extended to the hill with a mild slope and it was relatively easy to get up to or down from the glacier’s edge. When we got onto the gravel hill, we saw that another lake was at the glacier edge southwest of the hill and that a river flowed from the northern lake in an arch around the gravel hill. It flowed down a slope, with strong current through a rocky riverbed. We could not see how large the southern lake was because of a glacier ridge, which entered it.

We tore the cairn and found a wooden crate inside. Outside it lay 8 tin cans; their lids had been pushed closed but not soldered shut. They contained a half third kg of hardtack each, but moisture had gotten inside so that the hardtack had mildewed. We thought it was good enough food for humans. With them was a primus but with two legs broken off, and a 10 liter can of kerosene.

The lid on the wooden crate was loose. Inside it was a tin box, which was soldered closed. We cut it open with a knife and removed its contents. What it was, I have not written in my diary, but they were good and delicious dishes. Including, as I recollect, for lunch a turtle soup and oxtail soup. There was also a half a box of cigars, to relieve our tobacco hunger. But there was no pot, neither knife, nor spoon nor fork, and nothing for cooking besides the primus, the can with the kerosene and a small flask of methylated spirits.

XV. In West Greenland. New Difficulties and Hunger

After this investigation was finished, we ate generously from the dishes, each of us lit a cigar and either with it in hand or mouth, we sat for a conference. There was a 25 km distance[106] (as the bird flies) to the next fjord, Salmon Fjord.[107] Salmon Fjord is itself 9 Danish miles[108] long and the Inuit village Prøven is 7–8 km southwest of its mouth, and where we expected to reach people. We were, as mentioned before, half a month behind schedule. The governor in Prøven had been asked to monitor when we came from the ice sheet and to give us all the assistance that he could offer. It occurred to us that he might have sent Inuits to Salmon Fjord, since now was the time, when they normally went there for reindeer hunting. Our conference results were these: Capt. Koch and I should go to Salmon Fjord and try to reach Inuits if they were there or close by the fjord. Wegener and Larsen would go back onto the ice sheet, take with them some food from the supply, primarily two cans of hardtack, to conserve the food as was possible. If Kári was still in the same condition, they were to shoot him right away, because we had seen that it was unlikely for us to get him across what was left of the ice, due to crevasses on the way.

Capt. Koch and I stood up soon. He put in his pocket ¼ kg of chocolate and with that we left and went down by the river. We had to find a place to ford it. We thought it looked best right below the lake, at the river’s source. There it was about 50–60 m wide and with little current. On it floated ice fragments, because the ice on the lake melted fast. We took off our socks, tied our pants up at mid-thigh and waded in. We soon discovered that this would not be enough, so we returned to the same side and took off more clothes, tied them in a bundle on our shoulders and waded in again but holding hands. We made it across. The depth was well up under our arms, cold was it, and it was not completely free of being uncomfortable when the pieces of ice rubbed against our bare skin.

The weather had been wonderfully good, sunshine and heat, but now there were thick clouds and the sun could not be seen, there was a breeze from the northeast. One thing, which caused me some surprise, was that the land seemed to be lowest at the glacier, so that everything fell towards it and not from it. When we had walked a short distance from the river, we saw that the lake southwest of the gravel hill, where our supplies were, extended along the glacier edge as far as the eye could see. The place was undeniably well chosen; it was the only spot in an area, extending tens of kilometers, that could possibly have worked. The land next to the glacier was just wet patches of moss, but further away began rock-ribbed ridges. At the north-western corner of the large lake was a small marsh, where light sedge billowed in the north-eastern wind. We did not know how dense it was, we saw it from a distance, but we thought of Kári, who had to die so close to green grass.

Our progress enroute was slow, we often had to sit and rest. We found how powerless we had become from the extended lack of nutrition. In the morning we had put on lappshoes (Kumager); they were much too large, the feet rolled loose inside them. In general use, people wrap their feet with hay before putting them on, and stuff hay down with the foot, as much as possible, before tying the shoelaces. This morning there was no hay available and our feet could play at will, from toe, back to the heel or out to the sides. This made our walk even more uncomfortable. To this was added a thick fog, which suddenly appeared; we could hardly see one fathom and did not know where we were headed. But we continued onwards, into the unknown. At 6 o’clock PM we were in front of a tall, cliffed mountainside. A pouring rain had started but we had no shields against it. In the rock belt we found a small cave; it was barely enough for one of us, but it was shelter. We stayed for a half sixth hour and shivered from the cold. The rain let up a little and I refused to shiver there any longer. We scrambled down the mountainside and came into a valley, with knee-high willows, dwarf birch and erica. Everything was wet after the rain and we were soon wet up to our knees. We continued down the valley, amazed by this lush vegetation.

After a two-hour walk down the valley, it split in two by a high and large mountain. It seemed grassy as high as we could see. We selected the valley, which was on the left side, because into the other was an uphill slope. After a short walk, this valley widened up on both sides and before us lay a large stream, with a huge flow of water and current. We knew that there was a small creek flowing into Salmon Fjord, which was not supposed to be a hindrance to anyone. Could this be it? No one could cross this river. We walked upstream. After a one-hour walk, we saw this would be fruitless because the river emerged from a mountain gorge, which was more craggily rugged than I had ever seen before. We returned. We knew now that the river had its source in the large lake at the glacier edge. We walked downriver. A short walk downstream from were we first came to it, it widened out and flowed with a strong undercurrent. It was obvious from the eddies, which could be seen everywhere on the surface, that here could be a ferry crossing but nothing more.

We found a long-tailed duck’s nest with 5 eggs. The poor duck found it empty when she returned to it. The human is such a predator. We swallowed them on the spot. We continued downriver. A short while later it fell off a cliff in a beautiful waterfall, but we paid its beauty no attention, just continued to the unknown. The valley had become a ravine, yet its slopes, although steep, were covered with vegetation, the part we saw but fog hid the upper parts of the mountains. After a one-hour walk, the ravine widened and the river turned to the left, but a ridge extended from the mountain on the right. We crested the ridge. Below it was a large fjord, of course the Salmon Fjord, and there was only a short walk to its bottom. The river was the Salmon River. It did not enter the fjord at the bottom, like the map showed, but 5–6 km further out.

We arrived at the fjord’s bottom at 9 o’clock AM on July 5th. There was no one there, but it was visible that men had been here a few days ago. We saw where they had done their private business and used paper.

At the bottom of the fjord was a small flatland. It was, like everything else here, grown with willows and dwarf birch. Here was a large boulder, the full height of a man. We gathered stones from the Inuit campsites and built a cairn on top of it, there we fastened a reindeer antler, which we found, tied a handkerchief to it as a flag and a matchbox, with a letter to the governor in Prøven, that he would send a boat with 15 men to assist with carrying our cargo from the glacier edge to the fjord. This work had taken us one hour and after that there was nothing to do but return. Up the hill from the fjord, there was a trodden path. We followed it and when we crested the first hill, we rested and ate the chocolate.

We started onwards again. Good god, our sore feet! It was almost impossible to step on them. The rain poured out of the sky as never before. We had to crawl into shelter under a large boulder. We had lost the trodden path where it entered rocky ground. We continued anew, if anything, the rain had reduced somewhat. We had become afraid that there was no help in crawling into shelter, it would be best to plod on. But the fog became darker if the rain became lighter. We had followed a mountainside for a long while, which we had kept on our right-hand side, but suddenly we were in a narrow gulch. It was so narrow and hard to pass through, that we had to use our hands as much as our feet to move forward. Finally, we were free from it. We came upon rounded gravel ridges. Later we came to a large stone, which by the influence of frost and water had split into three. One of the stones lay flat, the others stood standing and I remembered that we had walked past them, when we left the glacier. I said this to Koch: “We are on the right way; I know these stones.” He turned around, looked hard at me and said: “Vigfús, are you loosing yourself? No living man recognizes stones with any certainty, they are all alike. Let us not argue about this.” A moment later the fog lifted and we saw Pingut. We were on the right way.

A half hour later we came to the river. The same story as before was repeated, we took off our clothes, waded the river and finally reached the supply storage. It was 37 hours since we departed from there. For food we had had 1/8 of a kg of chocolate and a half third duck egg per person, no sleep, and according to an approximate measurement using the map, we had walked 90 km. The weather had become nice, the sun could be seen, but we felt cold. We tore the supplies open, fetched the primus, poured kerosene in it and secured it between three stones. We opened a half-box of tea biscuits, emptied it and planned to use it as a pot. There was also a packet of oatmeal and we intended to cook us an oatmeal porridge. The box leaked in one corner and the porridge was about to burn, even though we stirred it with one leg from the primus. We gave up on the cooking, poured some milk on it, used crackers for a spoon and ate with good appetite. I thought this was a wonderful meal. We took a can of anchovies, ate the fish from it and warmed coffee in it so often, that we both had enough. We took one cigar each, walked to a boulder, sat down to enjoy the cigars, in shelter and sunlight. But we fell asleep before they were smoked.

I was startled awake by something ice cold touching my face. It was Glói, but he was supposed to be with our companions on the glacier. I woke Capt. Koch and told him that they would be on the way down from the glacier, otherwise Glói would not be here. We arose, half stiffer than before and with even sorer feet. We could barely move them in front of us. We had slept for two hours.

We plodded onwards. It was not walking, I do not know what it was most similar to. With many rest stops, we managed to get so far that we could see the tent. Wegener was outside and saw us. He put his head inside the tent for one moment, then walked to where a spiked staff stood in the snow, took it and came to us. He handed me the staff but grabbed under Capt. Koch’s arm and supported him home to the tent. The time was 12 noon on June 6th. They were just getting up. We drank coffee with them, crawled into their sleeping bags, which were still warm, and fell asleep.

