Salomon August Andrée
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Salomon August Andrée | |
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Arctic Balloon Expedition of 1897 |
Salomon August Andrée (18 October 1854 – October 1897), during his lifetime most often known as S. A. Andrée, was a Swedish engineer, physicist,
Early life and influences
Andrée was born in the small town of
From 1880 to 1882 he was an assistant at the Royal Institute of Technology, and in 1882–1883 he participated in a Swedish scientific expedition to
His view of life was that of the
Expedition to the North Pole
Supported by the
For these reasons they were forced down onto the ice, though the landing was conducted in a semi-controlled way rather than actually crashing. They had covered 295 miles (475 km) and foundered on the
They reached land in early October after more than two months on the ice, setting foot on Kvitøya (White Island), just east of Svalbard. They perished there, probably within two weeks after landfall. Most modern writers agree that Nils Strindberg died within a week of arrival: he was buried among the rocks (though no marker was placed on his grave) whilst the other two men were later found in the tent.
Diary notes and observations end just a few days after they landed on Kvitøya; up to that point these had been kept up even in hard conditions. This seems to indicate that something critical happened after a few days. It is likely that Strindberg met his end at this point. It has not been possible to establish the reason for his death. Suicide (which would have been possible with opium) is very unlikely in his case even though by this time all three no doubt realized they would die. Whatever Strindberg may have felt about the outcome of the expedition, it is near certain that he would have judged the option of suicide as treachery to his fellow explorers.[4]
The diary notes of the expedition indicate that all three men were sometimes plagued by digestive trouble, illness and exhaustion during the trek over the sea ice. The ultimate cause of death probably had something to do with the ingestion of polar bear flesh carrying Trichinella parasites,[citation needed] which were found in the remains of a polar bear on the spot examined by the Danish physician Ernst Tryde and published in a book in 1952 called ‘The Dead on White Island’. There is no doubt that the men became infected at some point during the ice trek, though the exact time span is unclear (and this matters because humans normally develop immunity to trichinosis if they survive the first wave of infection). When they arrived at White Island they were suffering from recurrent diarrhoea. A plausible indication of this is that some of the provisions they brought ashore (obviously after a few days of scouting to the west) were unloaded and left near the water and not carried to a safer place near the camp.
In contrast, Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson theorized in his book 'Unsolved Mysteries of the Arctic' that Nils Strindberg had probably died while chasing a polar bear, perhaps from drowning, and Andrée and Frænkel had asphyxiated on carbon monoxide from a malfunctioning stove while cooking in their tent. To account for the unburned amount of fuel in the stove Stefansson referred to his own experience with malfunctioning stoves that required regular pumping up to keep burning. In his opinion they had not lost hope of getting back, but they had made many mistakes and would have died of something else if they hadn't died when they did.
Aftermath
Until Andrée's last camp was found in 1930, the expedition's fate was the subject of myth and rumours. At the time of the disappearance, it was noted that a heavy storm had been raging and that the balloon had lost its steering lines at departure. This led experienced polar explorers to surmise that the expedition could not have got very far and had probably been forced down onto the ice. In 1898, eleven months after Andrée's first sighting of White Island (which he called New Iceland), a Swedish polar expedition led by
Modern assessments
Starting in the 1960s, Andrée's status as a national hero was increasingly questioned and a cooler, more skeptical view began to prevail, in a way not unlike the changing assessment of Robert Falcon Scott's South polar journey. Emphasis has been placed on the view that the expedition was bound to fail, and that Andrée refused to take in information that questioned the expedition's feasibility. He also had limited flight experience with large balloons, and none in Arctic conditions. Andrée has been seen as a manipulator of the national emotions of his age, bringing a meaningless death on himself and his two companions.[5] Several modern writers, following Per Olof Sundman's portrayal of Andrée in the semidocumentary novel Flight of the Eagle ("Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd", 1967), have speculated that by the time of the departure for Svalbard in 1897, Andrée had become a prisoner of his own successful funding campaign and of heightened national expectations. As such, they posit that he may have felt incapable of backing out or admitting faults in his plans in front of the press.[6]
Legacy
The Italian poet Giovanni Pascoli wrote a poem about Andrée's expedition and death.[8]
Andrée's writings were adapted into the song cycle The Andrée Expedition by the American composer Dominick Argento, written for the Swedish baritone Håkan Hagegård. Swedish composer Klas Torstensson's opera "Expeditionen" (1994–99) is also based on Andrée's story.[9]
Historian Edward Guimont has proposed that the 1930 discovery of the expedition's remains influenced H. P. Lovecraft in the writing of At the Mountains of Madness.[10]
In 1982, the Swedish filmmaker Jan Troell directed a film based on Sundman's book, Flight of the Eagle.
