Theater of the World

by Thomas Reinertsen Berg

  The errors in the maps of the mountainous regions may be due to any number of problems the surveyors were forced to reckon with–the following diary entry from Jotunheimen, dated 1873, provides an insight:

  4th. Arrived at Gjendin. Fog in the Jotun mountains.

  6th. Intense flurries of snow; tent snowed under. No work done.

  9th. Climbed Semmetind; ascent extremely strenuous due to the amount of fresh snow. Worked by the cairn and sighted a few locations, but at 3 p.m. the snowstorm returned as intensely as before, and so no more could be done.

  10th. Bad weather with driving snow and full storm, impossible to endure any more as blankets and walking clothes are wet. Decamped to the tourist hut down at Gjedin.

  The country’s infrastructure was in a state of flux, with the horse and cart being replaced by more mechanical means of transport. Munch drew a road map, published posthumously in 1867, which shows the planned railway lines. Eighteen years later, on the second printing, the map featured 200 railway stations across eight lines. According to the Fedraheimen newspaper, Albert Cammermeyer’s travel map from 1881, drawn by Per Nissen, includes ‘the names of all coaching inns, docks, telegraph offices and railway stations; all roads are clearly represented, including main roads, country roads and the most important mountain passes,’ according to the Fedraheimen newspaper. The reviewers also liked Cammermeyer’s Lomme-Reisekart over Norge (Pocket Travel Map of Norway): ‘All tourists and mountain climbers can be pleased about this map, which contains an overview of most of Jotunheimen. Considering what little I know about the mountains, I like the map; all the roads are visible, and everything is clearly presented. The blue water stands out against the brown-coloured rock, and the snowy mountains all seem to rise up with their white tops.’

  The Kart over Nordmarken og Sörkedalen for Skilöbere og Turister (Map of Nordmarken and Sörkedalen for Skiers and Tourists) was published by engineer Ernst Bjerknes in the year 1890–and is the world’s first ski map. Bjerknes has marked both ‘generally trafficked ski trails and winter roads’ and ‘steep slopes or sharp turns,’ and notes that ‘at the farms, whose names are underlined in red, food and lodgings can be obtained.’

  People also started to cycle–and in 1894 Nicolay C. Ræder created the Hjulturistkart over det sydlige Norge (Bicycle Touring Map of Southern Norway) for the Norsk Hjulturist-Forening (Norwegian ‘Wheel-tourist’ Association), which was supplemented with details of the incline of the roads. A handbook providing information about what can be seen along the thirty-one routes accompanied the map.

  The bicycle touring map gradually became a map for motorists, and in 1908, with 100 cars and fifty motorcycles in Norway, a brief ‘List of points to remember for motorists’ is added to the handbook–a useful supplement to the traffic rules, which were still yet to be written. Nine years later, the Kongelig Norsk Automobilklub (Royal Norwegian Automobile Club) published the first Automobil Kart over det sydlige Norge (Automobile Map of Southern Norway).

  THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY | Students of the academic year 1902/1903 became the first in Norway to peruse an atlas that would constitute many Norwegian schoolchildren’s first encounter with the wider world for several generations to come: the Atlas for skole og hjem (Atlas for School and Home) by Ivar Refsdal. Continually reprinted, it became a permanent fixture of classrooms until well into the 1960s, and when geography became a separate subject through the new Education Act of 1889, Refsdal wrote that the discipline was not given particularly high standing, and that ‘most teachers must be content with a minimum of teaching materials, and the little that exists is often so poor, that it is almost equal to having none.’ Refsdal drew his own maps, which were simple, clear and pedagogical, and was highly praised by teachers and geography experts alike. He also drew wall maps for use in Norwegian classrooms.

  On the 1910 edition of Refsdal’s map, Asia and Africa are characterised by colonies; Poland is not a country in its own right, but is split between Germany and Russia; Finland is part of Russia; Ireland belongs to Great Britain; and the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria all form part of ‘Austria-Hungary’, which dominates the southern part of central Europe. ‘I was born in 1881 in the great and mighty empire of the Habsburg Monarchy, but you would look for it in vain on the map today; it has vanished without trace,’ wrote Austrian author Stefan Zweig in his memoir The World of Yesterday from 1942.

