Abstract
On the last day of July 1878, Danish naval officer and Arctic explorer Jens Arnold Diderich Jensen cast his eyes on a jagged mountain rising improbably out of Greenland’s ice sheet, its gray shape encircled by a dazzling frozen sea of white.1 Jensen and his three companions had reached the foot of the nunatak a week earlier, utterly exhausted after a grueling 60-kilometer trek from southern Greenland’s Frederikshaab Glacier. For 11 days, the party negotiated minefields of crevasses, deep azure chasms plunging down into the ice and into darkness, barely able to see through eyes wet and stinging from snow blindness. Their reward—a view into Greenland’s sweeping interior—was delayed seven long days by gale force winds that whipped across the island, bringing mounds of fresh snow and confining the four men to their cramped tent. “The next morning, the weather was thankfully clear and I rose at once to the cairn, where I had an excellent view over the country,” wrote Jensen: “to the east rose the immense flat extent of the ice sheet, as far as the eye could see, always higher and higher, until it merged with the sky … [To the west] a row of large dark mountain tops loomed sternly, inhibiting the progression of the ice.”2
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Notes
Jens Arnold Diderich Jensen, J.A.D. Jensens Indberetning om den af Ham Ledede Expedition i 1878 (Copenhagen: Meddelelser om Grønland, 1890), 64–65.
Laurence P. Kirwan, A History of Polar Exploration (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1960), 191.
Hinrich Rink, “The Recent Danish Explorations in Greenland and Their Significance as to Arctic Science in General,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 22, no. 120 (1885): 280.
Fridtjof Nansen, “Journey Across the Inland Ice of Greenland from East to West,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographic Society and Monthly Record of Geography 11, no. 8 (1889): 469.
See, for example, Hugh J. Lee, “Peary’s Transections of North Greenland, 1892–1895,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 82 (1940): 922.
Robert E. Peary, “Journeys in North Greenland,” The Geographical Journal 11, no. 3 (1898): 214.
Elisha Kent Kane, Arctic Explorations (Philadelphia, PA: Childs & Peterson, 1856).
Paul-Emile Victor et al., Groënland: 1948–1949 (Paris: Arthaud, 1951), 28.
Paars’s account appears in Louis Bobe, Diplomatarium Groenlandicum 1492–1814 (Copenhagen: Meddelelser om Grønland, 1936), 186–89.
Quoted in Fridtjof Nansen, “Journey on the Inland Ice,” Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York 23 (1891): 174.
Quoted in Rud Kjems, Horisonter af Is: Erobringen af den Grønlandske Indlandsis (Copenhagen: GEC Gads Forlag, 1981), 22–25.
Robert Brown, “Obituary: Dr Hendrik Rink [sic],” The Geographical Journal 3 (1894): 65.
For example, Hinrich Rink, “Om Isens Udbredning og Bevægelse over Nordgrønlands Fastland Samt om Isfjældenes Oprindelse,” Tidsskrift for Populære Fremstillinger af Naturvidenskaben (1853).
For a more complete list, see Gunnar Jensen, “One Hundred Years of Crossings of Greenland’s Inland Ice,” American Alpine Journal 32 (1990).
A detailed look at early explorations of the ice sheet appears in Kjems, Horisonter af Is: Erobringen af den Grønlandske Indlandsis ; Børge Fristrup, The Greenland Ice Cap , trans. David Stoner (Copenhagen: Rhodos, 1966).
Nansen, “Journey Across the Inland Ice of Greenland from East to West,” 470. The crossing is described in Roland Huntford, Nansen: The Explorer as Hero (Trowbridge, UK: Duckworth, 1999)
Fridtjof Nansen, Paa Ski over Grønland . En Skildring af den Norske Grønlands-Ekspedition 1888–89 (Kristiania: Aschehoug, 1890).
Alfred Wegener and Johan Peter Koch, Durch die Weiße Wüste; Die Dänische Forschungsreise Quer Durch Nordgrönland 1912–1913 (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1919)
Johan Peter Koch and Alfred Wegener, Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Dänischen Expedition nach Dronning Louises-Land und Quer Über das Inlandeis von Nordgrönland 1912–1913 (Copenhagen: Meddelelser om Grønland, 1930).
