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S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Geographers and explorers

   S. A. Andrée and Knut Frænkel with the crashed balloon on the pack ice,
   photographed by the third expedition member, Nils Strindberg. The
   exposed film for this photograph and others from the failed 1897
   expedition was recovered in 1930.
   Enlarge
   S. A. Andrée and Knut Frænkel with the crashed balloon on the pack ice,
   photographed by the third expedition member, Nils Strindberg. The
   exposed film for this photograph and others from the failed 1897
   expedition was recovered in 1930.

   S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 was an ill-fated
   effort to reach the North Pole in which all three expedition members
   perished. S. A. Andrée (1854–97), the first Swedish balloonist,
   proposed a voyage by hydrogen balloon from Svalbard to either Russia or
   Canada, which was to pass, with luck, straight over the North Pole on
   the way. The scheme was received with patriotic enthusiasm in Sweden, a
   northern nation that had fallen behind in the race for the North Pole.

   Andrée neglected many early signs of the dangers associated with his
   balloon plan. Being able to steer the balloon to some extent was
   essential for a safe journey, and there was plenty of evidence that the
   drag-rope steering technique he had invented was ineffective; yet he
   staked the fate of the expedition on drag ropes. Worse, the polar
   balloon Örnen (Eagle) was delivered directly to Svalbard from its
   manufacturer in Paris without being tested; when measurements showed it
   to be leaking more than expected, Andrée refused to acknowledge the
   alarming implications of this. Most modern students of the expedition
   see Andrée's optimism, faith in the power of technology, and disregard
   for the forces of nature as the main factors in the series of events
   that led to his death and the deaths of his two companions Nils
   Strindberg (1872–97) and Knut Frænkel (1870–97).

   After Andrée, Strindberg, and Frænkel lifted off from Svalbard in July
   1897, the balloon lost hydrogen quickly and crashed on the pack ice
   after only two days. The explorers were unhurt but faced a grueling
   trek back south across the drifting icescape. Inadequately clothed,
   equipped, and prepared, and shocked by the difficulty of the terrain,
   they did not make it to safety. As the Arctic winter closed in on them
   in October, the group ended up exhausted on the deserted Kvitøya (White
   Island) in Svalbard and died there. For 33 years the fate of the Andrée
   expedition remained one of the unsolved riddles of the Arctic. The
   chance discovery in 1930 of the expedition's last camp created a media
   sensation in Sweden, where the dead men were mourned and idolized.
   Andrée's motives have later been re-evaluated, along with the role of
   the polar areas as the proving-ground of masculinity and patriotism. An
   early example is Per Olof Sundman's fictionalized bestseller novel of
   1967, The Flight of the Eagle (later filmed as Flight of the Eagle),
   which portrays Andrée as weak and cynical, at the mercy of his sponsors
   and the media. The verdict on Andrée by modern writers for virtually
   sacrificing the lives of his two younger companions varies in
   harshness, depending on whether he is seen as the manipulator or the
   victim of Swedish nationalist fervor around the turn of the 20th
   century.
   S. A. Andrée (1854–97).
   S. A. Andrée (1854–97).

S. A. Andrée's scheme

   Andrée's hydrogen gas balloon, the Svea.
   Enlarge
   Andrée's hydrogen gas balloon, the Svea.
   This newspaper cartoon shows Andrée on a Baltic Sea islet, trying to
   restrain an unrealistically small Svea in a high wind.
   Enlarge
   This newspaper cartoon shows Andrée on a Baltic Sea islet, trying to
   restrain an unrealistically small Svea in a high wind.

   The second half of the 19th century has often been called the heroic
   age of polar exploration. The inhospitable and dangerous Arctic and
   Antarctic regions spoke powerfully to the imagination of the age, not
   as lands with their own ecologies and cultures, but as challenges to
   technological ingenuity and manly daring.

   The Swede S. A. Andrée shared these enthusiasms, and proposed a plan
   for letting the wind propel a hydrogen balloon from Svalbard across the
   Arctic Sea to the Bering Strait, to fetch up in Alaska, Canada, or
   Russia, and passing near or even right over the North Pole on the way.
   Andrée was an engineer at the patent office in Stockholm, with a
   passion for ballooning. He bought his own balloon, the Svea, in 1893
   and made nine journeys with it, starting from Gothenburg or Stockholm
   and travelling a combined distance of 1,500  kilometers (900  miles).
   In the prevailing westerly winds, the Svea flights had a strong
   tendency to carry him uncontrollably out to the Baltic Sea and drag his
   basket perilously along the surface of the water and/or slam it into
   one of the many rocky islets in the Stockholm archipelago (see artist's
   impression, right). On one occasion he was blown clear across the
   Baltic to Finland. His longest trip was due east from Gothenburg,
   across the breadth of Sweden and out over the Baltic to Gotland. Even
   though he actually saw a lighthouse and heard breakers off Öland, he
   remained convinced that he was travelling over land and merely seeing
   lakes.