  Above Refsdal’s world map is a small, extra map, which symbolises one of the newly independent Norway’s sources of pride–the western Arctic. It is titled Nordamerikas arktiske öer (North America’s Arctic Islands), and states that ‘the lands discovered by Sverdrup are coloured red.’ This is the height of Norwegian Arctic Ocean imperialism, with Fridtjof Nansen crossing Greenland on skis, the Fram crossing Arctic waters, Roald Amundsen reaching the South Pole, and expeditions to Svalbard, Jan Mayen, Bear Island and Bouvet Island. Norway put itself on the map by putting other countries on the map.

  A map of the route taken by the first Fram expedition, which took place from 1893 to 1896. The map was drawn by Knud Bergslien in 1896 to mark the expedition’s achievements. Fridtjof Nansen was somewhat surprised not to find any new land in the waters through which they sailed. The first Fram expedition is described here.

  WHITE SPACES IN THE NORTH

  Isachsen, Canada

  78° 46′ 59″ N

  103° 29′ 59″ W

  One September morning in 1896, a few days after the Fram had arrived home from its first expedition to the Arctic Ocean, Captain Otto Sverdrup was unloading the ship in Lysaker Bay when Fridtjof Nansen came aboard. He wanted to hear about whether Sverdrup was interested in heading north once again–both Consul Axel Heiberg and the owners of the Ringnes brewery, brothers Amund and Ellef Ringnes, were willing to provide the necessary funds to equip a new polar expedition.

  ‘I cannot say otherwise than that I was pleased at this flattering offer. There were still many white spaces on the map which I was glad of an opportunity of colouring with the Norwegian colours, and thus the expedition was decided on,’ wrote Sverdrup in his travelogue New Land seven years later. The first Fram expedition had proved that there was no mainland at the North Pole–at least, not in the eastern parts of the region through which the expedition had sailed. But there was still much uncertainty surrounding the areas further west. On a map from 1896, which shows the route the Fram followed across the Arctic Ocean, parts of northern Greenland and the area to the west of this–and from here all the way around the polar region to the Ny Sibirske Øer (New Siberian Islands)–are completely blank. Only parts of the east coast of Ellesmere Island had so far been explored, and Sverdrup believed Norway could lay claim to the areas he and his crew mapped.

  The expedition set sail on 24 June 1898, the original aim being to map the northern and unknown parts of Greenland. The Fram would first sail up Greenland’s west coast, as this was as far north as the crew would be able to travel before being forced to harbour for the winter and undertake sledding expeditions to go further north and east–but due to challenging ice conditions this plan was abandoned in favour of exploring the Arctic islands of northern Canada. Spending the next four years in these waters, the crew explored and mapped an area the size of southern Norway–more than any expedition before them had ever achieved within the Arctic region.

  The expedition’s cartographer was Gunnar Isachsen, of whom Sverdrup wrote: ‘Gunerius Ingvald Isachsen, the cartographer of the expedition, was a first lieutenant in the cavalry. He was born at Drobak, in 1868, and has been in the army since 1891. Subsequently to the latter date he had passed through the Central School of Gymnastics.’ Isachsen’s first task was to find the location at which the Fram would harbour for the winter, Hayes Sound at Ellesmere, and he determined both the longitude and latitude values through observations of the Sun and Moon. The expedition possessed three theodolites, three sextants, a compass, a telescope, three large chronometers and six pocket chronometers.
They created a surveyor’s table onboard, and set markers out in the landscape when performing triangulations. The sleds were also equipped with odometers–small wheeled devices that measured the distances they covered.

  On Wednesday 14 September 1888, at 4.30 a.m., Isachsen set out on his first mapping expedition, together with Sverdrup and jack of all trades Ivar Fosheim. Sverdrup was eager to find out whether Hayes Sound really was a sound, or simply a large fjord.

  The journey was hard, and progress through the steep, unstable terrain was slow. None of the team were experienced in dog sledding, and when the dogs pulled like crazy and set off down the slopes at a furious pace, Sverdrup ‘quite expected them to do for themselves and for us too.’ Neither Isachsen nor Fosheim had ever slept in a tent before: ‘Tent-life was something quite new to Isachsen and Fosheim, and they were very keen to experience it.’ Fosheim felt as if he was suffocating with his head inside his sleeping bag. ‘On no account would Fosheim keep his head inside; he said he felt as if he was being suffocated, and thrust it out again, but not for long,’ recounted Sverdrup–the temperature was around 30 degrees below freezing.

