The Last Viking

by Stephen Bown

  Despite exhaustion and being soaked by freezing waves in the Arctic wind, and despite the men being “all pretty quiet and cool by nature,” they “burst out unrestrained.” Amundsen, self-critical as ever, admonished himself for not setting a watch in the crow’s nest: if the ship had been crushed here, no one could have come to help and the entire crew would have perished miserably. His crew, however, didn’t blame him; Helmer Hanssen later wrote that “no praise could be too much for Amundsen’s conduct during all these trials. It was his first expedition, but he was just a born natural leader.” Nevertheless, the captain vowed not to travel a single mile farther without a constant watch, though it would slow their progress and tire the men out.

  The nights were getting longer and the weather colder, so Amundsen began searching for a place to overwinter, a safe harbour for the Gjøa to be frozen in for the season. The ship continued south along the desolate coastline of the eastern shore of King William Island until September 9, when the captain spied an enticing spot for overwintering in the vicinity of the magnetic North Pole. It was a snug, sheltered bay that would shield them from the grinding ice of the open waters, surrounded by a ring of low hills that would defend against the bitter polar wind. It even had fresh water sources. “If one had sat at home and thought out a winter harbour, it would have been impossible to conceive a better one,” Amundsen said. He called the spot Gjøahavn and settled the little ship to be frozen in. There it would stay for nearly two years, amid a vast, treeless expanse of boulders and stunted grasses, soon to be entirely covered in snow. Coincidentally, the harbour, which is now a Canadian town, Gjoa Haven, was situated at nearly the same latitude north as Tromsø, the Norwegian home town of several of the crew. These men were accustomed to certain particularities of life in the high northern latitudes, such as the sun circling in a great arc in the sky, never dipping below the horizon in summer, counterbalanced in winter by a great, dark cap of stars and perpetual gloom. It was also close to the scene of Franklin’s crew’s demise more than sixty years earlier, when their enormous ships had been crushed in the ice on the western shore of the same island.

  After finding a secure berth for the ship, where it could be frozen-in safely, the crew began to unload all their provisions and to construct a scientific observation hut on a nearby hill. For use as building materials, they shovelled sand from the beach into empty provision cases, digging them as far as possible into the rocky ground, for protection from the wind, and covered the hut with an old sail. They named the uninspiring structure “The Magnet”; Wiik and Ristvedt, who would be responsible for the magnetic and climatic measurements, would bunk there for the winter. They also later constructed an astronomical observatory out of hardened snow topped with a sailcloth roof that they playfully called “Uranienborg,” after the famous astronomical observatory of Tycho Brahe. The dogs would also be living on land and, “of course, were highly affronted at being summarily ejected from the ship.”

  As the days grew darker and colder, the men tried to prepare themselves psychologically for the dreaded monotony of the long winter they faced living in the deserted, frozen expanse under a dome of perpetual dark. The daily routine, as far as anyone could predict, would consist of magnetic observations, hunting, taking care of the dogs and feeding themselves, with only a few extended excursions to pass the many months. The members of the small band had already grown tired of each others’ company, and with little to occupy them once winter set in, the lack of new company proved to be the greatest challenge.

  The first few weeks in their new home were, however, lively and exciting: a great herd of caribou was migrating nearby, and Amundsen, all too familiar with the ill-effects of salted and preserved foods eaten over prolonged periods, organized a hunt. Scurvy was a far greater danger than not getting a camp established right away. Amundsen knew that Dr. Cook had averted scurvy with his prescribed diet of lightly cooked seal meat on the Belgica and that the local Inuit did not suffer from the disease. All the fancy scientific theories that claimed to explain it and offer solutions were, as far as Amundsen was concerned, total foolishness.

  Harald Sverdrup, who sailed with Amundsen in later years, wrote that Amundsen “cared little for [scientists’] conclusions and even less for their theories. When he talked about men of science he had met, he would stress their personal characteristics and not their scientific accomplishments.” Amundsen liked to say during his lectures that the many scientific specialists who approached him before the Gjøa’s sailing pressed upon him their erroneous opinions on the location of the magnetic North Pole and that “they might as well have said the moon for all they knew.” To Amundsen, science was a necessary evil that he put up with, much like seasickness. This perspective would become even more apparent in the coming years, as the tedium of the magnetic pole observations continued. For now, the men rushed out to hunt the caribou and brought in over one hundred carcasses in short order, easily enough meat to feed them and their dogs for the winter.