   During a couple of the Svea flights, Andrée tested and tried out the
   drag-rope steering technique that he had invented and wanted to use on
   his projected North Pole expedition. Drag ropes, which hang from the
   balloon basket and drag part of their length on the ground, are
   designed to counteract the tendency of lighter-than-air craft to travel
   at the same speed as the wind, a situation that makes steering by sails
   impossible. The friction of the ropes was intended to slow the balloon
   to the point where the sails would have an effect (beyond that of
   making the balloon rotate on its axis). Andrée claimed that, with the
   drag rope/sails steering, his Svea had essentially become a dirigible,
   but this notion is rejected by modern balloonists. The Swedish
   Ballooning Association ascribes Andrée's conviction entirely to wishful
   thinking, capricious winds, and the fact that much of the time Andrée
   was inside clouds and had little idea where he was or which way he was
   moving. Moreover, his drag ropes would persistently snap, fall off,
   become entangled with each other, or get stuck to the ground, which
   could result in pulling the often low-flying balloon down into a
   dangerous bounce. No modern Andrée researcher has expressed any faith
   in drag ropes as a balloon steering technique.

Promotion and fundraising

   Swedish merchandizing: on this Andrée boardgame from 1896, polar bears
   can be seen snapping at the balloon's drag ropes.
   Enlarge
   Swedish merchandizing: on this Andrée boardgame from 1896, polar bears
   can be seen snapping at the balloon's drag ropes.
   International interest: French artist's impression of Andrée's
   projected launch from Svalbard.
   Enlarge
   International interest: French artist's impression of Andrée's
   projected launch from Svalbard.

   The Arctic ambitions of the northern European nation of Sweden were
   still unrealized in the late 19th century, while neighboring and
   politically subordinate Norway was a world power in Arctic exploration
   through such pioneers as Fridtjof Nansen. The Swedish political and
   scientific elite were eager to see Sweden take that lead among the
   Scandinavian countries which seemed her due, and Andrée, a persuasive
   speaker and fundraiser, found it easy to gain support for his ideas. At
   a lecture in 1895 to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Andrée
   thrilled the audience of geographers and meteorologists. A polar
   exploration balloon, he explained, would need to fulfill four
   conditions:
     * It must have enough lifting power to carry three people and all
       their scientific equipment, advanced cameras for aerial
       photography, provisions for four months, and ballast, altogether
       about 3000  kilograms (3 metric tons; approximately 3.5  short
       tons).
     * It must retain the gas well enough to stay aloft for 30 days.
     * The hydrogen gas must be manufactured, and the balloon filled, at
       the Arctic launch site.
     * It must be at least somewhat steerable.

   Andrée gave a glowingly optimistic account of the ease with which these
   requirements could be met. Larger balloons had been constructed in
   France, he claimed, and more airtight, too. Some French balloons had
   remained hydrogen-filled for over a year without appreciable loss of
   buoyancy. As for the hydrogen, filling the balloon at the launch site
   could easily be done with the help of mobile hydrogen manufacturing
   units; for the steering he referred to his own drag-rope experiments
   with the Svea, stating that a deviation of 27  degrees from the wind
   direction could be routinely achieved.

   Andrée assured the audience that Arctic summer weather was uniquely
   suitable for ballooning. The midnight sun would enable observations
   round the clock, halving the voyage time required, and do away with all
   need for anchoring at night, which might otherwise be a dangerous
   business. Neither would the balloon's buoyancy be adversely affected by
   the cold of night. The drag-rope steering technique was particularly
   well adapted for a region where the ground, consisting of ice, was "low
   in friction and free of vegetation". The minimal precipitation in the
   area posed no threat of weighing down the balloon; if, against
   expectation, some rain or snow did fall on the balloon, Andrée argued,
   "precipitation at above-zero temperatures will melt, and precipitation
   at below-zero temperatures will blow off, for the balloon will be
   travelling more slowly than the wind." The audience was convinced by
   these arguments, so disconnected from the realities of the Arctic
   summer storms, fogs, high humidity, and ever-present threat of ice
   formation. The academy approved Andrée's expense calculation of
   130,800  kronor in all, corresponding in today's money to just under a
   million U.S. dollars, of which the single largest sum, 36,000 kronor,
   was for the balloon itself. With this endorsement there was a rush to
   support his project, headed by King Oscar II, who personally
   contributed 30,000 kronor, and Alfred Nobel, the dynamite magnate and
   founder of the Nobel Prize.

