Current ads
Jobs
Tenders
Notices
General

Click below

February 24, 2006

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
March 2, 1876 – The last entertainment this winter

KENN HARPER

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

---

But mental well-being could not be overlooked. The dark period could be depressing, and the farther north one was, the more intense was the dark. The officers would at least be kept busy with scientific observations, but for the ordinary seaman, who was often illiterate, there was little to do. Sledge travelling was generally out of the question. And the period when the light was beginning to return always seemed to be the time when the already-frigid weather turned even colder. Yet it was important that the men not degenerate into lethargy and torpor.

Sir Edward Parry, who passed the winter of 1819-20 at Melville Island, started an evening school aboard his ship, with the officers acting as teachers. This had the advantage not only of keeping the men busy but of educating them as well. He also started a manuscript newspaper, to which crew members contributed, and which was passed from hand to hand.

In the winter of 1875-6, the Alert, under the command of Captain George Strong Nares, wintered at Floeberg Beach on Ellesmere Island, at 82º 28’N, the highest latitude that any ship had ever reached. Here the winter would be very long and very dark. Establishing a school was an important order of business. Classes began in the lower deck on Nov. 1, and operated each evening thereafter for an hour between 8 and 9 p.m. Attendance was regular until the sun began to reappear in mid-February.

After classes, the men had the rest of the evening to themselves. Chess and cribbage were among the popular pursuits. Unlike in Parry’s time, half a century earlier, on Nares’ ship, there were only two men who could not read and write, so books were also a source of entertainment and relaxation. Many men also kept their own journals. This ship also carried a piano, and was fortunate in having a talented musician among the officers.

Thursday nights were special nights on the Alert. They were devoted to dramatic entertainments, magic lantern exhibitions, lectures, readings and music. Nares called this series of entertainments the Thursday Pops.

During the search for the missing expedition of Sir John Franklin, many ships had begun to carry printing presses. The presses had a strategic purpose — they were used to print messages to be left so that the missing men might find them and know of the rescue attempts. But they were also used in promoting the popular entertainments carried out aboard ship — programs like Nares’ Thursday Pops.

On the Alert, two crew members, George Giffard and Robert Symons operated the press. Their first production was a tongue-in-cheek notice, announcing that “The Arctic Printing Office” had been set up in Trap Lane “within half a minute’s walk of the foremost Quarter Deck Ladder, and easily accessible to all parts of the city.”

The first of the Thursday Pops was announced a few days in advance by a printed notice, which stated:

“On Thursday, the 11th of November, 1875, will commence a series of popular entertainments, that will consist of lectures, readings, recitations, and music... No trouble or expense have been spared in obtaining the services of a great number of the most talented men of the day. The entertainment will be given in the airy and commodious hall situated in Funnel Row.” That evening featured a lecture on astronomy by Captain Nares, and a number of songs. Other evenings had lectures on magnetism, geology, meteorology, steam, history, and Arctic plants.

The second Thursday featured the first dramatic performance. The men — for the crewmembers were all men — put tremendous effort into making these performances amusing and entertaining. Costumes were sewn, wigs were made from muskox hides, and men dressed in drag when a female role was required. Indeed, in the very first play, the engineer, George White, played the role of Dinah Gruffin, and made “a fascinating little Dinah of six feet high, dressed in a Dolly Varden costume, whilst the other ladies were all that could be desired, and looked charming in their gorgeous silk and muslin dresses.”

The flyer produced for the evening of March 2 announced that that production would be “Positively the last Entertainment this Winter.” The reason was simple — the light had returned with the advent of spring and the men would shortly be away on sledging expeditions. As if to prepare them for this flurry of spring activity, Nares gave a final lecture that evening, “The Palaeocrystic Sea and Sledging Experiences.” It was followed by songs, readings and recitations. The evening ended, as did all these evenings, with a hearty rendition of “God Save the Queen.”

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.

February 17, 2006

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
Feb. 20, 1886 – The Birth of Peter Freuchen

KENN HARPER

Peter Freuchen, the renowned Arctic adventurer, was born 120 years ago on Feb. 20.