  Amundsen and his crew had been discussing the possibility of meeting the local Inuit for some time, hoping for new companionship to relieve their own isolation, and Amundsen was desperate to learn Inuit techniques of polar travel and living. When the Inuit arrived, it was a great surprise, “exceedingly ridiculous, and one of our liveliest reminiscences.” On October 29, the men of Gjøahavn noticed five strangers coming over a hill. Amundsen, Lund and Hansen, “armed to the teeth,” started toward the strangers, who were clad in shaggy caribou furs, their brown, weather-worn faces peering from fur-lined hoods, and bows strung over their backs. The trio of Norwegians strode boldly forth with their guns at their shoulders and with “such a fierce expression on their faces that it alone would have been enough to put a warlike detachment to flight.”

  The five native men paused, as if wondering how to respond to this hostility, and then continued to advance, humming and smiling. When they saw that the Norwegians were apparently unarmed (they didn’t recognize the guns as weapons), they started talking loudly in incomprehensible words. Amundsen recounted that as he and his companions approached and met the Inuit, the excitement and joy was mutual and the Norwegians “shouted and howled, patted and slapped, to the best of our ability.”

  The meeting was a grand success, the start of a multi-year alliance. As word of the friendly encounter spread throughout the region, various groups of Inuit came to Gjøahavn for short periods, departing as the urge or need arose. Meanwhile, Amundsen and his men met several other groups of people and found clusters of snow houses on their forays into the wintry wilds. Helmer Hanssen related that the learning process was slow on both sides, but that “as time went by we got more familiar with each other’s languages. That is to say, when we talked Eskimo they thought we were talking Norwegian, and when they tried Norwegian, it sounded to us like Eskimo, but we understood each other quite well and carried on long conversations.”

  These meetings were not inconsequential. The greatest scientific accomplishments of that first expedition were not the magnetic data tediously collected in the two makeshift observatories, but Amundsen’s detailed and unique collection of ethnographic artifacts and his accompanying descriptions of Inuit life and customs at the beginning of the twentieth century.

  An Education at Gjøahavn

  They waved long to us—probably a farewell for life; and if some traveller, many years later, pays this place a visit, the numerous tent-rings will remind him of the many happy days the Gjøa expedition spent here with their friends the Netsilik Eskimos.

  FOR THE NEXT two years, 1903 to 1905, the Gjøa did not move, nor did the observatory. The Norwegian adventurers used the occasion to venture into the tundra on many expeditions, in all seasons. They launched excursions to survey and chart the unknown portions of the nearby Arctic coastline. As the months rolled on, they made daily measurements of the wind and temperature, the duration of sunlight and darkness, the quantity of snow and rainfall, the number of frost-free days and the types of plants and
animals to be found in each season. The seven men lived long enough at Gjøahavn to become acclimated to the region. Somewhat astonished, Amundsen noted that he preferred the Arctic winter to the summer; “when during the winter the temperature rose to merely –30°C [–22°F] it was a lovely day, and curious as it may sound, felt quite summer-like.” Gjøahavn became the Norwegian adventurers’ home.

  They watched their dogs die and other dogs be born, they experienced relief at the end of the long, dark winter and witnessed the stunning transformation of the land during the thaw into a startlingly brilliant, intense but brief frenzy of life in high summer, with a profusion of flowers, animals and birds. Amundsen was delighted when a group of Inuit decided to set up camp right near the Gjøa: not only would the Europeans gain companionship but also opportunity to learn from the masters.

  He also made several attempts to reach the magnetic North Pole on the Boothia Peninsula. At first he was not particularly successful, but then he learned new techniques from the Inuit, including their methods of driving dogsleds and of surviving in the north. To Amundsen, the true value of the two years spent at Gjøahavn was his exposure to the cultural knowledge of the Inuit, not the tedious magnetic and meteorological measurements.