   There was also considerable international interest, and the European
   and American newspaper-reading publics were curious about a project
   that seemed as modern and scientific as the books of contemporary
   author Jules Verne. The press fanned the interest with a wide range of
   predictions, from certain death for the explorers to a safe and
   comfortable "guidance" of the balloon (upgraded by the reporter to an
   "airship") to the North Pole in a manner planned by Parisian experts
   and Swedish scientists.
   Andrée's polar balloon was made in Henri Lachambre's balloon workshop
   in Paris.
   Enlarge
   Andrée's polar balloon was made in Henri Lachambre's balloon workshop
   in Paris.

   "In these days, the construction and guidance of airships have been
   improved greatly", wrote The Providence Journal, "and it is supposed,
   both by the Parisian experts and by the Swedish scientists who have
   been assisting M. Andree, that the question of a sustained flight in
   this case will be very satisfactorily answered by the character of the
   balloon, by its careful guidance and, providing it gets into a Polar
   current of air, by the elements themselves." Faith in the experts and
   in science was common in the popular press, but with international
   attention came also for the first time informed criticism. Andrée being
   Sweden's first balloonist, nobody at home had the requisite knowledge
   to second-guess him about buoyancy or drag ropes; but in Germany and
   France there were long ballooning traditions and many far more
   experienced balloonists than Andrée, several of whom expressed
   scepticism of his methods and inventions. However, just as with the
   Svea mishaps, all objections failed to dampen Andrée's optimism.
   Eagerly followed by national and international media, he began
   negotiations with the well-known aeronaut and balloon builder Henri
   Lachambre in Paris, world capital of ballooning, and ordered a
   varnished three-layer silk balloon, 20.5  meters (67  ft) in diameter,
   from his workshop. The balloon, originally called Le Pôle Nord (French
   for "The North Pole"), was to be renamed Örnen ( Swedish for "The
   Eagle").

The 1896 fiasco

   The projected 1896 balloon crew, from left to right Nils Gustaf Ekholm,
   Nils Strindberg, S. A. Andrée.
   Enlarge
   The projected 1896 balloon crew, from left to right Nils Gustaf Ekholm,
   Nils Strindberg, S. A. Andrée.

   For his 1896 attempt to launch the balloon, Andrée had many eager
   volunteers to choose from. He picked an experienced Arctic
   meteorological researcher, Nils Gustaf Ekholm (1848–1923), formerly his
   boss during an 1882–83 geophysical expedition to Spitsbergen, and Nils
   Strindberg (1872–97), a brilliant student who was doing original
   research in physics and chemistry. The main scientific purpose of the
   expedition was to map the area by means of aerial photography, and
   Strindberg was both a devoted amateur photographer and a skilled
   constructor of advanced cameras. This was a team with many useful
   scientific and technical skills, but lacking any particular physical
   prowess or training for survival under extreme conditions. All three
   were indoor types, and only one of them, Strindberg, was young. Andrée
   expected a sedentary voyage in a balloon basket, and strength and
   survival skills were far down on his list.

   Modern writers all agree that Andrée's North Pole scheme was
   unrealistic. He relied on the winds blowing more or less in the
   direction he wanted to go, on being able to fine-tune his direction
   with the drag ropes, on the balloon being sealed tight enough to stay
   airborne for 30 days, and on no ice or snow sticking to the balloon to
   weigh it down. In the attempt of 1896, the wind immediately refuted his
   optimism by blowing steadily from the north, straight at the balloon
   hangar at Danskøya, until the expedition had to pack up, let the
   hydrogen out of the balloon, and go home. It is now known that
   northerly winds are to be expected at Danskøya; but in the late 19th
   century, information on Arctic airflow and precipitation existed only
   as contested academic hypotheses. Even Ekholm, an Arctic climate
   researcher, had no objection to Andrée's theory of where the wind was
   likely to take them. The observational data simply did not exist.

   On the other hand, Ekholm was critical of the balloon's ability to
   retain hydrogen, from his own measurements. Ekholm's buoyancy checks in
   the summer of 1896, during the process of producing the hydrogen and
   pumping it into the balloon, convinced him that the balloon leaked too
   much ever to reach the Pole, let alone go on to Russia or Canada. The
   worst leakage came from the approximately eight million tiny stitching
   holes along the seams, which no amount of glued-on strips of silk or
   applications of special secret-formula varnish seemed to seal. The
   balloon was losing 68  kilograms (150  lb) of lift force a day, and,
   taking into account its heavy load, Ekholm estimated that it would be
   able to stay airborne for 17 days at most, not 30. When it was time to
   go home, he warned Andrée that he himself would not be on board for the
   next attempt, scheduled for summer 1897, unless a stronger,
   better-sealed balloon was bought.

