Eating Dogs And Other Arctic Survival Tips

I've been reading a lot about Greenland lately in preparation for writing a novella set in Viking Greenland. One of the more interesting titles has been Those Greenland Days, by Martin Lindsay. It's about the 1930 British Arctic Air Route Expedition, written by one of the surveyors. Not exactly from the Viking era, but I've already read all the Viking sagas, so now I have to read more of the modern stuff.

I also have a personal connection to the expedition, and you may too. The explorers were studying the weather and terrain in preparation for a Transatlantic air route now used for flights between London and other northern European cities, and New York or Chicago.

But the expedition had a lot more to contend with than jetlag. They faced frigid temperatures, 100+mph winds, and remote wilderness with no chance of immediate help. They risked the real threat of being cut off and running out of food in the bleak interior of Greenland.

But they were prepared. They had a lot of dogs along to pull the sledges, but the animals served another purpose too. If the food ran out they could eat them. This had been the practice of the Inuit for centuries, and famous arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen had realized it was good insurance when he led the first expedition across Greenland in 1888. Apparantly dog tastes pretty good and is quite nutritious, and you can feed dog meat to other dogs if you still need a sledge team.

Animal rights are for people in comfortable climates. It's a bit hard to think about it, but it's our modern comforts and resources that shield us from some of the harder truths of survival.

Hopefully I won't have to eat any dogs to survive walking across England this August.

Flags Of The World

Hmmm, never seen this flag before? Well, that's because it's not for a country but a website. To feed Julián's continuing interest in flags, I found Flags of the World. It's the Internet's biggest site devoted to vexillology (the study of flags) and has images for more than 75,000 flags. They have all the countries, of course, as well as regions, cities, military flags, etc. This is Julián's favorite site at the moment, even knocking demolition derby clips on YouTube into second place. The interactive world map is the best way to navigate the site, and there's a section for blank flags to print out and color. Suddenly our refrigerator has become covered in flags! Below is the flag of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark that recently voted for more independence, but not full independence.

Below is the regional flag for the western province of Ilulissat Kommuniat, Jakobshavn. Glaciers and snowflakes. How appropriate!

And here is the flag for the big island just off its coast, Qeqertarsuup Kommuniat, Godhavn. Northern lights above a whale.

Hmmm...all these flags are on a white field, so they don't show up too well with a white background. They are all rectangles, as are most flags of the world with the exception of Nepal. Are there any other exceptions?

Fridtjof Nansen: Arctic Explorer

It's Biographer's Day today, commemorating the first meeting of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, who wrote the famous biography of Johnson. So here and on my other blog, Midlist Writer, I'm looking at a couple of great biographies I've recently read.

I'm researching a book on Arctic exploration and have been reading E.E. Reynolds' biography Nansen. Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930) was a Norwegian explorer who was the first to ski across Greenland. He also tried to be the first to make it to the North Pole. He noticed that much of the driftwood that washes up on Greenland's shores comes from Siberia, and theorized that it got caught in the ice, moved over the pole, and then thawed out and ended up on Greenland. He figured he could sail a ship up into the ice, let it get stuck, and the ice would carry him over the pole to Greenland.

Well, it didn't quite work out that way. The currents are a little more complicated than Nansen assumed and the ship started veering in the wrong direction. At that point he and a companion left the ship and headed off on dog sleds for the Pole. This was, remember, in the days before radio, airplanes, GPS, or even accurate maps of the polar region. While his shipmates drifted off and eventually extricated themselves from the ice during the spring thaw, Nansen and his companion set off over the ice. Their only hope of survival was to eventually make their way back to land. They would never be able to find their ship again.

Unfortunately, the ice was too rough for them to make it to the North Pole, and the had to sled back to land, but not before spending an entire winter in the polar wastes. Reynolds' book is full of interesting information about one of the great explorers of history. His writing style isn't too lively (he has a penchant for putting everything in the passive voice) but he seems to realize his limitations and lets Nansen, who was a good writer, do much of the narrative. Well worth a read. My edition is one of those old-style Penguin paperbacks, published in 1949 and purchased at the PBFA London Book Fair for a grand total of two pounds.