#denmark expedition

[i12bent]

Achton Friis (September 5, 1871 - 1939) was an artist and designer, trained at the Royal Academy. After graduation he joined polar expeditions such as the Denmark Expedition led by Mylius Erichsen to North-East Greenland (1906-8). Friis documented the expedition in drawings and in book form in 1909.

Above: Fjordbillede fra Sydvestgrønland, 1910 - color lithograph on carton

[archaeologicalnews]

Mysterious black spot in polar explorer's diary offers gruesome clue to his fate

As a polar explorer lay frostbitten and starving in a frozen Greenland cave, he smeared a black spot onto the bottom of his last journal entry. More than a century later, that dark smudge has revealed grim new details of the dying man's final hours.

His name was Jørgen Brønlund; he was a Greenland-born Inuit and was part of a three-man team on the Denmark Expedition to Greenland's Northeast Coast, conducted from 1906 to 1908 and led by Danish ethnologist Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen. Brønlund died in November 1907 and was the last of the team to perish — and the only one whose body was ever recovered.

He recorded his final thoughts in a diary, and the last page included a heavy black smudge. Researchers recently conducted extensive analysis of the spot, finding that it contained burnt rubber, oils and feces. These traces hint at Brønlund's desperate and unsuccessful attempts to light a life-saving petroleum burner before he succumbed to cold and hunger, scientists wrote in a new study. Read more.

[dame-de-pique]

Grønlandsk landskab, 1906-1908

[dame-de-pique]

Fugle på Grønland, 1906-1908

[dame-de-pique]

Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) - Danmarkekspeditionen til nordøst Grønland 1906-1908

[dame-de-pique]

Andreas Lundager (1869-1940) - Danmarkekspeditionen til nordøst Grønland 1906-1908

[dame-de-pique]

Gustav Thostrup (1877-1955) med en slædehund, 1906-1908

[i12bent]

Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen (Jan. 15, 1872 - 1907) was a Danish Polar explorer and journalist. He was the charismatic leader of the so-called Denmark Expedition in 1906, which aimed to explore Eastern Greenland north of the 79th parallel.

Mylius-Erichsen perished during the expedition, when his sleigh party was caught by a sudden melt due to an early onset of summer. They tried to hole up and restart their trek when snow returned, but for reasons still unclear chose a different route from the one where depots had been prepared and laid out for them.

They likely died from a mixture of hunger, exposure and extreme cold, but the bodies of Mylius-Erichsen and one other member, Høeg Hagen, were never recovered. The third member, Brønlund, made it a bit further and his corpse and his diary were recovered in 1908.