   Andrée resisted Ekholm's criticisms to the point of deception. On the
   boat back from Svalbard, Ekholm learned from the chief engineer of the
   hydrogen plant the explanation of some anomalies he had noticed in his
   measurements: Andrée had from time to time secretly ordered extra
   topping-up of the hydrogen in the balloon. Andrée's motives for such
   self-destructive behaviour are not known. Several modern writers,
   following Sundman's Andrée portrait in the semidocumentary novel The
   Flight of the Eagle (1967), have speculated that Andrée had by this
   time become the prisoner of his own successful funding campaign.
   The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet illustrates the three explorers'
   festive send-off from Stockholm in the spring of 1896.
   Enlarge
   The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet illustrates the three explorers'
   festive send-off from Stockholm in the spring of 1896.

   The sponsors and the media followed every delay and reported on every
   setback, and were clamoring for results. Andrée, Strindberg, and Ekholm
   had been seen off by cheering crowds in Stockholm and Gothenburg (see
   image from Aftonbladet, right), and now all the expectations were
   coming to nothing with the long wait for southerly winds at Danskøya.
   Especially pointed was the contrast between Nansen's simultaneous
   return, covered in polar glory from his daring yet well-planned
   expedition on the ship Fram, and Andrée's failure even to launch his
   own much-hyped conveyance. Andrée, theorizes Sundman, could not at this
   point face letting the press relay the message that besides not knowing
   which way the wind would blow he had also miscalculated in ordering the
   balloon, and would like another one.
   Knut Frænkel (1870–97).
   Enlarge
   Knut Frænkel (1870–97).

   After the 1896 launch was called off, enthusiasm for joining the
   expedition for a second attempt in 1897 did not run quite so high.
   There were still candidates, however, and Andrée picked out the
   27-year-old engineer Knut Frænkel to replace Ekholm. Frænkel was a
   civil engineer from the north of Sweden, an athlete and fond of long
   mountain hikes. He was enrolled specifically to take over Ekholm's
   meteorological observations, and, without any of Ekholm's theoretical
   and scientific knowledge, nevertheless handled this task efficiently.
   His meteorological journal has allowed the movements of the three men
   during their last few months to be reconstructed with considerable
   exactness.

The 1897 disaster

Launch, flight, and landing

   The Eagle with its sandbags.
   Enlarge
   The Eagle with its sandbags.
   The explorers minutes before takeoff on July 11, 1897.
   Enlarge
   The explorers minutes before takeoff on July 11, 1897.
   The Eagle sailing north, photographed from the steamer Virgo.
   Enlarge
   The Eagle sailing north, photographed from the steamer Virgo.

   Returning to Danskøya in the summer of 1897, the expedition found that
   the balloon hangar built the year before had weathered the winter
   storms well. The winds were more favorable, too, and Andrée's
   leadership more absolute, now that the critical Ekholm, an authority in
   his field and older than Andrée, had been replaced by the 27-year-old
   enthusiast Knut Frænkel. On July 11, in a steady wind from the
   south-west, the top of the plank hangar was dismantled, the three
   explorers climbed into the already heavy basket, and Andrée dictated
   one last-minute telegram to King Oscar and another to the paper
   Aftonbladet, holder of press rights to the expedition. The large
   support team cut away the last ropes holding the balloon and it rose
   slowly. Moving out over the water at low height, it was pulled so far
   down by the friction of the several-hundred-meter-long drag ropes
   against the ground as to dip the basket into the water. The friction
   also twisted the ropes round, detaching them from their screw holds.
   These holds were a new safety feature that Andrée had reluctantly been
   persuaded to add, whereby ropes that got caught on the ground could be
   more easily dropped. Now most of them unscrewed at once and
   530 kilograms (1170 lb) of rope were lost, while the three explorers
   could simultaneously be seen to dump 210 kilograms of sand overboard to
   get the basket clear of the water. 740 kilograms (1630 lb) of essential
   weight was thus lost in the first few minutes. Before it was well clear
   of the launch site, the Eagle had turned from a supposedly steerable
   craft into an ordinary hydrogen balloon with a few ropes hanging from
   it, at the mercy of the wind, with no ability to aim at any particular
   goal and too little ballast. Lightened, it rose to 700 meters
   (2300 ft), a quite unforeseen height in any of the calculations made,
   where the lower air pressure made the hydrogen escape all the faster
   through the eight million little holes.