  Mapping the polar regions at this time posed a highly specific set of challenges–not only did one have to contend with freezing ears, fingers and toes, but strong winds, huge volumes of snow and thick fog also made it difficult to perform any surveying activities at all. ‘In such circumstances one has time to fret one’s self almost distraught,’ wrote Sverdrup after attempting to take measurements on a day with particularly bad weather. If the crew found themselves on a glacier, it was almost impossible to take measurements because it was difficult to see the horizon, and since the Magnetic North Pole is in a different location to the geographic North Pole, they were unable to rely on their compass. It was also often necessary to turn back to the ship before the work was completed because provisions were running low.

  On this first excursion, Sverdrup’s desire to settle the question of whether the water formed a fjord or a sound would have to wait. ‘We ought, of course, to have investigated this,’ wrote Sverdrup after Isachsen had been high up into the mountains and seen a fjord that penetrated into the land further north, ‘but the dogs’ food had given out, and we were compelled to return to the ship.’

  A few days later, however, the company returned with eleven men, sixty dogs and extensive provisions, and set up camp to explore the area in greater detail. ‘The work first on our hands was to find a base[line] for the mapping operations,’ wrote Sverdrup. Isachsen had brought along a 20-metre-long steel tape for this purpose, and used it to measure a 1,100-metre-long baseline for the triangulation activities. The following spring, they measured a new baseline 1,500 metres in length slightly further north, and–to be completely sure that their results were correct–two more baselines further east along Hayes Sound, which was renamed the Hayesfjord following their investigations. The fjord split in two at its innermost point, and the names they gave to the southernmost arm and the place where it ends–Beitstadfjorden and Stenkjær–testify to Sverdrup’s longing for home: these were the names of places he had lived as a young man.

  During the expedition’s first autumn and winter, the crew mapped their immediate surroundings. On Tuesday 23 May 1899, when the brief Arctic summer had scarcely started, Isachsen and Ove Braskerud, the ship’s stoker and general handyman from Solør, set out on a long trip to explore the western parts of Ellesmere Island. In his report, Isachsen wrote: ‘The orders I received were agreeably brief; they were: with one man as a companion, two six-dog teams, and victuals for thirty days to traverse the inland ice of Ellesmere Land. I was to choose the direction myself, and I chose westward and endeavoured to reach the west coast, afterwards proceeding as far south as I could.’

  Isachsen and Braskerud made their way up onto a glacier, and from there travelled in a south-westerly direction. The dogs had ‘plenty of time for rest during our reconnaissances, which were frequent, and often of long duration.’ At midnight on 2 June they spotted a fjord on the west coast, but decided not to make their way down to it–Isachsen wished to stay as high up as possible, ascending the mountaintops in order to obtain as good an overview of the landscape as possible. ‘From a good point of vantage we observed that the chain of mountains stretched as far as we could see to the south-east, and that they were free of snow; while at the same time they shut in the view to the west and south-west.’ On other days it was impossible to carry out their planned tasks: ‘Unfortunately accurate measurement of [the mountain’s] height was in the circumstances impossible.’ Snowstorms and fog meant that they returned to the ship ten days late: ‘We were very sorry that our supply of tobacco had given out, though Braskerud’s waistcoat pocket, which had once had tobacco in it, did service in our pipes for three whole days.’

  But the crew of the Fram were not alone in the ice fields–their first winter harbour was right at the centre of Inuit hunting terrain. Sverdrup, full of awe and admiration, believed that polar researchers must ‘take lessons from the two races of native peoples’ who were best able to cope in these harsh surroundings–‘Finnen og Eskimoen’–the Sami and the Inuit. That spring, the Fram received its first visit from an Inuit man who Sverdrup described as looking ‘very intelligent for a so-called “savage”.’ They allowed him to look through polar researcher Eivind Astrup’s book Blandt Nordpolens Naboer (Among North Pole Neighbours), published in 1895, and it turned out that the man had been Astrup’s companion. ‘By the help of a map, with which he seemed as much at home as a professor of geography […] we got out of him that he was from the island of Kama, in Inglefield Gulf.’