Our walking route through Salmon Fjord to Prøven.

After 8 hours had passed they woke us up, offered us some food and asked if we had not slept enough. We accepted the food but wanted to sleep longer. Four hours later they woke us again and first then did we hear their news. They were in the shortest words: They shot Kári immediately, moved the tent over one glacier ridge, so that we would not have to see him dead at the tent’s door, when we got back. The whole time, when the rain pounded us, they were in a slushy snowfall and sometimes snowfall with frost. At 9 o’clock in the morning when we came, Glói had disappeared, and they thought for certain that we were close.

We took down the tent, placed our things on the sled and started going down from the glacier. Capt. Koch and I had greatly swollen feet and our heels were sore.

At 12 noon on the 7th of July, we had made it with all our things down from the glacier. We pitched the tent for the first time on ice-free ground, after 87 days on the ice sheet and after having traveled 1200 kilometers. This day had a sputtering of a snowfall but the snow did not stick to the ground.

When we had pitched the tent and cooked a meal, we went to the lake, cut each other’s hair and beard, and washed our faces and hands, but we had not done that since the evening before Christmas.

Capt. Koch and Vigfús prepare the last coffee.

The morning after we started transporting ourselves across the river. Capt. Koch and Larsen waded across at the same ford which we Koch had used before. Further downstream, where the river fell in narrows, Wegener and I threw a rope across to them and we pulled our cargo in small parcels between us across the river. At last the only thing remaining was a tin box with photograph plates, films and more. It contained completely everything which was of value for the scientific and practical success of our expedition. The box weighed 40 kg. The box’s lid was on hinges, fastened on the front with a clasp and a wooden stick was placed through the loop in front of the clasp. It occurred, which should never happen. Over the middle of the river, the box fell from the rope and into the water and started moving fast downstream with the current. Not thinking and without any considerations, I threw myself into the river after the box, and without understanding, even to this date, how I managed, I returned with the box in my arms up on the bank where they, Capt. Koch and Larsen, were already; of course, drenched to the top of my head, but uninjured. The box had opened and from it had fallen a small box with the ammunition, which we had, not counting the eight bullets, which we had in our pockets. Furthermore, a sunray meter in a cardboard box had also fallen out; we saw it later floating on the lake below.

Everything was removed from the box in a hurry and laid out to dry. There was bright sunshine and a moderate wind, coming from the ice sheet, heat of two degrees. Later it was discovered that the damage was inexplicably little.

The trip Capt. Koch and I made, had shown that we could neither cross the Salmon River nor the Salmon Fjord except by boat. If it were not available, all connection with the human world was severed. We thought that by dressing the sled with our sleeping bag lining, which was waterproof, we could make a boat. But the sled would have to be carried, it originally weighed 35 kg, but with the iron and other things which had been added when it broke last autumn, it would weigh at least 40 kg and was, as mentioned before, four meters of length. I offered to try and carry it to Salmon Fjord, even though it was a difficult and slow route; the others would take over if I were spent. We agreed to experiment with the carrying capacity of the sled with the sleeping bag lining. It was speedily dressed up and taken to the water. The vessel was found to work but could only carry one person. That was not enough, and we returned to the tent a little downtrodden.

I expect that we had all wondered the same thing, what solution could possibly save us. At least it was true for me. Finally, I dared to suggest one thing, which I had thought of.

“Koch, I think I have found a solution.”

“What is that Vigfús?”

“We each have our clothes-sack. They are made from the same material as the sleeping bag lining and are waterproof. We cannot blow them up, but up on the hill, where the supplies were, we left 8 cans emptied of hardtack, there are also many cans, which had contained canned foods. We collect all this together, divide it into the clothes-sacks, tie them well closed and tie two of them to each side of the sled.”

“Yes, Vigfús, there we have it.”

There was no delay in collecting this garbage together. But from here we did not leave until after 7 o’clock PM on July 9th. We left everything behind, tent, sleeping bags, primus, kerosene and whatever could be counted as a comfort, we took only what was necessary for the boat, and the food, which we had. Also a pot to cook in, which we planned to do with erica and willows, a flask with kerosene for lighting a fire and our drinking mugs. Our packs weighed, based on our best estimates, mine a full 40 kg, because in addition to the sled I had a few more things, and each of the others about 20 kg or less. We received good weather, but the way was arduous as before, and instead of the rain, which Capt. Koch and I had caught, the gnats intended to eat us alive during this one long day, which we were to get there, but the trip was a three day’s journey, that is, two nights and one day.

We came to the bottom of Salmon Fjord at three o’clock at night the 11th of July, each with his own burden, tired, swollen and bloody in the face from the gnats. We had a three-hour sleep, cooked, which took longer than when we used the primus. After that the boat construction began, and we took more care than during the experiment up at the glacier. The oars were two bamboo tent poles, with half a snowshoe on each end, and we would row Inuit style. At three o’clock this work was completed and the boat was ready to be floated.

We had selected a location for the ferry 5–6 km from the bottom of the fjord. There was a spit of land jutting out into the fjord, so that it was only 500 meters wide. Capt. Koch and Larsen were to sail to there. But when they were only a short distance from land, a strong storm picked up, and this boat could not handle waves. They headed back to land and thought to pull it along the coast. But this tore holes in the sailcloth, and the vessel, or shall we say boat, had to be dragged ashore. We mended the holes in the cloth and spread fat on the seams, while we waited for the wind to calm.

At 10 o’clock that evening the wind calmed. We began work anew. Larsen and Capt. Koch sailed across, Larsen fetched Wegener, and lastly myself. They could all swim, but I could not.

Koch and Larsen sail over Salmon Fjord.

On the 12th of July, at 12 o’clock midnight, we were ready to start our walk out along the fjord. We left everything, which we could be without, we only kept the food, which was supposed to last for three meals, with conservation, a pot to cook in, four drinking mugs, about half a flask of kerosene, one rifle, one sled sail on a bamboo pole and a Danish flag.

The map showed the coastline as just about straight, but we found otherwise. The mountains were cut by countless coves and inlets. We were either down by the sea or up at 900–1000-meter elevation. The trip progressed slowly. Wegener and Larsen kept falling behind. Larsen complained about pain in his foot, the one he had injured last winter. However, Wegener had the worst time going downhill. Later it was found that he had on this trip suffered from cardioptosis. I will not describe myself better than I am, but at the time I thought this was not right as it should. Had they not lain in the tent up on the glacier for two days, had plenty of food and rest, while Capt. Koch and I had plodded through bad weather through unknown territory, to call without food, for 37 hours? That is how selfish one can be.

We inched our way out the fjord, like snails, and early morning on July 13, probably about 5–6 o’clock, we had gone far enough, that we should stop following Salmon Fjord and should cross the peninsula to the next fjord to the south. It did not have a Danish name but Greenlandic, unpronounceable in our language. The map showed a valley with three lakes, a distance of 7–8 km. We had often been on bad routes, but never like this. It took us 6 hours to get across. Until now, we had good weather, but the sun disappeared and fog rolled in. We found the fjord and continued out along it. According to the map, there should be two inlets[109] extending northwards; we should walk around those and out along the latter. From the peninsula that was formed between the main fjord and this extra inlet, we were supposed to see the island Prøven. It was at its highest 80 meters above sea level. We had found two long and narrow inlets and walked out along the latter, with the false hope in our minds, that it would be a short distance to Prøven. Sleet came down and slush covered the ground.

When we arrived at the tip of the peninsula, we faintly saw an island, but it could not be Prøven. Where we saw this island, it had sheer cliffs, 200–300 m high; the real height of the island could not be seen because it was hidden by fog.

There on the peninsula we ate the last meal, which we had. It was one hardtack for each of us and one quarter liter can of canned milk. We thinned the milk with cold water so that each of us could have nearly one quarter liter. It was impossible to light a fire, the slush lay over everything and made all things wet. After this meal, we continued yet again and planned to follow the fjord. It turned out to be impossible because sheer cliffs stood straight from the sea. We tried to head up the steep slopes and made it to about 600-meter elevation. By then there was a snowfall with a strong wind, so that we could not see far. We found a rocky outcrop, which protruded from the cliff. There was plenty of loose rock. We resorted to building a knee-high shelter and used the cliff wall as one side. The shelter was no larger than enough for us to lie straight, tightly together, each at the others’ side. We stuffed erica in the largest holes and used the sled sail as a roof.

In this shelter we remained for 24 hours. All that time the storm raged on. Glói lay on top of Wegener’s legs. If anyone became tired of lying on the same side and wanted to change, all had to do the same.

In the morning of July 15th the weather let up. There was a one-foot thick snow cover over everything. There was fog and visibility was limited. We got going. We were all strengthless and depressed. We had only walked for 5–6 minutes, when Capt. Koch blacked out and fell into the snow. He did not fully lose consciousness. We raised him up, gave him camphor drops, which we had with us, and tried to talk to him. The camphor drops refreshed him so much that he could stand up. We walked back to the stone shelter and discussed what we could do. Capt. Koch thought our only option was to try and get back to the tip of the peninsula, where we had eaten our last meal, construct a cairn, place our diaries in it “and give the glory to god”, like he put it. None of us would agree to this. We needed food, but where was it to be found? It was hard to think about slaughtering Glói. He had, this poor creature, followed us faithfully from the beginning. But he would still have to save us from a hunger death. We had 8 bullets left. We had seen ptarmigans in many spots on our route until now, we would also see them today. We could shoot them and eat raw, and we would surely see Prøven on this day. Wegener started trying to light a fire with the erica from the shelter. Larsen walked along the cliff wall; he had often before found field sorrels along cliffs. This one protruded so much that the snow did not lie up against it in places. Larsen thought that he might find something akin to vegetables. Capt. Koch lay in the shelter. But I had to see to Glói, as hard as that would be.