   The balloon had two means of communication with the outside world,
   buoys and homing pigeons. The buoys, steel cylinders encased in cork,
   were intended to be dropped from the balloon into the water or onto the
   ice, to be carried to civilization by the currents. Only two buoy
   messages have ever been found. One was dispatched by Andrée on July 11,
   a few hours after takeoff, and reads "Our journey goes well so far. We
   sail at an altitude of about 250 m, at first N 10° east, but later N
   45° east. […] Weather delightful. Spirits high." The second had been
   dropped an hour later and gave the height as 600 meters. Aftonbladet
   had supplied the pigeons, bred in northern Norway with the optimistic
   hope that they would manage to return there, and their message
   cylinders contained pre-printed instructions in Norwegian asking the
   finder to pass the messages on to the newspaper's address in Stockholm.
   Andrée released at least four pigeons, but only one was ever retrieved,
   by a Norwegian steamer where the pigeon had alighted and been promptly
   shot. Its message is dated July 13 and gives the travel direction at
   that point as East by 10° South, adding "All well on board". Lundström
   and others note that all three messages fail to mention the accident at
   takeoff, or the increasingly desperate situation, which was being
   detailed in Andrée's main diary: the balloon was out of equilibrium,
   sailing much too high and thereby losing hydrogen at a faster rate than
   even Nils Ekholm had feared, then repeatedly threatening to crash on
   the ice. It was weighed down by being rain-soaked ("dripping wet"
   writes Andrée in the diary), and all the sand and some of the payload
   were being thrown overboard to keep it airborne.

   Free flight lasted for 10 hours and 29 minutes and was followed by
   another 41 hours of bumpy ride with frequent ground contact before the
   inevitable final crash. The Eagle thus traveled for 2 days and 3½ hours
   altogether, during which time according to Andrée nobody on board got
   any sleep. The definitive landing appears to have been gentle.
   Everybody was unhurt, including the homing pigeons in their wicker
   cages, and all the equipment was undamaged, even the delicate optical
   instruments and Strindberg's two cameras.

On foot on the ice

   Map of the path followed by the 1897 expedition, north by balloon from
   Danskøya, and south on foot to Kvitøya. Click on map to enlarge it.
   Enlarge
   Map of the path followed by the 1897 expedition, north by balloon from
   Danskøya, and south on foot to Kvitøya. Click on map to enlarge it.
   Frænkel (left) and Strindberg with the first polar bear the explorers
   shot.
   Enlarge
   Frænkel (left) and Strindberg with the first polar bear the explorers
   shot.

   From the moment they were grounded, Strindberg's highly specialized
   cartographic camera, which had been brought to map the region from the
   air, became instead a means of recording daily life in the icescape and
   the constant danger and drudgery of the trek. Strindberg took about 200
   photos with his seven-kilogram (15 lb) camera over the course of the
   three months they spent on the pack ice, one of the most famous being
   his picture of Andrée and Frænkel contemplating the fallen Eagle (see
   image above). Andrée and Frænkel also kept meticulous records of their
   experiences and geographical positions, Andrée in his "main diary",
   Frænkel in his meteorological journal. Strindberg's own stenographic
   diary was much more personal in content, and included his own general
   reflections on the expedition, as well as several messages to his
   fiancée Anna.

   The Eagle had been stocked with safety equipment such as guns,
   snowshoes, sleds, skis, a tent, a small boat (in the form of a bundle
   of bent sticks, to be assembled and covered with balloon silk), most of
   it stored not in the basket but in the storage space arranged above the
   balloon ring. It had not been put together with great care, nor with
   any thought of the indigenous peoples' techniques for adapting to the
   extreme environment. In this, Andrée contrasted not only with later but
   also with many earlier explorers. Sven Lundström points to the
   agonizing extra efforts that became necessary simply because the sleds
   Andrée had designed, of a rigid construction which owed nothing to
   Inuit sleds, were so impractical for the difficult terrain — "dreadful
   terrain", Andrée calls it — with its channels separating the ice floes,
   high ridges, and partially iced-over melt ponds. Their clothes did not
   include furs but consisted of woollen coats and trousers plus oilskins.
   The oilskins were worn, but the explorers still seemed to be always
   damp or wet from the half-frozen pools of water on the ice and the
   typically foggy, humid Arctic summer air, and always preoccupied with
   drying their clothes, mainly by wearing them. Danger was everywhere, as
   it would have meant certain death to lose the provisions lashed to one
   of the inconvenient sleds into one of the many channels that had to be
   laboriously crossed.