  VIKINGS | Naturally enough, the exploration of the northern regions started with the first people to travel north and settle there–the Inuit, who live in Greenland, northern Canada and Alaska, are the descendants of people who crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia some time around the year AD 1000. But the Inuit also tell legends about a people they drove away when they arrived, and archaeological excavations have confirmed that the Tunit or Sivullirmiut, which means ‘the first inhabitants’, lived in the Arctic region over 2,500 years ago, and that other people also inhabited the area before them, 5,000 years ago.

  The Sami have lived in Scandinavia for at least 2,000 years, and a broad range of other native peoples live across Siberia–but unlike the first Norwegians, these people left behind no written sources we can study. The Sagas are the earliest sources to provide us with first-hand information.

  When Icelander Eirik Raude, known in the English-speaking world as Erik the Red, raided Greenland in the year AD 982, he found traces of settlements, boats and stone artefacts on both the east and west coasts, ‘from which it was evident that the same kind of people had lived there as inhabited Vinland and whom the Greenlanders called “Skraelings”,’ wrote Are Frode in his Islendingabók (The Book of the Icelanders) from AD 1130. ‘Skraelings’ was the Norse people’s name for the Americans.

  Erik the Red’s son, Leif Eriksson, has had the honour of being named the Norse discoverer of Vinland–America–despite the fact that the Saga of the Greenlanders states that a man named Bjarni Herjolfsson was the first to set eyes on the country after becoming lost on one of his voyages–although he never went ashore there.

  The Vikings sailed across great distances, from Norway, Sweden and Denmark to Iceland, Greenland, America, the Faroe Islands, Ireland, Scotland, England, Russia, France, Italy and Turkey. Sigurd the Crusader travelled all the way to Jerusalem, and the Landnámabók (Book of Settlements) makes reference to a country that may be Svalbard. In light of this, it is astonishing that the Vikings never made a single map–not a single stretch of coastline or group of islands was ever reproduced by them. We can therefore only conclude that the Vikings managed perfectly well with verbal maps. Archaeologist and author Helge Ingstad imagines how this might have worked:

  Skippers, seamen and farmers would gather to discuss their experiences of many long voyages, sharing wise words about the winds, current
s and ice, distant waters and far off coasts. Knowledge was added to knowledge, and a great many fixed routes were established–a tradition emerged.

  The Hauksbók (Book of Haukr) from 1308 provides an example of such a verbal map:

  So say wise men that from Stadt in Norway it is seven days’ sail to Horn on Iceland’s east coast, but from Snøfellsnes it is four days’ sail to Hvarf on Greenland. From Hernar in Norway one must sail quickly west to Hvarf on Greenland, sailing north of Shetland so that one may see the land in clear weather, but south of the Faroe Islands such that one only sees the mountains at half height, and so far south of Iceland that the country’s seabirds and whales may be seen…

  Close to land, it was possible to navigate by landmarks and to ask for directions, while at sea it was necessary to navigate by the Sun and the stars. For longer voyages, the Vikings would have a navigation expert aboard–a ‘leidsagnarmadr’–who would ‘deila ættir’, or establish the cardinal directions. The Saga of the Greenlanders also tells of how Leif and his crew took measurements of the Sun when they constructed houses in America and spent the winter there: ‘There was more jamndøgr there than in Greenland or Iceland. The sun there had eyktarstad and dagmålastad on skamdagen.’

  Jamndøgr is the equinox, when day and night are equal in length, and skamdagen is the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, 21 December. Eyktarstad and dagmålastad are the positions of the sun at eykt and dagmåla–dinner and breakfast. In Vinland, unlike Scandinavia, the sun is up at both eyktarstad and dagmålastad at the winter solstice.

  Based on this information, historian Gustav Storm and astronomer Hans Geelmuyden calculated Vinland’s location as 49 degrees 55 minutes northern latitude–in northern Newfoundland. The fact that Ingstad also found ruins of houses dating back thousands of years in the area also confirms Storm and Geelmuyden’s result.