---

Freuchen was born in Denmark 120 years ago, the son of a merchant. He attended medical school at the University of Copenhagen, but interrupted his studies to join an expedition to far-off northern Greenland in 1906, as ship’s stoker and assistant meteorologist. When he returned, he later explained, he decided not to resume his studies after seeing a man who had just recovered from a lengthy stay in hospital run over by a wagon and killed while crossing the street. He decided on the spot, “I’ll not spend my life repairing people who have to die anyway.”

Back in Denmark, footloose (but not yet footless) Freuchen worked as a reporter for the influential paper, Politiken. And he met a young man from Greenland, the part-Danish part-Greenlandic Knud Rasmussen. Together they made plans to establish a trading post in north-western Greenland among the Inughuit.

They realized their dream in 1910 when they built the Thule Station on the shores of North Star Bay. For the next nine years Freuchen would be its chief trader. But he was no mere merchant. He traveled, explored, collected museum specimens, and made zoological, botanical and meteorological observations. He learned the language and customs of the Inughuit. A year after his arrival he took a young woman, Navarana, as his wife.

The missionaries took a dim view of this Inuit custom marriage but it suited Freuchen just fine. A lifelong atheist, he wrote to a friend, “I am hated by the mission and loved by the Eskimos. What more can I ask for?” The marriage produced two children, a son, Merqusaaq, named after Navarana’s father, and a daughter, Pipaluk.

In 1921 Knud Rasmussen began the most ambitious of his undertakings, the Fifth Thule Expedition, a major exploration of Arctic North America. He enlisted Freuchen as a participant. Unfortunately, Navarana, who was to have accompanied Peter, died before the expedition left Greenland. She is buried at Upernavik.

The Fifth Thule Expedition made its headquarters in Foxe Basin. From there, the scientists and ethnographers, with their Greenlandic assistants and guides, explored a wide area of northern Canada, collected artifacts for shipment back to Denmark, and collected the folk tales and legends of the Canadian Inuit. Freuchen, as cartographer and biologist, explored a vast area, from Repulse Bay and Wager Bay in the south, to Arctic Bay and Pond Inlet in the north.

On one of his mapping trips, he froze one foot very badly. Back in base camp, gangrene set in and the flesh began to peel from the foot. Eventually he lost the flesh of all five toes. Freuchen set about amputating the toes himself, fitting the jaws of a pair of pincers around each toe, then hitting the handle with a hammer. Always in search of the memorable sound-bite, Freuchen later remarked, “Perhaps one could get used to cutting off toes, but there were not enough of them to get sufficient practice.” That summer, at Chesterfield Inlet, Freuchen went to see the doctor aboard the Hudson’s Bay Company ship, Nascopie, who amputated the rest of the foot. Freuchen, a non-drinker, reportedly downed half a bottle of rum before the operation, as there was no anesthetic available.

After the expedition, sporting a peg leg, Freuchen knew that his days as an explorer were over. He remarried, became a writer, and even starred in the MGM film version of his novel, Eskimo, in 1934. He worked tirelessly in the Danish resistance during the Second World War, eventually fleeing via Sweden to the United States.

Throughout his life he was a champion of the Inuit people. He wrote extensively about his life in the north — probably no-one ever wrote more autobiographies. And he wrote about the Inuit he loved, especially the Inughuit, for whom this giant of a man — he stood 6’7”— was always Pitarssuaq, or “Big Peter.” One line from his writings sums up his attitude toward the Inuit, whose customs he portrayed in his literature. It is a line that other Danish writers in 2006 — I’m thinking of cartoonists and editors — might have been wise to heed: “These are not our ways, but they are ways worthy of respect.”

When Peter Freuchen visited Thule for the last time in 1952, the place where he had become a man four decades earlier was overrun with 20,000 Americans building an air base. His old friend, Uutaaq, who had once accompanied Robert Peary on his quest for the North Pole, took the change in stride. “We are being punished because we have stayed too long in one place,” he told Peter. “Life is journey without end.”