   Before starting the march over the dreadful terrain, the three men
   spent a week in a tent at the crash site, packing up and making
   decisions about what and how much to bring and where to go. The far-off
   North Pole was not mentioned as an option; the choice lay between two
   depots of food and ammunition laid down for their safety, one at Cape
   Flora in Franz Josef Land and one at Seven Islands in Svalbard (see
   map). Thinking the distances to each about equal, from the faulty maps
   of the day, they decided to try for the bigger depot at Cape Flora.
   Strindberg took more pictures during this week than he would at any
   later point, including 12 frames that make up a 360-degree panorama of
   the crash site.
   Strindberg on snowshoes with heavily-laden, impractical sled.
   Enlarge
   Strindberg on snowshoes with heavily-laden, impractical sled.

   The balloon had carried a lot of food, of a kind more adapted for a
   balloon voyage than for travels on foot. Andrée had reasoned that they
   might as well throw excess food overboard as sand, if losing weight was
   necessary; and if it was not, the food would serve if wintering in the
   Arctic desert did after all become an issue. There was therefore less
   ballast and large amounts of heavy-type provisions, 767 kg (1690 lb)
   altogether, including 200  liters of water and some crates of
   champagne, port, beer, etc., donated by sponsors and/or manufacturers.
   There was also lemon juice, though not as much of this precaution
   against scurvy as other polar explorers usually thought necessary. Much
   of the food was in the form of cans of pemmican, meat, sausages,
   cheese, and condensed milk. Some of it had in fact been thrown
   overboard. The three men took most of the rest with them on leaving the
   crash site, along with other necessities such as guns, tent,
   ammunition, and cooking utensils, making a load on each sled of more
   than 200 kg (440 lb). This was not realistic, as it broke the sleds and
   wore out the men, and after one week a big pile of food and
   non-essential equipment was left behind, bringing the loads down to
   130 kg per sled. It became then more necessary than ever to hunt for
   food. Seals, walruses, and especially polar bears were shot and eaten
   throughout the march.
   Crossing a channel with the balloon-silk boat.
   Enlarge
   Crossing a channel with the balloon-silk boat.

   Starting out for Franz Josef Land to the south-east on July 22, they
   soon found that their struggle across the ice with its two-story-high
   ridges was hardly bringing the goal any nearer: the drift of the ice
   was in the opposite direction, moving them backwards. On August 4 they
   decided, after a long discussion, to aim for Seven Islands in the
   southwest instead, hoping to reach the depot there after a six- to
   seven-week march, with the help of the current. The terrain in that
   direction was mostly extremely difficult, sometimes necessitating a
   crawl on all fours, but there was occasional relief in the form of open
   water — the little boat (not designed by Andrée) was apparently a
   functional and safe conveyance — and smooth, flat ice floes.
   "Paradise!" wrote Andrée. "Large even ice floes with pools of sweet
   drinking water and here and there a tender-fleshed young polar bear!"
   They made fair apparent headway, but the wind turned almost as soon as
   they did and they were again being moved backwards, away from Seven
   Islands. The wind varied between southwest and northwest over the
   coming weeks, which they tried in vain to overcome by turning their own
   course more and more westward, but it was becoming clear that Seven
   Islands was out of their reach.

   On September 12, the explorers resigned themselves to wintering on the
   ice and camped on a large floe, letting the ice take them where it
   would, "which", writes Kjellström, "it had really been doing all along"
   (p. 47). Drifting rapidly due south towards Kvitøya, they hurriedly
   built a winter "home" on the floe against the increasing cold, with
   walls made of water-reinforced snow to Strindberg's design (see plan,
   below, left). Observing the rapidity of their drift, Andrée recorded
   his hopes that they might get far enough south to feed themselves
   entirely from the sea. However, the floe began to break up directly
   under the hut on October 2 from the stresses of pressing against
   Kvitøya, and they were forced to bring their stores on to the island
   itself, which took a couple of days. "Morale remains good", reports
   Andrée at the very end of the coherent part of his diary, which ends
   with the sentence: "With such comrades as these, one ought to be able
   to manage under practically any circumstances whatsoever." It is
   believed, on the basis of the incoherent and badly damaged last pages
   of Andrée's diary, that the three men were all dead within a few days
   of moving onto the island.

Speculation and recovery

   Creating the heritage: schoolchildren at a 1930 exhibition of the
   Kvitøya finds at Liljevalchs konsthall, Stockholm.
   Enlarge
   Creating the heritage: schoolchildren at a 1930 exhibition of the
   Kvitøya finds at Liljevalchs konsthall, Stockholm.

