Salomon August Andrée
Encyclopedia
Gränna
Gränna is a locality situated in Jönköping Municipality, Jönköping County, Sweden with 2,578 inhabitants in 2005. It is situated in Småland on the eastern shores of the lake Vättern, about 35 km north of Jönköping....
, Småland
Småland
' is a historical province in southern Sweden.Småland borders Blekinge, Scania or Skåne, Halland, Västergötland, Östergötland and the island Öland in the Baltic Sea. The name Småland literally means Small Lands. . The latinized form Smolandia has been used in other languages...
– October 1897), during his lifetime most often known as S. A. Andrée, was a Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
engineer, physicist, aeronaut and polar explorer who died while leading an attempt to reach the Geographic North Pole by hydrogen balloon. The balloon expedition
S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897
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 , the first Swedish balloonist, proposed a voyage by hydrogen balloon from Svalbard to either Russia or Canada, which was to pass,...
was unsuccessful in reaching the Pole and resulted in the deaths of all three of its participants.
Early life and influences
Andrée was born in the small town of Gränna, Sweden; he was especially close to his mother, especially after the death of his father in 1870. He attended the Royal Institute of TechnologyRoyal Institute of Technology
The Royal Institute of Technology is a university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH was founded in 1827 as Sweden's first polytechnic and is one of Scandinavia's largest institutions of higher education in technology. KTH accounts for one-third of Sweden’s technical research and engineering education...
in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
and graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering is a discipline of engineering that applies the principles of physics and materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the...
in 1874. In 1876 he went to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where he was employed as a janitor at the Swedish Pavilion. During his trip to the United States he read a book on trade winds and met the American balloonist John Wise; these encounters initiated his life-long fascination with balloon travel. He returned to Sweden and opened a machine shop where he worked until 1880; it was less than successful and he soon looked for other employment. 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 Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Constituting the western-most bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea...
led by Nils Ekholm, where Andrée was responsible for the observations regarding air electricity. From 1885 to his death, he was employed by the Swedish patent office
Patent office
A patent office is a governmental or intergovernmental organization which controls the issue of patents. In other words, "patent offices are government bodies that may grant a patent or reject the patent application based on whether or not the application fulfils the requirements for...
. From 1891–1894 he was also a liberal member of the Stockholm city council
City council
A city council or town council is the legislative body that governs a city, town, municipality or local government area.-Australia & NZ:Because of the differences in legislation between the States, the exact definition of a City Council varies...
. As a scientist, Andrée published scientific journal
Scientific journal
In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past...
s about air electricity, conduction of heat
Heat conduction
In heat transfer, conduction is a mode of transfer of energy within and between bodies of matter, due to a temperature gradient. Conduction means collisional and diffusive transfer of kinetic energy of particles of ponderable matter . Conduction takes place in all forms of ponderable matter, viz....
, and invention
Invention
An invention is a novel composition, device, or process. An invention may be derived from a pre-existing model or idea, or it could be independently conceived, in which case it may be a radical breakthrough. In addition, there is cultural invention, which is an innovative set of useful social...
s. His view of life was that of the natural science
Natural science
The natural sciences are branches of science that seek to elucidate the rules that govern the natural world by using empirical and scientific methods...
s, and he entirely lacked interest in art or literature. He was a believer in industrial and technical development, and claimed also that emancipation of women would come as a consequence of technical progress.
Expedition to the North Pole
Supported by the Royal Swedish Academy of SciencesRoyal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...
and funded by people like King Oscar II
Oscar II of Sweden
Oscar II , baptised Oscar Fredrik was King of Sweden from 1872 until his death and King of Norway from 1872 until 1905. The third son of King Oscar I of Sweden and Josephine of Leuchtenberg, he was a descendant of Gustav I of Sweden through his mother.-Early life:At his birth in Stockholm, Oscar...
and Alfred Nobel
Alfred Nobel
Alfred Bernhard Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, innovator, and armaments manufacturer. He is the inventor of dynamite. Nobel also owned Bofors, which he had redirected from its previous role as primarily an iron and steel producer to a major manufacturer of cannon and other armaments...