In 2010, the American rock group Brian's Escape created a seven-track concept album inspired by Andrée's adventures entitled The Journey: An Account of S. A. Andrée's Arctic Expedition of 1897.[11]
The 2010 novel Strindberg's Star by Swedish writer Jan Wallentin revolves around the story of the expedition. The explorers reportedly found two relics which opened a portal to the Norse underworld and set off a chain of events connecting both world wars and the modern day with ancient Norse myths.
In 2012, English band The Greenland Choir included a song Reindeer, 1897 on their E.P. Here we are, wandering around like ghosts, which was inspired by Andrée.[12]
In 2013, UK/ Norway theatre company New International Encounter (NIE) created a show charting the story of the ice balloon in co-production with The North Wall Oxford and The Key Theatre. North North North premiered at The Key Theatre, Peterborough on May 9, 2013, and toured across the UK and internationally.
A 2013 novel Expeditionen : min kärlekshistoria by Swedish writer Bea Uusma retells the story from the point of view of Strindberg's love for his fiancée, Anna Charlier.
Footnotes
- ^ Wilkinson, Alec. "The Ice Balloon", The New Yorker. April 19, 2010. p. 39.
- ISBN 9789163076398.
- ^ "Lesson Learned: Don't Fly To North Pole In A Balloon". NPR.org. NPR. Archived from the original on 2018-11-18. Retrieved 2012-01-21.
- ISBN 9789120048901. The book makes a long and rigorous analysis of the written and physical traces of the Andrée expedition and how these may be harnessed in rational interpretation of the course of the journey.
- ^ This assessment is discussed in several contexts in Vår position är ej synnerligen god... by Andrée specialist Sven Lundström, curator of the Andreexpedition Polarcenter Archived 2006-01-09 at the Wayback Machine in Gränna, Sweden (see for example p. 131) and it is also a key underpinning of P-O. Sundman's two books, Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd and Ingen fruktan, intet hopp
- ^ See Kjellström, p. 45, and Lundström, pp. 69–73.
- ^ "Catalogue of place names in northern East Greenland". Geological Survey of Denmark. Archived from the original on 13 May 2020. Retrieved 7 July 2016.
- ^ "Odi e Inni". Archived from the original on 2012-03-31.
- ^ "The expedition". Archived from the original on 2012-01-20. Retrieved 2012-01-06.
- JSTOR 26939814.
- ^ "The Journey: An Account of S. A. Andrée's Arctic Expedition of 1897". The Journey. Brian's Escape. Archived from the original on 28 March 2012. Retrieved 25 July 2011.
- ^ "Here we are, wandering around like ghosts". Archived from the original on 2022-03-04. Retrieved 2017-07-21.
References
- Ahlman, Axel (1928). Isviddernas hjältar: polarforskningens historia genom tiderna berättad för ungdom i alla åldrar [Heroes of the Ice Fields: the history of polar research through the ages told for youth of all ages] (in Swedish). Lund, Sweden: C.W.K. Gleerup. OCLC 25520273. Popular book on polar expeditions; the author had long experience of treks in the Arctic Ocean and makes a detailed analysis of what might have happened to Andrée.
- Andrée, Salomon August; Strindberg, Nils; Fraenkel, Knut Hjalmar Ferdinand (1931). Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography (ed.). The Andrée diaries : being the diaries and records of S.A. Andrée, Nils Strindberg and Knut Fraenkel, written during their balloon expedition to the North Pole in 1897 and discovered on White Island in 1930, together with a complete record of the expedition and discovery. Translated by Adams-Ray, Edward. London: Bodley Head. OCLC 173492022.
- Kjellström, Rolf (1999). "Andrée-expeditionen och dess undergång: tolkning nu och då [The Andrée expedition and its demise: interpretation now and then]". In Wråkberg, Urban (ed.). The Centennial of S.A. Andrée's North Pole Expedition: Proceedings of a Conference on S.A. Andrée and the Agenda for Social Science Research of the Polar Regions'. Bidrag till Kungl. Svenska vetenskapsakademiens historia, No. 29 (in Swedish). Stockholm: Center for History of Science, ISBN 9789171900319.
- Lundström, Sven (1997). "Vår position är ej synnerligen god...": Andréexpeditionen i svart och vitt ["Our position is not particularly good...": The Andrée expedition in black] (in Swedish). Borås: Carlssons förlag. , Sweden. This museum has been mainly dedicated to Andrée's polar expedition.
- (in Swedish) Sörlin, Sverker. Entries Andrée, Salomon August and Andrée-expeditionen in the web version of the encyclopedia Nationalencyklopedin, accessed April 27, 2006 (Swedish)
- (in Swedish) Nordisk familjebok, 2nd edition, the entry Andrée, Salomon August (Swedish; written several years before the final fate of the expedition was discovered)
- Sollinger, Guenther (2005). S.A. Andree: The Beginning of Polar Aviation 1895–1897. Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences Institute for the History of Natural Science and Technology. )
- Sollinger, Guenther (2005). S.A. Andree and Aeronautics: An Annotated Bibliography. Moscow: Rusavia. )