   For the next 33 years, the fate of the expedition was shrouded in
   mystery and its disappearance part of cultural lore in Sweden and to a
   certain extent elsewhere. It was actively sought for a couple of years
   and remained the subject of myth and rumor, with frequent international
   newspaper reports of possible findings. An extensive archive of
   American newspaper reports from the first few years, 1896–99, entitled
   "The Mystery of Andree", shows a much richer media interest in the
   expedition after it disappeared than before, and a great variety of
   suggested fates for it, inspired by finds, or reported finds, of
   remnants of what might be a balloon basket, or great amounts of balloon
   silk, or by stories of men falling from the sky, or visions by
   psychics, all of which would typically locate the stranded balloon far
   from Danskøya and Svalbard. Lundström points out (p. 134) that some of
   the international and national reports take on the features of urban
   legends and reflect a prevailing disrespect for the indigenous peoples
   of the Arctic, who frequently appear in the newspapers as
   uncomprehending savages and kill the three men or show a deadly
   indifference to their plight. These speculations were refuted in 1930,
   upon the discovery of the expedition's final resting place on Kvitøya
   by the crews of two ships, the Bratvaag and the Isbjørn.

   The Bratvaag, a Norwegian sealing vessel from Ålesund, was hunting in
   the vicinity of Kvitøya on August 5, 1930. Additionally, it was
   carrying a scientific expedition, led by Dr. Gunnar Horn, with the
   purpose of studying the glaciers and seas of the Svalbard archipelago.
   Kvitøya was usually inaccessible to the sealing or whaling ships of the
   time, as it is typically surrounded by a wide belt of thick polar ice
   and often hidden by thick ice fogs. However, summer in 1930 had been
   particularly warm, and the surrounding sea was practically free of ice.
   As Kvitøya was known to be a prime hunting ground for walrus and the
   fogs over the island on that day were comparatively thin, some of the
   crew of the Bratvaag took this rare opportunity to land on what they
   called the "inaccessible island". Two of the sealers in search of
   water, Olav Salen and Karl Tusvick, discovered Andrée's boat near a
   small stream, frozen under a mound of snow and full of equipment,
   including a boathook engraved with the words "Andrée's Polar
   Expedition, 1896". Being presented with this hook, the Bratvaag's
   captain, Peder Eliassen, had the crew search the site together with the
   expedition members. Among other finds, a journal and two skeletons were
   uncovered, identified as Andrée's and Strindberg's remains by monograms
   found on their clothing.

   The Bratvaag left the island to continue its scheduled hunting and
   observations, with the intent of coming back later to see if the ice
   had melted further and uncovered more items. In the meantime, they
   notified the press and the Norwegian authorities by means of another
   seal hunting ship. When the Bratvaag returned on August 26, it was
   unable to approach the island due to rough seas. Further discoveries
   were made by the M/K Isbjørn of Tromsø, Norway, a sealing sloop
   chartered by news reporters to waylay the Bratvaag. Unsuccessful in
   this, the reporters and the Isbjørn crew made instead for Kvitøya
   themselves. They landed on the island on September 5 in fine weather,
   finding even less ice than the Bratvaag on the site. After
   photographing the area, they searched for and found the third body,
   that of Frænkel, and further artifacts, including a tin box containing
   Strindberg's photographic film and Strindberg's logbook and maps.

   The crews of both the Bratvaag and the Isbjørn turned over their finds
   to a scientific commission of the Swedish and Norwegian governments in
   Tromsø on September 2 and 16, respectively. The bodies of the three
   explorers were transported to Stockholm, arriving on October 5.

Cause of deaths

   Strindberg's plan for their winter home on the ice floe, used only for
   a few days before the ice broke up under it. It contained, shown from
   top to bottom, a bedroom with their triple sleeping bag, a room with a
   table, and a storeroom.
   Enlarge
   Strindberg's plan for their winter home on the ice floe, used only for
   a few days before the ice broke up under it. It contained, shown from
   top to bottom, a bedroom with their triple sleeping bag, a room with a
   table, and a storeroom.

   The bodies of the three dead men were cremated without further
   examination upon being returned to Sweden in 1930. The question of
   what, exactly, killed them has attracted both interest and controversy
   among scholars, and several medical practitioners and amateur
   historians have read the extensive diaries with a detective's eye,
   looking for clues in the diet, for telltale complaints of symptoms, and
   for suggestive details at the death site. The main factors extracted
   are these: they mostly ate scanty amounts of canned and dry goods from
   the balloon stores, plus huge portions of half-cooked meat of polar
   bears and occasionally seals; they suffered often from foot pains and
   diarrhea, and were always tired, cold, and wet; and, when they moved on
   to Kvitøya from the ice, they left much of their valuable equipment and
   stores outside the tent, and even down by the water's edge, as if they
   were too exhausted, indifferent, or ill to carry it further.
   Strindberg, the youngest, had died first and been "buried" (wedged into
   a cliff aperture) by the others.