  Indeed, as time passed, Amundsen’s lack of enthusiasm for scientific measurement became glaringly obvious. Ristvedt eventually noted with some resentment that “Wiik works continually on the magnetic north. The Governor [Amundsen] and the lieutenant read novels and smoke and go for walks from time to time. It is unbelievable that a man can change like the Governor has in the course of one year. Last year he worked constantly with his observations. This year he has done nothing and we achieved nothing on our sledge trip this spring that was sufficiently accurate.” In fact, the expedition gathered a vast quantity of magnetic and meteorological data that was later distributed to specialists to help understand the climatology of the region and to provide a better understanding of the earth’s magnetic fields. From a scientific perspective, the Northwest Passage expedition was far from a failure, but it wasn’t Amundsen who did this work, and the men assigned to perform it could not help but resent his lack of interest.

  Amundsen was an ethnographer by disposition, yet his interest was not only cultural but also practical. Even so, many of his men couldn’t understand his preoccupation with the Inuit and disliked his hiring of local people as general labour and as instructors, thus encouraging several families to live near the Gjøa for months at a time. Second mate Helmer Hanssen, who felt that the Inuit “were lousy and smelled terribly,” admitted to playing various tricks to get them out of his cabin, because “we couldn’t chase them out . . . [and] we did not want them to go to Amundsen and say we had treated them unkindly.” He added that “Amundsen had asked us to treat them with the greatest kindness, so that we could depend on them as friends if we ever needed their help.” Wiik, who was the youngest member of the expedition and who least understood Amundsen, was most critical of his captain’s interest in the Inuit. He complained in his journal that “there were always many of them. I cannot comprehend why on earth he needs them; they eat for three, but he can’t afford to feed the dogs.” The young man, and to a lesser extent several of the older adventurers, failed to understand that Amundsen was not planning merely this one trip and then retirement: he was keeping the locals around to learn from them for the future, in addition to satisfying his natural curiosity. Amundsen probably already had dreams for trips to the North and South Poles, and he knew the knowledge of the Inuit would be indispensable. For him, the true treasure of the Northwest Passage voyage was the knowledge and technology of local people. His open-mindedness toward different peoples and new ideas contributed in no small measure to his ultimate success in the Arctic and the Antarctic, as well as to his ability to reimagine or reinvent his career as technology and public interest evolved.

  Amundsen had no intention of studying the Inuit in a condescending manner, as if they were subjects in an experiment. He accepted their culture on its own terms, without romanticizing the people themselves or their way of life, and he viewed them as cultural equals. Perhaps unusually, Amundsen was very interested in the Inuit as individuals and was not content with assigning the stereotypical idea of the “race” to each individual. In fact, judging from his writings and the transcripts of his lectures, he seems to have been more interested in his Inuit visitors than in his own crew; this should hardly be surprising, since he had just spent many tedious months with his handful of men and had long tired of them, their stories and peccadilloes. The locals, on the other hand, were fresh, exotic and intriguing, with different ways of looking at the world and different ways of living. And their temporarily intertwined lives were sort of a soap opera. All this so impressed him that later in life, Amundsen harboured the wish to return to Alaska or the Canadian Arctic and visit the Inuit again.

  “It is often said that the Eskimo are lazy,” he mused, “unwilling, and possessed of all other bad qualities under the sun. Certainly this was not true.” A significant number of pages in his book The North-West Passage are devoted to anthropological observations of Inuit customs and material culture, and tales of his own interactions with them. Later in life he donated his collections of Inuit material culture to the Norwegian state, becoming the centrepieces of museum collections.

  The band of Inuit that spent the most time near the Gjøa were the Netsilik, or Netsilingmiut, “the people of the ringed seal.” Their main food sources were seals, reindeer, salmon, trout and cod. In the summer they caught birds as well: “swans, geese, loons, ducks, eiders, and many small birds.” Amundsen’s slide collections, which he used to accompany his lectures, include numerous images of these people in all manner of poses: fully clothed, holding long spears; standing near loaded sledges, with their dogs lolling about on the snow; children practising their bow-and-arrow shooting; men spearing fish; women lounging inside their snow houses or carrying babies on their backs; family groups posing in front of the ship with bundles of fur-covered goods for trade; hunters paddling in skin kayaks; the dead bundled for burial and laid out on the windswept barrens; men and women posing to display their clothing; and many of the Norwegians posing fully dressed in “Eskimo” style. But not all the people they encountered near Gjøahavn were friendly, and Amundsen does not shy from recording the negative attributes of other groups who occasionally were thieving, violent or untrustworthy. He met ten tribes during his sojourn and noted that although their material culture was identical, each group had its own distinct characteristics.