We chopped the meat into small bites and placed that, which Larsen had collected and we call vegetables, with it into the pot. We had lost the lid from the pot, so that it was open. The erica did not burn well. There was a little left in the kerosene flask and it was splashed onto the fire now and then, and at last there came the moment, when we could enjoy the dish. I thought it was good, but hunger makes all things sweet. I thought the smoke taste was worst. All this had taken three hours. Meanwhile the fog had lifted, so we could see the sun. Wegener stood up against the cliff wall while he ate, but simultaneously looked over the fjord. The rest of us sat on the shelter wall. Suddenly Wegener says, and that unusually loud: “What is this out on the fjord? Is it an iceberg or is it a boat with sails?”

We sprang up and looked in the direction, which Wegener pointed, and we all said: “It is a boat! We must catch it!”

We placed a bullet in the rifle in a hurry and shot out into the fjord, as close to the boat as we dared, and followed this by shouts as loud as our strength and windpipes allowed. This echoed in the mountains and they sent it between them. We looked eagerly at the boat. Yes, it turned from its heading and aimed for the coast, sailed alongside it for a little while, but turned back towards the fjord. We repeated our former actions, and they worked. The boat returned, lowered the sail and rowed to land.

Capt. Koch and Wegener had already started going down the mountainside. Larsen and I threw away, what we had left of the food, picked up what little we had with us, and followed.

The Inuits had landed and noticed us. They came towards us up the mountainside 7 together, the 8th remained by the boat. Five remained with Capt. Koch and Wegener, and two came towards us Larsen. Of course we did not understand a word of what they said, but they took from us what we carried. When we came closer, we saw there were more people on the boat because steam billowed from the beachfront. Those were three or four children. He, who had remained with the boat, was Rev. Chemnitz. He lived in Upernavik and was on his way to South Upernavik,[110] to confirm children there. He was with the children from Prøven and would stay a week in South Upernavik and prepare the children from both villages, Prøven and South Upernavik, for the ceremony. Due to bad weather and surf he had to detour his way around here, which was a much longer route than necessary if the weather was good. He spoke good Danish, but was a pure Inuit, or little mixed. He said that the boat’s owner was with him and his name was Jonas. If we wanted, he would negotiate with him on our behalf about transport to Prøven. We would have to pay those expenses. This would delay his trip by two days. He said he would charge every man 50 øre per day, or for two days seven krone. Capt. Koch said he would gratefully accept this, and that he would even pay one krone per day or a total of 14.00 kroner, furthermore, he would give everyone in the village of Prøven coffee, like was habitual when a stranger visited.

The pastor called Jonas over and they exchanged some words, which were complete Hebrew to me. After that the pastor said everything was all right and asked, if he could offer us anything to eat. He said the children had already boiled the eggs, but otherwise he did not have much to offer. We said we would gratefully receive anything, because we had just eaten our dog, when we were so lucky to see the boat. With him we ate auk egg and rye bread with coffee afterwards. He also offered us tobacco, if we smoked, and we accepted that with gratitude.[111]

We departed and headed in the direction of Prøven, with the Dannebrog flag at full mast in the prow.

The boat was a Danish jolly boat and Jonas had received it from Mylius Erichsen because he accompanied him somewhat, when Mylius Erichsen was on his way to Cape York. Later I learned that this Jonas was considered a leader of his birth village, Prøven, because in addition to the boat he had money in a savings bank, about 200 kroner.

After sailing for three hours we came to Prøven. That was on July 15th, at 6 o’clock in the evening. We were well received by the governor, Lembcke-Otto.[112] Of course there had to be performed a little comedy, before we were let up onto the pier, because Greenland was a closed land and still is. Our papers were all in order. It was otherwise for poor Glói, but now he was dead, so there was no performance needed on the pier due to him.

Every resident of the village arrived, about 180 people, including children and the elderly. This whole flock followed us to the house, where the governor lived. It stood a little separated. From the steps of the house, the Inuits were told that they should come to the store, where they would receive coffee, rice and rock sugar (Inuits burn rice together with the coffee), which would be sufficient for all. Moreover, they were asked to forgive, that we could not join the dance, because we were so tired after the long and difficult journey.

Woman-boat. The man in the center is the pastor, Rev. Chemnitz.

We had various things stored in Prøven. For example, a motorboat, which would become our home, and remained as such for the next three months. Additionally waited us enough food, and last but not least, letters from loved ones and friends. They were, however, about one-year old, but we first chose to read them. Thereafter we sat at the table, with white tablecloth and other things belonging to civilization.

Upon completing that, we started looking over our belongings. We had to get new underwear, and among other things buy ourselves new cloth pants, but it turned out difficult for Capt. Koch and me to find them large enough. We also needed to get black caps with a shining visor (casket, it was called), have sown for us blue coats from cotton material with a hood (anoraks), and new kamiks, so that we could dress after Greenlandic fashion.

All this was done under the direction of the governor, and the tailoring was assigned to Jonas’s wife and daughter. The amazing thing was, that the next morning we could wear the new anoraks. They had sewed them by hand, because there were no sewing machines.

While this progressed, we asked the governor’s wife to warm water in the largest pot, which she had, and make sure there was enough water in the kitchen and a large wash basin, and leave the kitchen when we came. All this was performed according to our best wishes. I do not have to explain this more closely. But our feelings afterwards, washed, wearing clean clothes, well fed, cigars and enough tobacco to smoke, everything which civilization, or perhaps uncivilization, has made us used to, and all this we enjoyed to its fullest.

Later that evening we went to our motorboat, which was in the harbor. We had borrowed some things on land, for sleeping that night. But before we left, Capt. Koch asked that we receive a thick rice and milk porridge with raisins for lunch the day after, because it was a Christmas porridge in Iceland and tomorrow was my birthday. Therefore we had to receive that food. We would warm coffee for ourselves out on the boat, we took with us enough for that task.

The island, where the village Prøven is located,—because it is the village and not the island which carries this name—is shaped like a horseshoe, which has broken at the last heel hole on the left-hand side when sailing into the harbor from the south. The heel part, which has broken off, has shifted a little so that there are two islands. The channel between them is not passable for large ships. They must sail into the harbor from the north, or rather from the northwest. On the little island (the broken heel), stood the shop’s fish oil burning plant and there they kept everything, which could be a fire hazard, including our kerosene supplies. Kerosene was completely forbidden in Greenland, only sheriffs and doctors, which were 3–4 in the whole country, could get a small amount for use on motorboats, which they used for summer patrols. One man, the director of the science research institute in Godhavn on Disko, Dr. M. P. Porsild,[113] could use it for lighting or for anything else. I got to know him later that summer, and again later in 1930. He was a gentleman and completely free of various things, which I otherwise felt characterized some Danes in Greenland. I, though, want to state, that the hospitality of all Danes there was excellent. I have not found better except perhaps at Skjöldólfsstaðir in Jökuldalur, in the time of old Jón Skjöldur and Mrs. Þórdís, when I had the postal route between Seyðisfjörður and Grímsstaðir á Fjöllum, without any negativity to others. —But this is a side-track and I will stop.—

We were told that over there was the only water well, which was secure from being used by dogs.

The motorboat came with a small jetty, which could carry us four on a calm sea, but not more than that. Our first task that morning was to fetch water and oil. Larsen and I did that. Right after having coffee, I started trying to get the motor running, but it was more than a year since it had last been used. It could be said that it started on the first try. We sailed a few circles around the harbor, then back to the pier and let Koch and Wegener ashore. Capt. Koch intended to offer the pastor that we would take him to South Upernavik later that day. He would find that a great offer, since he had never set foot on a motorboat, not even seen one.

Larsen and I went out to the fish oil plant. There was a pier, where we could land the motorboat. In the boat were two oil tanks, one on each side of the engine. They held about a barrel each. The boat was otherwise outfitted so that the ordinary cargo hold was a cabin with four bunks and benches in front of the bunks. There was a table in the middle of the floor. In front of the cabin was a dark room, for developing photographs. On the starboard side in the dark room was a water cannister; from it were two water faucets, one into the dark room and one into the cabin.

At the front of the boat was a small cubbyhole. The length of the boat above deck was 32 feet, the width nine and a half feet, but the depth was greater than was normal for a boat of this size. The engine was a 8 horsepower “Dan”.[114]

Larsen and I filled up both the oil and water tanks, we returned and landed at a pier by a stock house, which was a short walk from the governor’s house. There we had food and other things in storage, and we took all this to the boat. What was next, was to transport the pastor, and on the return-trip bring 12 Inuits to Salmon Fjord to fetch the cargo, which we left up at the glacier edge. They were to do this under the leadership of Jonas, who was mentioned earlier. Larsen and I moved the boat to the mooring and went to land, because it would be close to mid-day. The lunch arrived soon and was as requested, rice porridge with raisins, and more.

In front of the governor’s house, a tad on the right-hand side, was a wooden deck, about three by three meters of size. From its center stood a flagpole and the Dannebrog flew in the guests’ honor. At the flagpole was a table and 5 or 6 wicker chairs. At it we drank coffee along with two drinks of cognac after the meal.

The governor had Jonas called there, and solemnly laid down the rules for how he should manage fetching our cargo. When the speech was over, in which I did not understand one word, he poured one drink and pointed Jonas to it. But the whole time, which the speech lasted, he had stood bare-headed with hands behind his back. He reached for the drink and drank it in one gulp, placed the glass on the table and looked longingly for another round. The former waved his hand to signal that he should leave.