For Greenland’s pre- and early population history, see, for example, Bjarne Grønnow and John Pind, eds., The Paleo-Eskimo Cultures of Greenland: New Perspectives in Greenlandic Archaeology (Copenhagen: Danish Polar Center, 1996)
Hans Christian Gulløv, ed. Grønlands Forhistorie (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2005)
Kirsten A. Seaver, The Frozen Echo: Greenland and the Exploration of North America, ca. A.D. 1000–1500 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996).
For the early cartography of Greenland, see William H. Hobbs, “Zeno and the Cartography of Greenland,” Imago Mundi 6 (1949).
Kirsten A. Seaver, “Review of Narrating the Arctic: A Cultural History of Nordic Scientific Practices,” Arctic 56 (2003): 306.
Nancy Fogelson, “Greenland: Strategic Base on a Northern Defense Line,” Journal of Military History 53, no. 1 (1989), John Edwards Caswell, Arctic Frontiers: United States Explorations in the Far North (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956)
Michael F. Robinson, The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
Paolo Coletta, ed. United States Navy and Marine Corps Bases Overseas (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), 132. For Greenland during and after World War II, see Clive Archer, “The United States Defense Areas in Greenland,” Cooperation and Conflict 23 (1988)
Warren F. Kimball, The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991)
Niels Amstrup, “Grønland i det AmerikanskDanske Forhold, 1945–1948,” in Studier i Dansk Udenrigspolitik: Tilegnet Erling Bjøl, ed. Niels Amstrup and Ib Faurby (Aarhus: Politica, 1978)
Bo Lidegaard, I Kongens Navn: Henrik Kauffman i Dansk Diplomati, 1919–1958 (Copenhagen: Samleren, 1996); “DUPI Vol. 1, Grønland Under den Kolde Krig: Dansk og Amerikansk Sikkerhedspolitik, 1945–68” (Copenhagen: Dansk Udenrigspolitisk Institut, 1997)
Nikolaj Petersen, “Negotiating the 1951 Greenland Defense Agreement: Theoretical and Empirical Analyses,” Scandinavian Political Studies 21 (1998)
Nikolaj Petersen, “SAC at Thule: Greenland in the US Polar Strategy,” Journal of Cold War Studies 13 (2011)
Poul Villaume, Allieret Med Forbehold: Danmark, NATO og den Kolde Krig, Et Studie i Dansk Sikkerhedspolitik, 1949–1961 (Copenhagen: Eirene, 1995)
Jørgen Taagholt and Jens Claus Hansen, Den Nye Sikkerhed: Grønland i et Sikkerhedspolitisk Perspektiv (Denmark: Atlantsammenslutningen, 1999)
Poul Villaume and Thorsten Borring Olesen, I Blokopdelingens Tegn, 1945–1972 (Copenhagen: Gyldendaal, 2005).
Balchen’s story is told in his fast-paced memoirs: Bernt Balchen, Corey Ford, and Oliver LaFarge, War Below Zero: The Battle for Greenland (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1944).
For analysis, see Eric S. Einhorn, National Security and Domestic Politics in Post-War Denmark: Some Principal Issues, 1945–1961 (Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press, 1975)
Erik Reske-Nielsen and Erik Kragh, Atlantpagten og Danmark 1949–1972 (Copenhagen: Atlantsammenslutningen, 1972).
Frederic S. Ross and Paul E. Ancker, “Thule Air Base,” Tidsskriftet Grønland 9–10 (1977): 270.
David Thomas Murphy, German Exploration of the Polar World: A History, 1870–1940 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 107.
This section on Germany and the polar sphere draws on Murphy’s book. Also see Cornelia Lüdecke, “Approaching the Southern Hemisphere: The German Pathway in the 19th Century,” in Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years, ed. Roger D. Launius, James Rodger Fleming, and David H. DeVorkin (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
Hans W. Ahlmann, “Review of Scientific Results of the German Alfred Wegener Greenland Expedition 1929 and 1930–31,” Geografiska Annaler 23 (1941): 134.