  He spent many weeks in all seasons learning from the Netsilik visitors. After working with an elder teacher whom he had hired to teach snow-house building techniques to the Norwegians, the area around Gjøahavn was littered with dozens of snow houses of varying quality. Amundsen reported that “Old Teraiu, who could not understand what we were building all these huts for, shook his head pensively, evidently in the conviction that we had taken leave of our senses. Sometimes he would throw out his arms to indicate the overwhelming number of houses and exclaim, ‘Iglu amichjui—amichjui—amichjui!’ Which means, ‘This is a dreadful lot of houses.’ But in this, too, we arrived at what we wanted: we became at last good snow builders.”

  On another occasion, during a sledding excursion, Amundsen wrote of his experience with Inuit clothing: “We were ready to leave on the first of March. The thermostat showed –55°C (–63°F). But through the months of February we had become so accustomed to the cold that it did not bother us much. We were also very well dressed. Some of us wore complete Eskimo costumes, others partly civilized clothing. My experience is that in these parts in winter the Eskimo dress is far superior to our European clothes. But one must either use it alone or not at all. Any combination is bad. Wool underwear gathers all perspiration and will soon make the outside clothing wet. Dressed entirely in reindeer skin, like the Eskimo, and with the clothing loose enough on the body to let the air circulate between the layers, one will as a rule kee
p the clothing dry. . . . Finally, skins are absolutely wind-proof, which is of course a very important point.” Within a short time after the arrival of the Netsilik during the first winter, all the crew had bartered for suits of the finest caribou-skin clothing.

  Amundsen also learned the finer points of polar sledge running. During their first winter at Gjøahavn many of Amundsen’s dogs died from a mysterious disease. Rather than abort his plans to explore the surrounding territory, Amundsen decided to make an excursion using fewer dogs to haul the sleds. During this trip, the sledges stuck in the snow, which was “like sand,” and the animals were exhausted. Amundsen and two companions took to hauling one of the sledges themselves, which proved to be “terrible labour” to cover a slight distance. “After ceaseless toil from morning to evening, we managed to cover 3.5 miles. I realized now that this sort of thing was not good enough.” He soon learned to coat the sledge runners with ice for smooth running, and set out to learn all he could about the training and maintenance of dogs in the polar environment, which involved a different set of customs and practices from those used for raising dogs as pets in Norway. To the Inuit, the use of dogs was a matter of life and death, and they were working animals, not pets. Anyone accustomed to considering dogs as pets would have been appalled by the rough treatment and heavy work load of these animals.

  Amundsen’s interest in Inuit culture was not limited to aspects he felt would improve his own career as a polar explorer. In The North-West Passage he detailed, through story and anecdote, many aspects of Inuit culture that were esoteric, spiritual or seemingly based only on custom (although customs and beliefs have their foundations in the environment and the need to survive). In addition to discussing their material culture—their houses, clothing, hunting and food preparation techniques and tools—he described Inuit religious practices, their songs, dances, stories and ceremonies. He was intrigued by the changes in lifestyle from season to season, especially the winter practice of constructing a giant communal igloo where the tribe gathered for dancing and drumming, and theatrical, spiritual and athletic displays. He also related events that were obviously disturbing and perhaps disgusting to him (to some of his men even more so), such as certain methods of food preparation. For example, Amundsen and Ristvedt joined a group of hunters one summer day. When a deer was shot, the blood was quickly collected and some of it was drunk by the hunters before they removed the animal’s stomach. “The Eskimo partook of a portion of the contents by scooping it up with their hands. When the stomach was half empty, they put the blood into it and stirred it round with a thigh bone. The dish thus prepared was blood-pudding á la Eskimo, which even Ristvedt had refused to partake of.”