A short while later the pastor came and let us know that he was ready to depart. We took off and all four of us left, along with the governor. South Upernavik is a small village, somewhat smaller than Prøven and, as it seemed to me, even poorer. The administrator was Danish and his wife also. They had three children and were visibly poor but greeted us warmly. They had only two rooms and a kitchen, and in the same house was a store and a stock storage. This village had it over Prøven that here was a small church made from timber. Otherwise everything bore witness to greater poverty. The stay was short, and that night we returned to Prøven.

On the 17th of July, Larsen and I went with 12 Inuits to Salmon Fjord. It took us 7 hours. The Inuits headed out, under the direction of Jonas, while we Larsen waited on the boat. The first 7 returned in 48 hours, the remaining 5 came four hours later.

We came back to Prøven on the 21st of July at three o’clock at night. Thereby we had all our belongings back amongst people.

The crossing of Greenland was over.

Epilogue

As I finish this work of mine, I feel, that I must include a few words. The first is to state, that the basis for this telling is a diary, which I regularly wrote every day, from when we left Iceland and until we came to the village in West Greenland. The first part of this book, until the Chapter “At Borg”, was written in 1915–’16. I negotiated for the publication of the trip’s story with Fjallkonuútgáfan publishers (the late Einar Gunnarsson), and it was to be published in issues, and the first issue was printed, 64 pages. Something else came up with the publisher and no more was printed at that time. The latter half of the book was written in 1946 after oft repeated requests by the couple, Mrs. Svava Þorsteinsdóttir and Ársæll ‘bookseller’ Árnason. It is thanks or blame to them, that the book exists. Ársæll typed the entire manuscript and handled the publishing of the book. Also, Benedikt Sveinsson, former Speaker of the Althing and archivist, read the manuscript and gave various good advice and suggestions regarding what could be improved, especially regarding wording; he also read the 2nd proof of the entire book. Printing plates were made by Ólafur J. Hvanndal. The maps were drawn by Halldór Þórhallsson, under the supervision of Árni Sveinbjörnsson, Ársæll’s nephew.

I send all these people my best wishes of gratitude.

Vigfús Sigurðsson.

Part 2. The Family in Iceland

Vigfús Sigurðsson (16.7.1875–26.5.1950) was married to Guðbjörg Árnadóttir, who was born in Simbakot at Eyrarbakki, Iceland, June 9th, 1884, and passed away in Reykjavik, Iceland, on December 26th, 1966. They were married on February 2nd, 1906. When Vigfús was hired for the expedition to Greenland, they lived at Brekka in Álftanes in Bessastaðasókn parish, Gullbringusýsla county, Iceland. At that time, Guðbjörg was pregnant and they had three children: Tómas Vigfússon (1906–1974), Gunnþóra Vigfúsdóttir (1908–1981) and Ólafur Vigfússon (1910–1999).

The position on the expedition was advertised in newspapers in Iceland by Sigurður Símonarson, who had assisted Capt. Koch during his time surveying in Iceland in 1902–1904 (Kongstad, 2015). Sigurður received about 20 applications and selected Vigfús. Capt. Koch hired Vigfús with a telegram on March 21st, 1912 and sent him 4000 kr. in funds to purchase horses and equipment (Kongstad, 2015). Vigfús was 36 years old at the beginning of the expedition, and he left his home on March 29th, 1912, only 8 days after receiving the telegram from Capt. Koch.

When Vigfús left, Guðbjörg had to move with the children from Brekka to Reykjavik, where she rented a small flat. Guðbjörg became 28 years old on June 9th, 1912. She traveled to Akureyri, with their oldest son Tómas, and was there to bid farewell to Vigfús when he and the companions left on the trip across Iceland on June 14th (Kongstad, 2015). Guðbjörg and Tómas returned to Reykjavík by ship and were not there when the expedition departed for Greenland (Kongstad, 2015).

On July 6th, 1912, Vigfús left harbor on the Godthaab from Akureyri in northern Iceland. Vigfús had his 37th birthday on July 16th, aboard the Godthaab when the ship struggled through the sea ice off Greenland’s coast. On July 26th, Guðbjörg gave birth to their fourth child, a daughter. The baby was neither named nor baptized until after Vigfús returned home more than a year later. She was named Anna Vigfúsdóttir (1912–2002).

Vigfús had negotiated that the salary for his work on the expedition would be paid out to his wife Guðbjörg during the expedition. This salary has been reported to have been 70 kronur per month (Geirdal, 2012). Vigfús’s mother, Þóra Bjarnadóttir (1850–1934) came to Reykjavík, from her home in northeast Iceland, to live with Guðbjörg and help her while Vigfús was away.

According to descendant’s recollections Vigfús’s salary was not paid after he was thought to have perished. It is unclear when or if this occurred. Based on the books by Vigfús and Capt. Koch, they were only about two weeks late on their arrival in West Greenland. There were strong memories among the children that their mother, Guðbjörg, was in financial difficulties. The family and the children would have been quite frightened at that because if Guðbjörg were unable to provide for herself and the children, she would have had to seek out assistance from the County. Based on the law in Iceland at that time, this would likely have meant that she would have been sent north to Axarfjörður, Vigfús’s birth home, and the children removed, possibly separated, and placed with other families. Guðbjörg is said to have earned money by doing laundry for families in Reykjavik. At that time, laundry was done in the laundry pools in the Laugardalur valley hot spring area on the, then, outskirts of Reykjavik.

The Reykjavik laundry hot springs in 1911 (By unknown photographer, Reykjavik Museum of Photography, Public Domain).

We can try to imagine ourselves in the footsteps of this young, mother of four, who is trying all she can to provide for herself, her children and her mother-in-law while her husband has, from her standpoint, completely disappeared. No news can come from Vigfús and the expedition while it is underway. Guðbjörg will have received news when Vigfús departed with the Godthaab from Akureyri and perhaps that they safely made it to Greenland.

The family was in some financial difficulties. Among the children in the family, there was a strong memory from Christmas Eve in 1912. Guðbjörg put the children early to bed and turned off all lights in the apartment. She did this to let possible visitors think they were not at home, because she had no food to offer guests.

It was not until September 22nd, 1913, a little over two months after the expeditioners arrived in Prøven and had received all their luggage and data, that they left Greenland for Denmark. They arrived in Copenhagen on October 18, 1913. It is possibly not until then that the first news was sent back home to Iceland. For example, Anna Vigfúsdóttir stated in an interview that the family did not known about their father’s survival until shortly before his return to Iceland. While Vigfús was in Copenhagen, the expeditioners were celebrated and festivities held in their honor. The expeditioners were each given an honorary award from King Christian X of Denmark.

It was finally on the Monday of November 10th, 1913, that Vigfús Sigurðsson Grænlandsfari (Greenland-Traveller), like he was called in a front-page headline in a newspaper, arrived back in Iceland. This name, Grænlandsfari, stuck to him and is written on his headstone.

Vigfús sailed to Iceland on the merchant ship Ceres,[115] which maintained a regular shipping schedule between Iceland and Europe in these years. The ship Ceres was the property of The United Steamship Association A/S (today named DFDS), Copenhagen, Denmark, and Vigfús was offered the trip with compliments of the company and traveled as the company’s guest (Vísir, 1913). Vigfús’s homecoming was also described two days later in another newspaper on page two (Morgunblaðið, 1913).

Vigfus’s homecoming was front-page news. (Vísir, 1913).

A news article about Vigfús’s homecoming (Morgunblaðið, 1913).

The ship Ceres (Danish Maritime Museum, Elsinore).

A year later, 1914, Vigfús traveled around Iceland and gave talks on the expedition and presented a slide show from the journey (see, for example, Vísir, 1914). He was, however, still unemployed after the expedition and worked various jobs as a day laborer.

Front-page announcement about Vigfús’s lectures on the Greenland expedition (Vísir, 1914).

The family’s descendants recollect that Capt. Koch wrote a letter to the Icelandic government, where he expressed that it was not befitting that a man such as Vigfús, who had accomplished so much during the expedition across Greenland, were unemployed. This resulted in Vigfús being offered the position of lighthouse-keeper of Reykjanesviti lighthouse in 1915. He accepted and the family moved to there.

A part of Vigfús’s text was published in 1916 (Sigurðsson, 1916). While the family lived at Reykjanesviti, Vigfús and Guðbjörg had four more children: Svanhildur Vigfúsdóttir (1918–2002), Sigurður Árni Vigfússon (1921–1988), Auður Ingibjörg Vigfúsdóttir (1922–1987) og Jóhann Pétur Koch Vigfússon (1924–1996), who was named after Capt. Johan Peter Koch. The years growing up at Reykjanesviti were unforgettable to the older children. In 1925, the family moved to Reykjavik and settled there.

Vigfús returned to Greenland for a second time in 1929. He traveled with a group of men to try and capture muskoxen and transport them to Iceland in an attempt to begin farming muskoxen in Iceland (Ísafold, 1929). The project received a financial grant from the Althing. This project ended badly. After having found a herd of muskoxen, they did not manage to capture them because the adults defended the herd. That ended with the men shooting all the adults dead, 34 in number, and capturing only 7 young calves, which they transported back home to Iceland. The Danish ambassador to Iceland made an official protest to the government of Iceland for the killings of the muskoxen in Greenland. The muskoxen calves did not fare well in Iceland and they all died within a few months (Sveinsson, 1998; Svavarsson, 2018).