, his polar exploration project was the subject of enormous interest and was seen as a brave and patriotic scheme. The North Pole expedition made a first try to launch the balloon Örnen (The Eagle) in the summer of 1896 from Danskøn, an island in the west of the Svalbard Archipelago, but the winds did not permit the expedition to start. When Andrée next tried, on July 11, 1897, together with his companions engineer Knut Frænkel
Knut Frænkel
Knut Hjalmar Ferdinand Frænkel was a Swedish engineer and arctic explorer who perished in the Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 of S. A...
and photographer Nils Strindberg
Nils Strindberg
Nils Strindberg was a Swedish photographer who was one of the three members of S. A. Andrée's ill-fated Arctic balloon expedition of 1897. Before perishing on Kvitøya with Andrée and Knut Frænkel, Strindberg recorded on film their long doomed struggle on foot to reach populated areas...
(a second cousin of playwright August Strindberg
August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...
), the balloon did set off and sailed for 65 hours. This was not directed flight, however; already at the lift-off the gondola had lost two of the three sliding ropes that were supposed to drag on the ice and thus function as a kind of rudder (this was observed by the ground crew). And within ten hours of lift-off, they were caught by powerful winds from a storm raging in the area. The heavy winds continued and, together with the rain creating ice on the balloon, impeded the flight. It is likely that Andrée realized before the flight ended that they would never come near the pole.
Due to these causes they were forced down on the ice, though the landing was conducted in a semi-controlled way rather than actually crashing. They had covered 295 miles (475 km) and floundered on the pack ice. The expedition was well equipped for traveling on the ice (three sledges and a boat) and had supplies for three months plus three deposits in northern Svalbard and one in Franz Josef Land
Franz Josef Land
Franz Josef Land, Franz Joseph Land, or Francis Joseph's Land is an archipelago located in the far north of Russia. It is found in the Arctic Ocean north of Novaya Zemlya and east of Svalbard, and is administered by Arkhangelsk Oblast. Franz Josef Land consists of 191 ice-covered islands with a...
. They set off eastbound for the latter but after a week they had moved west due to the currents which moved the ice. They then changed direction towards northern Svalbard; movement was slowed down by ice drift and by the craggy surface of the pack ice. The three had to pull the sledges themselves, and despite good reserves of food, added to by their shooting polar bears, the efforts against the moving, uneven ice wore them out.
They reached land in early October after over two months on the ice, setting foot on Kvitøya
Kvitøya
Kvitøya is an island in the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, with an area of . It is located at , making it the easternmost part of the Kingdom of Norway...
(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 marking was set on his grave) while the other two men were later found in the tent.
Diary notes and observations end just a few days after they landed on Kvitöya; 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. Likely, Strindberg met his end at this point. The reason for his death has not been possible to establish. 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 might have felt about the outcome of the expedition, it is near certain that he would have judged the option of suicide as treachery on his fellow explorers.
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 was probably to do with the ingestion of polar bear flesh carrying Trichinella
Trichinella
Trichinella is the genus of parasitic roundworms of the phylum Nematoda that cause trichinosis . Members of this genus are often called trichinella or trichina worms...
parasites, 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 diarrhea. 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. The three bodies were cremated before the burial in Stockholm, unfortunately without any examination to find out the cause of death.