In 1957, Peter Freuchen dropped dead of a heart attack at the airport in Anchorage, Alaska, at the age of 71. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered over the top of his beloved Thule Mountain.

Peter Freuchen left behind a son he never knew after the Fifth Thule Expedition. Through his son, Ole Itinnuar of Rankin Inlet, he has numerous descendants in Canada. It was also my privilege to know his daughter, Pipaluk, and her family in Denmark. Amazingly, Freuchen’s sister, Regitze, is still alive. I interviewed her a few years ago. She is 103.

The poet and artist Rockwell Kent expressed his admiration for his friend, Peter Freuchen, this way:

“God, Heaven
Devil, Hell
Santa Claus, North Pole,
Peter Freuchen, Denmark.”

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.

February 10, 2006

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
Feb. 16, 1875 — The Birth of an Arctic Geologist: Per Schei

KENN HARPER

Per Schei was a Norwegian born geologist whose career was cut short by an early death. Even at that, he made major contributions to his field. A biographical sketch of him states that he “made his mark on the geological understanding of a vast region of the eastern Canadian High Arctic.”

Peder Elisaeus Schei, known as Per, was born near Trondheim, Norway on February 16, 1875, the son of a farmer. He was educated in Copenhagen and Oslo, and secured degrees in mineralogy and geology.

In 1898, Schei joined his countryman, Otto Sverdrup, on his expedition to the High Arctic aboard Fritdjof Nansen’s former vessel, Fram. Ice prevented the expedition from travelling as far north as they had hoped and they spent the first winter on the eastern coast of Ellesmere Island at a harbour which Sverdrup named Fram Haven. Schei, who suffered from short-sightedness and a chronically stiff knee, nonetheless took well to expedition life. But an early sledging expedition on Bache Peninsula led to frostbite and several toes on each foot were amputated. Undaunted, Schei became one of the expedition’s best dogsled drivers and hunters, and was an excellent skier.

The next summer, with ice again blocking the path north, Sverdrup took the Fram south, then west into Jones Sound. The party passed the next three winters in harbours on the southern coast of Ellesmere Island. From these bases, Sverdrup and his men explored and mapped most of the west coast of Ellesmere Island. Schei participated in the discovery and mapping of a group of islands east of Ellesmere, which were named the Sverdrup Islands. Schei assisted in the mapping of the west coast of Ellesmere and of much of Devon Island.

A Norwegian biographer has noted that Schei was an excellent diary writer. On Schei’s trip to Graham Island in the spring of 1900, he noted, hunting stories made up a large part of the diary. Hunting, however, was not only fun for the young scientist, then only 25, but it was also necessary for the survival of both men and dogs.

Schei was with Sverdrup when they discovered coal on Ellesmere Island and proved that Axel Heiberg was an island. He and the expedition leader returned to the ship on June 16, 1902, just in time for Fram to finally be released from the grip of ice and head for home, where the explorers were given a hero’s welcome.

Schei returned to Norway with valuable geological and paleontological collections. At home, his contributions to the success of the expedition were recognized, and he was selected as chief scientific editor for the official reports that were to follow. The next year he was appointed lecturer at the University of Kristiania’s mineralogical institute. Unfortunately Schei lived only long enough to see to the publication of a few preliminary reports.

Early in 1905, his health began to decline, probably as a result of the strenuous activity of his four years in the Arctic. A report noted that “he was seized with a severe illness and after a long suffering the promising career of this amiable and talented scientist came to a close...” Per Schei died on November 1, 1905 of kidney malfunction.

Per Schei is almost unknown in Canada. But his name lives on, on the map of the Canadian Arctic. Schei Peninsula is on Axel Heiberg Island and Schei Point on Ellesmere Island. Two eminent geologists who themselves have contributed immensely to our knowledge of the geology of the High Arctic, Peter Dawes and Robert Christie, have written that “Schei can be credited with making the most impressive contribution by a single person to the geological understanding of the Arctic Islands prior to the advent of aircraft.” High praise indeed for a man who died a century ago at the tragically-young age of 30.