In 1930, Vigfús went for the third time to Greenland. He was hired by Dr. Wegener to manage the transport of 130 tons of equipment, supplies, and building materials for Dr. Wegener’s third Greenland expedition. Vigfús was to direct the transport of the cargo from the ship at Greenland’s western coast, Uummannaq Fjord, and to the western camp on the ice sheet. Dr. Wegener was adamant to hire Vigfús for this task as he trusted Vigfús completely.

When Vigfús had accomplished the transport on October 5th, 1930, he returned home to Iceland and arrived on December 21st, 1930. Already, people feared for Dr. Wegener, who had left his camp high on the inland ice sheet on October 19, enroute to the western camp with one other man, Rasmus Villumsen. There was no news of them when Vigfús arrived in Iceland. Vigfús was interviewed about this and he stated that he was not yet worried about Dr. Wegener, who was such an experienced polar expeditioner that he would stay safe (Morgunblaðið, 1930). Unfortunately, the result was different. Dr. Wegener passed away in November 1930. Dr. Wegener’s body was found the following spring, on May 12th, 1931, in a grave dug by Villumsen and marked with a cross made of Dr. Wegener’s skis. Villumsen continued onwards but never arrived at camp and his body was never found. Autopsy results on Dr. Wegener’s corpse discovered that Vigfús was right regarding that Dr. Wegener would not die from exposure. Rather, it was found that Dr. Wegener seemed to likely have passed away due to heart attack, possibly because of over exertion, since he smoked a lot (Wegener og Loewe, 1939). We are also reminded of Vigfús’s own mention that Dr. Wegener was diagnosed with cardioptosis sometime after the 1912–1913 expedition.

It was not until 1948 that Vigfús’s book was published (Sigurðsson, 1948), the book which is the basis for this work. By then the 1912–1913 Greenland expedition was largely forgotten by the public. Great world events had happened in the meantime, two world wars. In the same year, an Icelandic translation of Capt. Koch’s book about the expedition was published (Koch, 1948). It can be surmised that this timing hurt the sales of both books. Ultimately, the first, and only, printing of Vigfús’s book did not sell out. The descendants gathered the stock together and stored it. Occasionally, the original book is available in antique bookstores.

It was on May 26th, 1950, that Vigfús Sigurðsson Grænlandsfari passed away at Landakot hospital in Reykjavik, in his 75th year of age. His funeral was held in Iceland’s Dómkirkja cathedral on June 5th, 1950 and the ceremony was broadcast nationally on the radio.

Vigfús and Guðbjörg’s headstone.

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Footnotes

These footnotes appeared at the bottom of pages in the original publication. Readers can click on the * symbol to be moved to the note location in the text.

[*] It can be pointed out that we cannot compare to the ocean around Iceland, which is normally about 7–11 degrees Celsius. The ocean here in Greenland was close to 0°C. Therefore, it freezes quickly when frost arrives, like described earlier.

[*] Kola pills excite the blood and quickly invigorate men.

[*] We later called them “noon-holes”, because in West Greenland, when we arrived there, they were full of water, which we could get and use for cooking.

[*] The kamik are Greenlandic shoes from sealskin, knee high.

Endnotes

Readers can click on the number of the note to be moved to the note location in the text.

[1] Upernavik (72°47.2’N, 56°8.8’W) is a town in Greenland on the island of Upernavik in the Upernavik Archipelago.

[2] Woman-boat (g. umiaq) is a larger version of the Greenlandic canoe, which was open and, for example, used when families moved during the summer but not for hunting. Women and children were often in these types of boats. Capt. Holm and Garde explored Greenland’s east coast to 66°8’N during the so-called woman-boat expedition.

[3] Gustav Frederik Holm (6.8.1849–13.3.1940) was a captain in the Danish navy and an explorer.

[4] Thomas Vilhelm Garde (22.10.1859–24.6.1926) was an officer in the Danish navy and an explorer. He later reached the rank of rear admiral.

[5] Adolf Erik Nordenskjöld (18.11.1832–12.8.1901) was a baron in the Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian Empire and later became a Swedish Parliament member and explorer. He directed the Vega expedition (1878–1880) which was first to complete the northeast passage from Europe to Asia and then returned south around Asia, thereby becoming the first expedition to circumnavigate Eurasia (Nordenskjöld, 1881).

[6] Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (10.10.1861–13.5.1930) was a Norwegian scientist and explorer. He led the first crossing of the Greenland ice sheet in 1888, which was a 450 km route across the southern part of Greenland.

[7] Georg Carl Amdrup (19.11.1866–15.1.1947) was an officer in the Danish navy and explorer. He completed two expeditions during these years and Vigfús’s description refers to the latter expedition which was done in the year 1900. That expedition was split into two groups. J. P. Koch was among the expeditioners in the group that explored the area around Scoresby Sound.

[8] Robert Peary (6.5.1856–20.2.1920) was an officer in the U.S. navy and explorer, who at that time had reached the furthest north and believed he had reached the North Pole, although this is doubted (Herbert, 1989).

[9] Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen (7.6.1879–21.12.1933) was a Greenlandic-Danish anthropologist and explorer who went on a number of Greenland expeditions. Vigfús is referring to Rasmussen’s so-called first Thule expedition, which he went on with Peter Freuchen. Rasmussen later led a famous dogsled expedition that completed the northwest passage from Canada’s east coast to the west coast of Alaska.

[10] Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen (15.1.1872–25.11.1907) was a Danish author and explorer. Vigfús is describing an expedition which is called the Denmark expedition 1906–’08.

[11] Jørgen Brønlund (14.12.1877–11.1907) was a Greenlandic teacher and explorer. He was a childhood friend of Knud Rasmussen.

[12] Johan Peter Koch (15.1.1870–13.1.1928) was a Danish naval officer, land surveyor and explorer. He lead the expedition which is described in this book. He had previously participated in Amdrup’s expedition to Scoresby Sound in the year 1900. He also participated in the surveying of Iceland in 1903–1904 for the development of the Danish General staff topographic department’s maps of Iceland.

[13] Niels Peter Høeg Hagen (15.10.1877–11.1907) was a Danish naval officer, land surveyor and explorer.

[14] Alfred Lothar Wegener (1.11.1880–11.1930) was a German geologist, meteorologist and explorer. He met J. P. Koch during Mylius-Erichsen’s fateful expedition and participates in leading the expedition described in this book. He published papers on his famous theory of continental drift shortly before the expedition (Wegener, 1912a, 1912b).

[15] Danmarkshavn (e. Denmark Harbour; 76°46’N, 18°40’W) on the north-eastern coast of Greenland was also the starting point of the expedition described in this book.

[16] The original text was included in Danish: “Omkom 79 Fjorden eftir Forsög paa Hjemrejse over Indlandsisen i November Maaned. Jeg kommer hertil i aftagende Maaneskin og kunde ikke komme videre af Forfrysning i Födderne og af Mörket. De andres Lig findes midt i Fjorden foran Bræ (omtr. 2½ Mil). Hagen döde 15. Nov. Mylius omtrent 10 Dage senere.”

[17] This village was at the time named Prøven but is now named Kangersuatsiaq (72°22.8’N, 55°33.0’W). The village is on an island at the northwest coast of Greenland in the Upernavik Archipelago and is the destination for the expedition described in this book.

[18] Carl Frederick Wandel (15.8.1843–21.4.1930) was a high-ranking officer in the Danish navy and an explorer.

[19] Erik Semmy Henius (31.3.1863–6.4.1926) was a Danish merchant and consul for Denmark.

[20] Valdemar Josef Glückstadt (25.2.1868–11.11.1942) was a Danish merchant and general consul for Denmark.

[21] Hans Valdemar Ludvigsen (20.9.1861–11.2.1939) was a Danish general consul and the co-founder of the Hellesens battery factory.

[22] The Carlsberg Fund (d. Carlsbergfondet) is a Danish research fund supporting natural science, founded in 1876 by J.C. Jacobsen the founder of the Carlsberg beer company with a gift of stock in Carlsberg.

[23] Harald Naphtali Julius Goldschmidt (12.11.1857–9.12.1923) was a Danish veterinarian and teacher who specialized in the research and veterinary care of livestock, notably horses.

[24] The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University of Denmark (d. Kongelige Veterinær- og Landbohøjskole) was founded in 1856 and merged with the University of Copenhagen in 2007.

[25] Etatsráð, in the official Icelandic spelling (danish: Etatsråd), was a Danish royal honorary title that was not inherited but awarded by the king. It can be translated as Councillor of the State.

[26] The Danish General staff topographic department (d. Generalstabens Topografiske Afdeling) was a department within the Danish military which performed land surveying and developed maps.

[27] “Vitality teach us by fire; fortify us with frost” is a translation of the first line in the third verse of the poem “Ísland” (e. Iceland) by Bjarni Thorarensen, (30.12.1786–25.8.1841) Amtmaður (e. Provincial Governor) and poet. The complete verse in Icelandic is as follows: “Fjör kenni oss eldurinn, frostið oss herði, / fjöll sýni torsóttum gæðum að ná, / bægi, sem kerúb með sveipanda sverði, / silfurblár ægir oss kveifarskap frá.” (Thorarensen, 1847).

[28] Johann Heinrich Carl Matthaeus Ralph Walther von Knebel (13.4.1880–10.7.1907) was a German geologist.

[29] Max Rudloff was a painter who traveled with von Knebel to Iceland in 1907. Also with them on the journey to Iceland, was Hans Spethmann, geologist and current student of von Knebel, but he was not with them on the fateful boat trip.

[30] The steamship Godthaab was in the fleet of the Royal Greenland Trading Department and not the first of its name.

[31] The War in 1848 which the book covered was about the first Schleswig war, also called the first Schleswig-Holstein war or the Three Year War. The war went on from 1848 until 1850 when peace was negotiated but armed battle continued the whole year and did not end until January 1851.