Aftermath
Until Andrée's last camp was found in 1930, what could have happened to the expedition was the subject of myth and rumours. In 1898, eleven months after Andrée's first sighting of White Island (which he called New Iceland) a Swedish polar expedition led by A G Nathorst was passing by just 1 km off shore the camp, but the weather stopped them from getting ashore. Already around this time, it was noticed that a heavy storm had been raging and that the expedition had lost the steering lines at departure, and experienced polar explorers surmised already before 1930 that the expedition couldn't have got very far and had likely been forced down on the ice. Finally the remains of the three men were found in 1930 by the Norwegian Bratvaag ExpeditionBratvaag Expedition
The Bratvaag Expedition was a Norwegian expedition in 1930 led by Dr. Gunnar Horn, whose official tasks were hunting seals and to study glaciers and seas in the Svalbard Arctic region. The name of the expedition was taken from its ship, M/S Bratvaag of Ålesund, in which captain Peder Eliassen had...
which picked up remains including two bodies. A month later the ship M/K Isbjørn, hired by a newspaper, made additional finds, among them the third body. Note books, diaries, photographic negatives, the boat and many utensils and other objects were recovered. The homecoming of the bodies of Andrée and his colleagues Strindberg and Frænkel was a grand event. King Gustaf V delivered an oration, and the explorers received a funeral with great honors. The three explorers were cremated and their ashes interred together at the cemetery Norra begravningsplatsen
Norra begravningsplatsen
Norra begravningsplatsen, literally "The Northern Cemetery" in Swedish, is a major cemetery of Metropolitan Stockholm. The cemetery is located in the municipality of Solna.Inaugurated on June 9, 1827, it is the burial site for a number of Swedish notables....
in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
.
Modern assessments
Starting in the 1960s, Andrée's status as a national hero has become questioned and turned into a cooler, more skeptic view, in a way not unlike the changing assessment of Robert Falcon ScottRobert Falcon Scott
Captain Robert Falcon Scott, CVO was a Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the Discovery Expedition, 1901–04, and the ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–13...
's South polar journey. The emphasis has been turned to the fact that the expedition was bound to fail, and that Andrée obviously refused to take in information that questioned the expedition's feasibility (and also had meagre actual 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. Several modern writers, following Sundman's Andrée portrait in the semidocumentary novel The Flight of the Eagle ("Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd", 1967), have speculated that Andrée, by the time of the departure for Svalbard in 1897, had become the prisoner of his own successful funding campaign and the excited national feelings, and was now incapable of backing out or admitting weaknesses in the plans in front of the press.
Legacy
The Italian poet Giovanni PascoliGiovanni Pascoli
Giovanni Placido Agostino Pascoli was an Italian poet and classical scholar.- Biography :Giovanni Pascoli was born at San Mauro di Romagna , into a well-to-do family. He was the fourth of ten children of Ruggero Pascoli and Caterina Vincenzi Alloccatelli...
wrote a poem about Andrée's expedition and death.
Andrée's writings were adapted into the song cycle
Song cycle
A song cycle is a group of songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a single entity. As a rule, all of the songs are by the same composer and often use words from the same poet or lyricist. Unification can be achieved by a narrative or a persona common to the songs, or even, as in Schumann's...
The Andrée Expedition by the American composer Dominick Argento
Dominick Argento
Dominick Argento is an American composer, best known as a leading composer of lyric opera and choral music...
, written for the Swedish baritone Håkan Hagegård
Håkan Hagegård
Håkan Hagegård is a Swedish operatic baritone.He studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and has performed on stages across the world, including Carnegie Hall, the London Royal Opera House, La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, the Sydney Opera House, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Vienna...
.
In 1982, the Swedish filmmaker Jan Troell directed a film based on Sundman's book, Flight of the Eagle
Flight of the Eagle
Flight of the Eagle is a 1982 Swedish biographical drama film directed by Jan Troell, based on Per Olof Sundman's novelization of the true story of S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897, an ill-fated effort to reach the North Pole in which all three expedition members perished. The film...
.
In 2010, 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.
External links
- Article in Polish by Andrzej M. Kobos with many pictures of the balloon expedition
- Grenna Museum - The Andreexpedition Polarcenter (Swedish)
- IMDB - Swedish Movie about Andrée's balloon expedition, with Max von SydowMax von SydowMax von Sydow is a Swedish actor. He has also held French citizenship since 2002. He has starred in many films and had supporting roles in dozens more...
as Andrée - Arctic Mystery Of Andree's Fate Now Solved Popular Mechanics, November 1930