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.

Canadian Arctic Not What It Used To Be

In more depressing news about the state of the Arctic, a 4,500 year-old shelf of ice has broken off from Ellesmere Island. The BBC reported that a nineteen-square-mile section, about three times the size of Manhattan, is now floating around the ocean. It's getting bad on the other islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago too. What people often forget is that not only is this a scary symptom of global warming, but these ice shelves are actually very fragile ecozones that are now in serious danger of disappearing.

I've always been fascinated with Arctic exploration. When I was a kid I loved the stories of explorers such as Hudson and Barents navigating between ice floes and having run-ins with polar bears. I loved looking at maps of the Arctic and wondering about all those islands with the strange names--Ellesmere, Baffin, Devon. I wondered what it would be like to be trekking across their huge expanses of ice. Looks like I'll never know.

Kayaking to the North Pole

What's wrong with this title? Well, you shouldn't be able to kayak to the North Pole, because there's supposed to be a bunch of ice up there! Unfortunately, the polar cap has been shrinking so quickly that star swimmer Lewis Pugh has decided to attempt to kayak to the top of the world to bring awareness to the problem of global warming.

He's got a fascinating blog about his preparations and start of his expedition. I don't know how much he'll be posting from now on, because he just left Svalbard, headed north. Best of luck, Lewis!

Oh, and if you don't "believe" in global warming, get with the program. Its existence is the closest thing to consensus I've seen in the scientific community, expect for maybe evolution. While the rate of global warming and the extent of human culpability are both debatable, it should be common sense that pumping huge amounts of toxins into our air and water supply is a bad idea.

Volunteer Wanted To Retrace Shackleton Expedition

"Men wanted for hazardous duty. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success."

A hundred years ago, a team of men who answered this newspaper ad tried to make it to the South Pole. It was the famous Nimrod Expedition of 1908-9, led by Sir Ernest Shackleton. They made it to within 97 miles of the pole before having to turn back.

Now a new expedition will retrace their route exactly 100 years later, and they're looking for a volunteer. You don't need any previous experience as an explorer, but you do have to answer a battery of questions, beat the other candidates at an endurance test, and undergo ice training by crossing Baffin Island. The winner will get to join the expedition 97 miles north of the pole, just where the first expedition turned back. This time they plan to make it all the way.

Think you're up for it? You can apply here.

Oh, expect to endure temperatures of -35 degrees Celsius and have to haul a 100 lb sled over rough ice. You also need to be a resident of the UK, so sadly you won't have any competition from me.

Wise Words on the Value of Wilderness

Fridtjof Nansen was an accomplished Arctic explorer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, skiing across Greenland and trying to make it to the North Pole on an epic journey across the ice. On the value of the wilderness and travel, he said:

"The first great thing is to find yourself, and for that you need solitude and contemplation, at least sometimes. I tell you deliverance will not come from the rushing, noisy centers of civilization. It will come from the lonely places."

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress and is in the public domain.

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.