[32] Ejnar Mikkelsen (23.12.1880–1.5.1971) was a Danish explorer and author. He married Naja Marie Heiberg Holm (1887–1918), the daughter of explorer Gustav Frederik Holm, who was named earlier in the book. Ejnar participated in Amdrup’s expedition to the east coast of Greenland in the year 1900.

[33] On September 10, 2010, the Danish patrol ship Ejnar Mikkelsen visited Shannon island and the still standing shelter built by Capt. Mikkelsen’s men almost a 100 years earlier. The shelter is called the Alabama hut.

[34] Sleeping Bay (76°30’N, 20°0’W) is named Dove Bugt (e. Dove Bay) in Danish. It seems that Vigfús thinks the word Dove is Danish and possibly linked to the Danish word doven, which means lazy, and that he decided to translate the name of the bay to Icelandic as sleeping. In translating this book from Icelandic it was decided to keep Vigfús’s meaning and use the term Sleeping Bay to match his original usage. However, the bay was originally named in German as Dove Bai after Heinrich Wilhelm Dove (1803–1879), a German physicist and meteorologist, by the expedition of Carl Koldewey, who Big Koldewey island is named after.

[35] Ryle is the Danish name for the Red knot bird. Its subspecies Calidris canutus islandica migrates to northern Greenland in summers. Kar is Danish for a tub, here used for a grassy patch.

[36] Varderyggen (76°49.6’N, 18°50.8’W) is a mountain ridge in south Germania Land which was named by the 1906–08 Denmark expedition (Higgins, 2010).

[37] Keilir is a prominent cone-shaped mountain in Reykjanes, Iceland, visible from the farm where Vigfús lived.

[38] Higgins (2010) calls Udkigshøjen a low hill, providing good view over the plain (76°58.6’N, 20°01.3’W).

[39] Specifically, they were attacked by swarms of flying insects of the species simulium vittatum from the simuliidae insect family. These flies are called mývargur or mýflugur in Icelandic and have their habitat in North America, Greenland, and Iceland. Their bites can be vicious, especially when they attack in enormous numbers.

[40] On this day, July 26, 1912, the fourth child of Vigfús Sigurðsson and Guðbjörg Árnadóttir was born in Iceland, Anna Vigfúsdóttir (26.7.1912–16.7.2002), who was neither named nor baptized until after Vigfús returned home more than a year later.

[41] The horses, which were not found, were called Leistur and Grundar-Gráni (Kongstad, 2015).

[42] This valley innermost in Mørkefjord (e. Dark Fjord) is now called Vigfusdal (e. Vigfus Valley; 76°57.8’N, 21°45.5’W), so named after Vigfús Sigurðsson. The valley was named by the 1938–1939 Mørkefjord’s Expedition (Higgins, 2010). Occasionally Mørkefjord is called Vigfusdalfjord (e. Vigfus Valley Fjord) (Higgins, 2010).

[43] Capt. Koch’s 1912–1913 expedition, described in this work, named the river Mørkefjordselv (76°58.3’N, 21°41.2’W) and it remains its name although occasionally it is called Vigfusdalelv (e. Vigfus Valley River) (Higgins, 2010). The 1938–39 Mørkefjord’s Expedition named the eastern-most lake in Vigfusdal as Glóës Sø (e. Glói’s Lake) (approximately 76°58’N, 21°36’W) after the dog Glói, however an accurate location of this lake is unknown because the lake seems to have been a wide section of the Mørkefjordselv river (Higgins, 2010).

[44] They called this mountain in Danish as Mylius Erichsens Vardefjeld (e. Mylius Erichsen’s Cairn Mountain) but this name does not remain. Possibly this is the current Bundfjeldet mountain (76°58.3’N, 21°48.2’W) (Higgins, 2010).

[45] A picture of a herd of muskoxen.

A herd of muskoxen (Higgins, 2010, Figure 60).

[46] This stream of water, which flowed along the glacier edge, was named in Danish as Randelven (e. Edge River; 76°54.8’N, 22°04.6’W) by the expedition, and this name is in use (Higgins, 2010).

[47] This mountain is likely located at (76°53.8’N, 21°35.2’W) and is also written as 440 in Vigfus’s book. This name did not enter official records.

[48] Lorenz Peter Elfred Freuchen (20.2.1886–2.9.1957) was a Danish explorer, author and anthropologist, who lived for many years in Greenland and went on numerous expeditions.

[49] The expedition later gave this fjord the name Borgfjord in Danish because it was due east of their winter dwelling, Borg, and it still has this name (76°40.0’N, 22°00.0’W) (Higgins, 2010).

[50] Thomasine Christine Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd (9.11.1773–2.7.1856) was a Danish baroness and an author. Her first novels were published anonymously. Her books became popular and she took the penname “The Author of An Everyday Story”. Her books were published under that name during her life. She kept her authorship secret and it was only after her passing that her books were identified as hers and republished under her real name.

[51] The expedition named the land area between Seal Lake and Borgfjord as Daniel Bruun Land (76°53.0’N, 21°52.0’W) after Capt. Daniel Bruun, 1856–1931, who assisted L. Mylius Erichsen in planning the 1906–1908 expedition (Higgins, 2010), which J. P. Koch and A. Wegener participated in.

[52] Vigfús, in partnership with a group of men, tried to move muskoxen to Iceland in 1929 but that experiment ended badly as is explained in part two of this book.

[53] The mountain still carries the name Blåbærfjeldet (e. Blueberry Mountain; 76°40.2’N, 21°40.1’W) but Higgins (2010) points out that the berries were bilberries and not blueberries. The species are closely related and have the same name in Danish.

[54] The cape is still named Kap Stop (e. Cape Stop; 76°37.8’N, 21°39.7’W) (Higgins, 2010), which the expedition named this southernmost cape in Daniel Bruun Land because they could not get around the cape in the motorboat, and the cape became a difficult hindrance to their journey as is described in this book.

[55] The expedition named the narrow sound between Daniel Bruun Land and the island they called Long Island as Strømsund (e. Current Sound; 76°41.1’N, 21°26.1’W) because of the strong ocean current (4–5 knots), which made their progress on the motorboat difficult. The sound still carries this name but not the island (Higgins, 2010).

[56] There exists a 305 m tall and prominent cape called Haystack (75°43.7’N, 19°23.7’W) with a conical profile and well known to Wegener from his previous expedition to Greenland (Higgins, 2010). However, it does not fit Vigfús’s description of being 900 m high and it seems unlikely that he and Wegener could have seen Haystack from their position on the southeast coast of Daniel Bruun Land. Yet, the direction is correct and Haystack would appear from their viewpoint to the west (right-hand side) of Devil’s Cape but about 5 km farther south. It can be postulated that there was a misunderstanding between Vigfús and Wegener, who may have pointed in that direction and mentioned Haystack, but Vigfús would have seen another, closer, taller and more prominent mountain in the same direction and taken that to be Haystack. A likely mountain is Orgelpiberne (76°17.4’N, 20°23.7’W), reported as 740 m high by Higgins (2010).

[57] Vigfús mentions Vikar Mountain (Vikarfell in Icelandic) but there is no mountain with that name found anywhere in the region. However, the next tall mountain he would have seen, based on his sweep from Big Koldewey Island to Devil’s Cape, to Orgelpiberne, would be Vivian Fjeld (76°13.2’N, 20°40.0’W), which Higgins (2010) records as being 990 m high with a sharp conical peak.

[58] The expedition gave this cove the name Port Arthur (76°46.3’N, 21°12.3’W), which is still in use, because of its geographic similarity with the city then called Port Arthur in northeast China (Higgins, 2010), which is named Lüshunkou District.

[59] Based on this description of the motor malfunction and its repair, it is likely that this was a hot-bulb engine, which required an external heat source, such as the gas lamp Vigfús refers to, could run on kerosene, was light, strong, technically simple due to no electrical system, could start in cold weather, and was a popular boat engine at the time.

[60] The kola pills were caffeine pills made from kola nuts. Such pills were popular in arctic expeditions at the time (Kongstad, 2015). See for example, “Forced March” kola pills from the Burroughs Wellcome & Co.

“Forced March” kola pill glass (Wellcome Library, London).

[61] Vigfús is describing the hindrances that led the expedition to name Kap Stop (e. Cape Stop; 76°37.8’N, 21°39.7’W) (Higgins, 2010) as explained previously.

[62] Henning Dal (e. Henning Valley; 76°48.2’N, 21°49.3’W) is named by the expedition, probably after Henning Bistrup, 1879–1948, who participated in the 1906–1908 expedition of L. Mylius Erichsen along with J. P. Koch, A. Wegener and others (Higgins, 2010).

[63] This campsite, the skeletons of the horses, and the cairn were found by the 1988–90 Grønlands geologiske undersøgelse (GGU; e. Earth Science Institute of Greenland) East Greenland expedition in the year of 1989 (Higgins, 2010, p. 222). The horses which were felled here were Little-Red (Wegener's small horse), Jarpur (Called “Den Rødbrune” in Danish), Little-Gray, and Hari (Kongstad, 2015).

[64] Lindhard Ø (e. Lindhard Island; 76°31.5’N, 22°10.0’W) was named by the expedition after Jens Peter Johannes Lindhard, 1870–1947, medical doctor on the 1906–1908 expedition of L. Mylius Erichsen (Higgins, 2010).

[65] The expedition named Kap Jarner (e. Cape Jarner; 76°38.0’N, 22°08.2’W) after Hakon Høeg Jarner, 1882–1964, who was a geologist on the 1906–1908 expedition of L. Mylius Erichsen (Higgins, 2010).