   The best-known and most widely credited suggestion was made by Ernst
   Tryde, a medical practitioner, in his book De döda på Vitön ("The Dead
   on Kvitøya") in 1952: that the men succumbed to trichinosis that they
   got from eating undercooked polar bear meat. Larvae of Trichinella
   spiralis were found in parts of a polar bear carcass at the site.
   Lundström and Sundman both favour this explanation, while critics point
   out that the diarrhea which is Tryde's main symptomatic evidence hardly
   needs an explanation beyond the general poor diet and physical misery,
   whereas some more specific symptoms of trichinosis are missing. Also,
   Fridtjof Nansen and his companion Hjalmar Johansen had lived largely on
   polar bear meat in exactly the same area for 15 months without any ill
   effects. Other suggestions include vitamin A poisoning from eating
   polar bear liver (however, the diary shows Andrée to have been aware of
   this danger), carbon monoxide poisoning (this theory has found few
   adherents as their primus stove was turned off when found, with
   kerosene still in the tank), lead poisoning from the cans in which
   their food was stored, scurvy, botulism, suicide (they had plenty of
   opium), polar bear attack, cold and exposure as the Arctic winter
   closed in, and dehydration in combination with general exhaustion,
   apathy, and disappointment. The last explanation is favored by
   Kjellström, who comments that Tryde never takes the nature of their
   daily life into account, and especially the crowning blow of the ice
   breaking up under their promisingly mobile home, with the enforced move
   onto a glacier island. "Posterity has expressed surprise that they died
   on Kvitøya, surrounded by food," writes Kjellström (p. 54). "The
   surprise is rather that they found the strength to live so long".

Legacy

   The remains of the three explorers are brought straight from the ship
   through the center of Stockholm on October 5, 1930, beginning "one of
   the most solemn and grandiose manifestations of national mourning that
   has ever occurred in Sweden" (Sverker Sörlin).
   Enlarge
   The remains of the three explorers are brought straight from the ship
   through the centre of Stockholm on October 5, 1930, beginning "one of
   the most solemn and grandiose manifestations of national mourning that
   has ever occurred in Sweden" (Sverker Sörlin).

   In 1897, Andrée's daring or foolhardy undertaking nourished Swedish
   patriotic pride and Swedish dreams of taking the scientific lead in the
   Arctic. The title of " Engineer" — "Ingenjör Andrée" — was generally
   and reverentially used in speaking of him, and expressed high esteem
   for the late 19th-century ideal of the engineer as a representative of
   social improvement through technological progress. The three explorers
   were fêted when they departed and mourned by the nation when they
   disappeared. When they were found, they were celebrated for the heroism
   of their doomed two-month struggle to reach populated areas and were
   seen as having selflessly perished for the ideals of science and
   progress. The home-bringing of their mortal remains to Stockholm on
   October 5, 1930, writes Swedish historian of ideas Sverker Sörlin,
   "must be one of the most solemn and grandiose manifestations of
   national mourning that has ever occurred in Sweden. One of the rare
   comparable events is the national mourning that followed the Estonia
   disaster in the Baltic Sea in September 1994" (p. 100).

   More recently, Andrée's heroic motives have been questioned, beginning
   with Per Olof Sundman's bestselling semi-documentary novel of 1967, The
   Flight of the Eagle, where Andrée is portrayed as the victim of the
   demands of the media and the Swedish scientific and political
   establishment, and as ultimately motivated by fear rather than courage.
   Sundman's interpretation of the personalities involved, the blind spots
   of the Swedish national culture, and the role of the press carries over
   into the Oscar-nominated film by Jan Troell, Flight of the Eagle
   (1982), which is based on Sundman's novel.

   Appreciation of Nils Strindberg's role seems to be growing, both for
   the fortitude with which the untrained and unprepared student kept
   photographing at all in what must have been a more or less permanent
   state of near-collapse from exhaustion and exposure, and for the
   artistic quality of the result. Out of the 240 exposed frames that were
   found on Kvitøya in waterlogged containers, 93 were saved by John
   Hertzberg at Strindberg's own workplace, the Royal Institute of
   Technology in Stockholm. In his article "Recovering the visual history
   of the Andrée expedition" (2004), Tyrone Martinsson has lamented the
   traditional focus by previous researchers on the written records — the
   diaries — as primary sources of information, and made a renewed claim
   for the historical significance of the photographs.

   In 1983, American composer Dominick Argento created a song cycle for
   baritone and piano entitled "The Andrée Expedition". This cycle sets to
   music texts from the diaries and letters.
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   ition_of_1897"
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