Georg C. Amdrup, Danmark-Ekspeditionen til Grønlands Nordøstkyst 1906–1908 Under Ledelse af L. Mylius-Erichsen (Copenhagen: Meddelelser om Grønland, 1913). This tragedy was due in part to inaccuracies in Robert E. Peary’s survey of northern Greenland, which showed a channel cutting off Greenland’s northeastern corner (known as Peary’s Channel) where none existed. At the time of the Danmark Expedition, Peary’s Channel was shown on the standard map of Greenland published in Denmark. See “The Non-Existence of Peary Channel,” Geographical Review 1, no. 6 (1916).
Alfred Wegener, Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (Braunschweig: F. Vieweg, 1915).
See, for example, Knud Rasmussen, “Professor Alfred Wegener in Memoriam,” Geografisk Tidsskrift 34, no. 2 (1931).
Johannes Georgi, Mid-Ice: The Story of the Wegener Exhibition to Greenland, trans. F.H. Lyon (New York: EP Dutton & Co, 1935), 19; Rasmussen, “Professor Alfred Wegener in Memoriam.”
Quoted in Jutta Voss, “Alfred Wegeners Weg als Polarforscher,” in 125 Jahre Deutsche Polarforschung, ed. Alfred Wegener Institut (Bremerhaven: Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung, 1994), 88.
Ernst Sorge, “Winter at Eismitte,” in Greenland Journey, The Story of Wegener’s German Expedition to Greenland in 1930 to 1931 as Told by Members of the Expedition and the Leader’s Diary, ed. Elsie Wegener and Fritz Loewe (London: Blackie & Sons, 1939), 180.
Fritz Loewe, “The End of the Last Autumn Sledge Journey,” in Greenland Journey, The Story of Wegener’s German Expedition to Greenland in 1930 to 1931 as Told by Members of the Expedition and the Leader’s Diary, ed. Elsie Wegener and Fritz Loewe (London: Blackie & Sons, 1939), 177.
Christian Kehrt, “Eternal Ice in the Cold War: The Polar Regions in Spatial and Environmental Perspective, 1957–1991” (Paper presented at the Cold War Science, Colonial Politics and National Identity in the Arctic Workshop, Aarhus, December 2010)
Christian Kehrt, “Ponies, Dogs or Propeller Sledges? Alfred Wegener and the Limits of Modern Technology in Polar Exploration” (Paper presented at the SHOT Annual Meeting, Copenhagen, October 2012).
François E. Matthes, “The Glacial Anticyclone Theory Examined in the Light of Recent Meteorological Data from Greenland, Part I,” American Geophysical Union Transactions 27 (1946): 225.
Georgi’s meterological work at Eismitte also fed into the vibrant glacial anticyclone debate of the era; as well as Matthes see, for example, Johannes Georgi, “Greenland as a Switch for Cyclones,” Geographical Journal 81 (1933)
William H. Hobbs, “The Greenland Glacial Anticyclone,” Journal of Meteorology 2 (1945).
Henri Bader, “SIPRE Research Report 2, AD-014 366: Sorge’s Law of Densification of Snow on High Polar Glaciers” (US Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment, 1953), 322.
Henri Bader, “United States Polar Ice and Snow Studies in the International Geophysical Year,” in Geophysics and the IGY , ed. Hugh Odishaw and Stanley Ruttenberg (Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union, 1958), 178.
Bader later gave this law a math-ematical form and named it after Sorge. See Henri Bader, “Sorge’s Law of Densification of Snow on High Polar Glaciers,” Journal of Glaciology 2, no. 15 (1954).
Bernhard Brockamp, Ernst Sorge, and Kurt Wölcken, Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Deutschen Grönland-Expedition Alfred Wegener 1929 und 1930/1931, Band II: Seismik (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1933), 125ff; Sorge, “Scientific Results of the Wegener Expedition to Greenland,” 337ff.
Einar Storgaard, “Alfred Wegeners Grønlandsekspedition 1929–1931,” Geografisk Tidsskrift 35, no. 4 (1932): 211.
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© 2013 Janet Martin-Nielsen
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Martin-Nielsen, J. (2013). A Land Apart. In: Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137375988_2
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