[66] Bagfjord (e. Back Fjord; 76°34.6’N, 22°22.5’W) still has this name, given to it by the expedition (Higgins, 2010).

[67] This was the horse Thor (Kongstad, 2015).

[68] Christian X, whose full name was Christian Carl Frederik Albert Alexander Vilhelm (26.9.1870–20.4.1947), was the king of Denmark (1912–1947) and the king of Iceland (1918–1944).

[69] This book is available in the public domain: The South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian expedition in the Fram, 1910–12, Vol. I, Vol. II (Amundsen, 1912).

[70] The Celsius scale of temperature is used everywhere in the book. 20 degrees of frost, -20°C, is about -4°F.

[71] The horses Wicked (Kjarna-Red, called Illgjarn in Icelandic and Den Ondskabsfulde in Danish) and Star (which had a star on the forehead, called Stjarni in Icelandic, Stjerne in Danish) were put down on Oct. 8, Hesjuvellir-Gray (also called Lundager because it was Lundager’s horse on the trip in Iceland) was put down on Oct. 10, and Hvassafell (Hvassafell-Brown) was put down on Oct. 26 (Kongstad, 2015). The remaining horses were: Polaris, also called Koch’s Gray and Stórhamars-Gray; Cavalier (written Kavalér in Icelandic and Kavaleren in Danish), also called Vargjár-Brown and Black (Svartur in Icelandic); The Lady (Daman in Icelandic, Damen in Danish), also called Brownie (Brúnka in Icelandic) by Vigfús; Hvassafells-Red (was called Den Fuchsrøde in Danish), which Vigfús also called Lazy-Red or Red (Lati-Rauður or Rauður in Icelandic); and last but not least, Vigfús’s favorite horse, Kári, called Gráni (spelled Grauni in Danish) by the others (Sigurðsson, 1948; Kongstad, 2015).

[72] The estimated geographic coordinates of the expedition’s winter home, Borg are 76°42’N, 22°24’W (Higgins, 2010).

[73] The two scholars Vigfús is referring to are Capt. Koch and Dr. Wegener, who both wrote about this expedition.

[74] 20°C is 68°F.

[75] -12°C is 10.4°F.

[76] -32°C is -25.6°F.

[77] This peak, Gundahl Knold (e. Gundahl Peak; 76°42.1’N, 23°02.3’W), was named by the expedition after Jens Gundahl Knudsen (1876–1948) who was a carpenter on the 1906–1908 expedition of L. Mylius Erichsen (Higgins, 2010).

[78] They named this lake Randsøen (e. Edge Lake; 76°41’N, 22°58’W), a name that is still in use (Higgins, 2010).

[79] The frost-meter is a thermometer measuring frost in degrees of Celsius but without the negative sign. Hence, a reading of 34° means -34°C or -29.2°F.

[80] Vilhelm Christoffer Herold (19.3.1865–15.12.1937) was a famous Danish opera singer, tenor, voice teacher and director.

[81] Helge Nissen (5.9.1871–5.10.1926) was a famous Danish opera singer, voice teacher and movie actor.

[82] 50.5°C of frost is -50.5°C or -58.9°F.

[83] The sleds, which Vigfús called Nansen-sleds, are traditional Inuit dogsleds called qamutiik.

[84] The word nunatak is taken from the Greenlandic word nunataq and is typically used for a rock formation, which sticks out of a glacier, usually a mountaintop or a mountain ridge, which appears like an island out of the ice.

[85] The expedition left the large sleds behind. The sleds moved slowly with the ice stream over the next few years and ended up on an iceberg out in Dove Bay, which Vigfús always called Sleeping Bay. Two trappers found the sleds on the iceberg in 1933 (Nyholm-Poulsen, 1985). They pulled one of them over to the northern point of a small island, less than two kilometers due east of Cape Peschel, which is now called Slædeøen (e. Sled Island; 76°14.5’N, 19°52.6’W). The sled is still there and has a plaque commemorating the expedition (Higgins, 2010).

[86] The expedition named Borgjøkelen (e. Borg Glacier; 76°38.5’N, 23°48.0’W; Higgins, 2010) after their winter home, Borg. The glacier lies west of there. The Borgjøkelen demarks the Carlsbergfondet land (76°33.0’N, 24°00.0’W; Higgins, 2010) on the north side. The expedition named this part of Queen Louise Land after the Carlsberg Fund which funded about 3/8-ths of the expedition’s expenses according to Vigfús’s account (Sigurðsson, 1948).

[87] The Danmark expedition is the expedition of Mylius-Erichsen and companions to east Greenland in 1906–1908 during which Mylius-Erichsen, Hagen and Brønlund died from exposure as told earlier in this book.

[88] The fjord still carries the name Kavalerfjorden (e. Cavalier Fjord; 76°32’N, 22°00’W) (Higgins, 2010).

[89] The expeditioners, Capt. Koch, Dr. Wegener, and Vigfús wrote diaries during the journey. Vigfús based his book on his diaries. Capt. Koch wrote and published a book about the expedition based on his diaries (Koch, 1913). Koch’s book was translated to German (Koch, 1919) and to Icelandic (Koch, 1948). The Icelandic translation of Koch’s book was published in the same year that Vigfús published his book (Sigurðsson, 1948). Koch also published summaries in scientific journals (Koch, 1912, 1914). There are additional publications related to this expedition than are listed here. A scan of Wegener’s diaries is available online.

[90] Kap Aage Bertelsen (e. Cape Aage Bertelsen; 76°40.1’N, 23°03.0’W) was named by the expedition after Aage Bertelsen (1873–1945). They named Kap Achton Friis (e. Cape Achton Friis; 76°46.2’N, 23°04.6’W), which is the next cape north of Kap Aage Bertelsen, after Achton Johannes Friis (5.9.1871–17.12.1939). Both Bertelsen and Friis were artists and on the L. Mylius Erichsen 1906–1908 expedition. They drew and painted numerous pictures during the expedition (Higgins, 2010). They named the cape north of Kap Achton Friis as Kap Weinschenck (e. Cape Weinschenck; 76°58.9’N, 23°09.9’W) after Ivar Kjerulff Weinschenck, 1882–1963, first engineer on the ship Danmark on Erichsen’s expedition. They named Kap Freuchen (e. Cape Freuchen; 76°21.0’N, 23°41.4’W) after Peter Freuchen, 1886–1957, who was also an expedition member, along with Koch and Wegener, on Erichsen’s expedition. Kap Freuchen is south from Kap Aage Bartelsen, between the Budolfi glacier tongue and L. Bistrup Brae glacier.

[91] The Himmerland Hede (e. Himmerland Heath; 76°41.0’N, 24°00.0’W) was named by Capt. Koch after Himmerland in Denmark, where expeditioner Lars Larsen was born (Higgins, 2010).

[92] Vigfús does not explain the origin of the name Rossmule (e. Horse Mountain; 76°39.4’N, 24°22.5’W) but the name remains in use today. It is hypothesized that the name is either due to the shape of the mountain or in memory of an event with the expedition’s horses (Higgins, 2010).

[93] Dannebrogsfjeldene (e. Dannebrog mountains; 76°40.0’N, 25°18.4’W) were named by Capt. Koch after Dannebrog, the Danish flag. A myth regarding its origin says it fell from the sky on June 15, 1219, when the Danes conquered the Estonians at Reval, the ancient Nordic name for the capital of Estonia (Higgins, 2010), now Tallin. Capt. Koch named the peaks west of there, Revaltoppe (76°39.7’N, 25°42.6’W) (Higgins, 2010).

[94] Sankt Vitus Bjerg (e. Mt. St. Vitus; 76°38.0’N, 25°09.5’W) was named by Capt. Koch after the Catholic saint, St. Vitus, but his celebration day is June 15, which is the day when the Dannebrog fell from the skies according to myth (Higgins, 2010).

[95] The lake and the valley still bear the Danish names given by Capt. Koch, Farimagsø (e. Farimag Lake; 76°36.0’N, 24°27.3’W) and Farimagdal (e. Farimag Valley; 76°34.0’N, 24°27.3’W) (Higgins, 2010). The word farimag is drawn from a Danish phrase meaning to travel easily.

[96] The mountain, which Vigfús calls Ryebread, is possibly the mountain that Capt. Koch named Hjelmen (e. Helmet; 76°34.5’N, 25°07.6’W) and that is its current name (Higgins, 2010).

[97] Capt. Koch has possibly named the Dronningestolen mountain (e. Queen’s Throne; 76°31.0’N, 25°00.0’W) because of the view its peak offered over Queen Louise Land. The expeditioners climbed it in the evening of April 26th according to Vigfús, but Higgins (2010) states they climbed the Dronningestolen on April 29th. According to Vigfús, they are then at Kaldbakur. Another hypothesis regarding the mountain’s naming, is that this is a reference to the Dronningestolen in Denmark, which is the highest peak on Møns Klint on the island of Møn just east of southern Zealand (Higgins, 2010).

[98] The Kursbræ (e. Direction Glacier; 76°33.0’N, 24°48.0’W) glacier still has this Danish name given by the expedition due to how good its direction was for their route (Higgins, 2010). Kursbræ is north of Dronningestolen mountain. The next glacier to the south is Pony Gletscher (e. Pony Glacier; 76°28.4’N, 25°00.0’W), which was named by a British expedition in 1952–1954 after the horses on this expedition (Higgins, 2010). To the south of it is a glacier named by Capt. Koch’s expedition as Budolfi Isstrøm (76°19.0’N, 25°00.0’W), possibly after the Budolfi church in Ålborg, Denmark (Higgins, 2010). The Budolfi Isstrøm merges with L. Bistrup Bræ at Cap Freuchen.