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.

February 3, 2006

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
Early February 1924 — More on the Herschel Island Hangings

KENN HARPER

Last week I wrote about the events leading up to the hangings of Tatamigana and Alikomiak at Herschel Island in 1924. This week, some contemporary observations on those hangings.

A storm of protest in southern Canada had resulted from the convictions of Tatamigana and Alikomiak. It was led by Bishop J. R. Lucas of the Church of England. It was he who first brought to the attention of the public that the court party had been accompanied by a hangman, had carried lumber for the construction of a gallows, and even that the graves for the reception of the bodies of Alikomiak and Tatamigana had been dug before sentence was passed. Lucas painted a pathetic scene of what took place in the Herschel Island courtroom — only a dozen spectators, mostly Inuit, had attended. The defendants appeared not to understand what was going on, Alikomiak laughing often and at inappropriate times. He was, some argued, probably only 16 years of age.

Lucas portrayed the killings on the Kent Peninsula as responses to cultural conflict, not as reflections of the criminal character of the Inuit. He blamed one of the victims, specifically the trader, Otto Binder, and northern white society generally, for destabilizing the traditional society of the Copper Inuit. As he well knew, the traditional society of the Inuit in the western Arctic had been ripped pitilessly from its moorings in an extremely short period of time by an insurgence of white traders in search of fur.

Lucas’s efforts succeeded in having the hangings postponed. But in the end he failed to stop them.

In 1924, the great Greenlandic-Danish explorer and ethnographer, Knud Rasmussen, was traveling westward across Arctic North America on his epic journey known as the Fifth Thule Expedition. In February he was at Tree River in the western part of today’s Kitikmeot Region. There he learned the story of the hangings of Tatamigana and Alikomiak. He too knew of the rapid culture change that was taking place in the western Arctic, and he too was sympathetic. He wrote about the hangings this way:

“Heavy and cumbersome machinery was required to get the two murderers sentenced. Judges, jury and witnesses had to be summoned from long distances...

“All that great show of judges, jurymen and witnesses made no particular impression on them; they seemed to be at peace with their conscience. Both were sentenced to death, but first the sentence had to be confirmed by the highest Canadian authorities. Thus it happened that one evening late in winter, while following their customary occupation of making salmon nets, they were informed that they were to be hanged next morning at three o’clock. Young Alikomiak received the news with a smile. The other man, who was somewhat older, felt as if he were choking and asked for a glass of water. Having taken a drink he too was ready to meet his fate. Just before they were to be executed they gave the wife of the police sergeant some small souvenirs carved in walrus ivory, as a sign that they bore no malice toward the police. They ascended the scaffold with great calmness and met death without fear.”

Rasmussen then described the sad fate of the father of one of the two men:

“One of the two men had an old father living on Kent Peninsula. When he got to know that at the command of the white man his son had to undertake the long journey to the eternal hunting grounds, he realized that he must not go up there unless someone was there to receive him. This could only be if he killed himself, but the old man was to learn that human life is a tenacious thing. First he tried to shoot himself in the chest with a rifle. When this failed he tried to stab a knife into his heart. As this did not cause death either, he cut his throat and then at last was able to fulfill his self-imposed obligation towards his son.”

In early February, 1924, Rasmussen took the time to visit the grave of the deceased and wrote sensitively about the powerful emotions he felt there:

“It chanced that one winter’s day I stood by the old man’s grave, which was only protected against wild beasts by one or two simple skins and some blocks of snow. A cold north wind swept over the ground; the drifting snow enveloped me; yet I could not help feeling a stream of warmth through my body, and I had to bow in reverence to the destiny that rested in that lonely grave. Somewhere far away a boy had been hanged by strange men; but on this spot an honourable old heathen had taken his part in expiating the crime by giving his life too.”

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.

TOP

Advertising
Specs, rates,
& maps
Multi-paper
buying services
About the market
E-mail ad dept

More Information