[99] The expedition named Gefiontinde (e. Gefion Peak; 76°28.1’N, 25°39.0’W) after the Norse goddess Gefjun, who in Norse mythology forms Zealand in Denmark (Higgins, 2010). The mountain is now measured somewhat lower than stated in the book. Vigfús describes these as nunataks, sticking out of the ice, but current maps (Higgins, 2010) and satellite photos of the area show Gefiontinde as mountains standing beyond the edge of the ice sheet.

[100] The expedition named the Kaldbakur (76°31.4’N, 26°10.5’W) nunatak in Icelandic and that is still its name (Higgins, 2010).

[101] The expedition named this nunatak Punktum (76°22’N, 26°52’W), Danish for a full stop, because it was the last nunatak which they passed before their crossing of the Greenland ice sheet (Higgins, 2010). The expedition named several other nunataks in the region, but Vigfús does not mention them all in his description. They are in alphabetical order (Higgins, 2010): Falkonerklippe (76°28.1’N, 26°26.2’W) which they named on May 5th because they saw two gyrfalcons there, Helgoland (76°26.9’N, 26°20.2’W) was named after the Helgoland island northwest of the coast of Germany, Meridiannunatak (76°25.7’N, 22°37.0’W) was a pointed peak about 30 km south of their winter homestead Borg and named because they used it as a surveying point, Prøvestenen (76°25.6’N, 26°45.7’W) was named after Prøvestenen fort in Copenhagen, and Syvstjernen (approximately 76°33’N, 26°32’W), which is a cluster of seven nunataks (Higgins, 2010).

[102] These lines are from a poem titled “Trú, von og ást” (e. Faith, hope and love) by poet Þorstein Erlingsson (1858-1914) and from his poetry collection Þyrnar (e. Thorns) (1st ed. 1897; 4th ed. 1943): “Vonin mín á valtan knör, / veður gæftir baga; / sú hefur marga fýluför / farið um sína daga.” The translation is by the translator of this book.

[103] This ditty was composed by rev. Jón Þorláksson at Bægisá farm and is said to have been about a mad old woman who both barked angrily and cried at the same time. The whole ditty reads in Icelandic: “Oft hefur Ingunn illa látið / en aldrei sem í kvöld, / hún hefur bæði gelt og grátið / og glennt up kjaftatjöld!” (Kristjánsson, 2005). Vigfús only included the first two lines. The lines were translated by the translator of this book.

[104] The expeditioners describe seeing five suns, the actual sun in the center and then four mock suns which appear around the sun. This optical phenomenon forms due to refraction of light on ice crystals in the atmosphere. The most common is the circular 22° halo which can surround the sun although usually only parts of it are seen. Vigfús does not mention the 22° halo but parts of it are likely to have been seen as well. The two mock suns flanking the sun on both sides are common and often called sun dogs or parhelia. The upper mock sun that they mention is likely an upper tangent arc which can be seen on occasion on the 22° halo, right above the sun. The lower mock sun is likely the corresponding lower tangent arc on the 22° halo. The lower part of the 22° halo and the lower tangent arc are rarely seen. To be able to see the lower halo and lower tangent arc, the sun has to be higher up than 22° so that the lowest part of the 22° halo is above the horizon or the viewer has to have a high elevation with a downward slope towards the horizon. Conditions which occur on the western flank of the Greenland ice sheet. However, the sun cannot be much higher than that because when the sun reaches 29° the tangent arcs begin to merge together to form a halo around the sun.

[105] Pingut (72°37.0’N, 53°54.0’W) is at the edge of the ice sheet and is the highest mountain in the currently named J. P. Koch Land (Seyd, 1951). Pingut is Greenland’s northernmost basalt mountain (Seyd, 1951). Mt. Pingut is 61 km, in a straight line distance, from the settlement Vigfús knows as Prøven.

[106] This land area was later named J.P. Koch Land (72°35’N, 54°15’W) (Seyd, 1951). It is bounded by the ice sheet to the east, Salmon Fjord to the west and south, and Upernavik Icefjord to the north (GEUS, 2017). The land area is about 390 square miles (1010 square kilometers) (Seyd, 1951).

[107] Salmon Fjord (72°30’N, 54°55’W) is named Eqalugaarsuit Sulluat in Greenlandic and Laksefjorden in Danish (GEUS, 2017).

[108] A Danish mile is 7,532.48 m.

[109] The first inlet of the two is called Tunusuk (72°25’N, 55°05’W).

[110] South Upernavik (72°9.3’N, 55°31.5’W) is a settlement in Greenland now named Upernavik Kujalleq and is located on the island of Qeqertaq in the Upernavik Archipelago.

[111] Lars Nielsen Larsen (19.9.1886–1978) recollected in a newspaper interview that they thought only about their dog Glói while eating this meal (Bergh, 1972). It is clear how Glói’s sad end affected Larsen by his recollection of Glói and his emphasis on Glói’s story in the interview, when he was 86 years old.

[112] The colony governor was named Carl Ernst Christian Lembcke-Otto. He was the governor in Prøven, 1912–1914, moved to be governor in Christianshaab in 1914, but later became the administrator of Upernavik. He retired from office in Upernavik on September 26, 1932, the birthday of King Christian X of Denmark, and left that day on a schooner named The Seal. The schooner stopped by Prøven where Lembcke-Otto was honored with cannonball shots. They continued sailing, although the weather outlook was considered bad. Two days later a strong storm hit the coast and the schooner was never found (Tíminn, 1962).

[113] Morten Pedersen Porsild (1.9.1872–30.4.1956) was a Danish botanist who lived and worked for the most of his career in Greenland. He founded the scientific research institute Arctic Station in the town, then named Godhavn, in 1906 on Disko island (g. Qeqertarsuaq, which means Big Island). The institute is now a part of the University of Copenhagen. Icelander Erik the Red is said to have visited this island sometime in the years 982–985 (Seaver, 1998).

[114] Dan is a type of kerosene burning engine for boats, for example, also used by Amundsen on the ship Gjøa in 1901 (Amundsen, 1908).

[115] The Ceres ended its days sailing from Fleetwood to Reykjavik with salt, herring, and three passengers when it was sunk by a German U-boat on July 13, 1917, off the Hebrides and two crewmen lost their lives. The other crew and passengers made it into a lifeboat, which they rowed in 52 hours to land in the Hebrides (Morgunblaðið, 1917).

Dedication

Anna Vigfúsdóttir wished for the next generation to know this story. This book is dedicated in remembrance of her. Heartfelt thanks are sent to my wife for her support. I thank my family and friends who all have helped. - GFÚ.

Bibliography

Amundsen, R., 1908. The North West Passage, E. P. Dutton and Co., New York, New York, U.S.A., p. 9. Accessed on Internet Archive.

Amundsen, R., 1912. The South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian expedition in the Fram, 1910–12. Vol. I, Vol. II. Translated by A. G. Chater. John Murray, London, England.

Arktisk Institut, 2020. Arctic Institute’s Photography, Art and Object, and Sound Collection. Accessible at: Arktiske billeder. This link is to a public collection created by the author. The photographs from the expedition were mostly found by searching for the expeditioners' last names. Most were found from Koch and Wegener, some were found using the alternate spellings Sigurðsson and Sigurdsson. Photos were also found by searching for Vigfús and Vigfus.

Bergh, O., 1972. Til sidst forsvinder også sulten. (In Danish). Published in an unknown newspaper, Ålborg, Denmark. Accessed from the Facebook page Johan Peter Koch 1870–1928.

Geirdal, V., 2012. Vatnajökulsleiðangur J. P. Kochs 1912. (In Icelandic). Landabréfið, Issue 26, p. 3–25.

Geirdal, V., and Sigurðsson, V., 2018. Grænlandsfarinn — Dagbækur Vigfúsar Sigurðssonar og þrír leiðangrar hans. (In Icelandic). Forlagið, Reykjavík, Iceland, 316 pp.

GEUS, 2017. Geologisk kort over Grønland i 1:500.000. (In Danish). Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Higgins, A. K., 2010. Exploration history and place names of northern East Greenland. Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin 21. Copenhagen, Denmark, 368 pp.DOI: 10.34194/geusb.v21.4735

Koch, J. P., 1912. Den Danske Ekspedition til Dronning Louises Land og tværsover Nordgrønlands Indlandsis 1912–1913. Rejsen tværsover Island. (In Danish). Geografisk Tidsskrift, Volume 21, p. 257–264. Accessed on tidsskrift.dk

Koch, J. P., 1913. Gennem den hvide Ørken: Den danske Forskningsrejse tværsover Nordgrønland, 1912–13. (In Danish). Gyldendal, Copenhagen, Denmark, 286 pp.

Koch, J. P., 1914. Captain Koch’s Crossing of Greenland. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, Vol. 46, No. 5, p. 356–360. DOI: 10.2307/201816

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Table of Contents

Foreword

Original Foreword

Part 1. The Expedition 1912–1913. Prologue

I. The Journey in Iceland

II. The Journey to Greenland

III. The Search for the Horses and Other Work

IV. To the Glacier and Pustervig

V. Capt. Koch and Larsen Stuck in the Sea Ice

VI. Further to the Southwest

VII. Staying at Cape Stop

VIII. The Glacier Calves. We abandon wintering in Queen Louise Land

IX. At “Borg”

X. New Difficulties and an Accident

XI. Christmas and the New Year

XII. New Tasks

XIII. Sled Trips and Other Activities

XIV. Onto the Ice Sheet

XV. In West Greenland. New Difficulties and Hunger

Epilogue

Part 2. The Family in Iceland

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Footnotes

Endnotes

Dedication

Bibliography