In the summer of 1912, a Swiss expedition traversed the central Greenland ice sheet, bringing back a trove of scientific and geographical findings. Nobody died, fell in a crevasse or succumbed to frostbite. So how did they prosper, when so many other polar expeditions of the time came to grief?
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| Somewhere in Greenland, in the summer of 1912 |
Some pointers towards an answer can be picked up at the Greenland 1912 exhibition at the Forum of Swiss History – located in the town and canton of Schwyz, this is an offshoot of Switzerland’s National Museum. Quite a few of of the exhibits testify to the thoroughness of the expedition’s planning and preparation.
There’s a message even in the magnificent diorama – part of the expedition’s rich legacy of colour images – that stands at the entrance. This shows a Danish ship, the Hans Egede, icebound on Greenland’s west coast (below).
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| The Hans Egede at Umanak, 1909 |
The expeditioners travelled to Greenland on this scheduled steamer by necessity. With a budget of 30,000 Swiss francs, they couldn’t stretch to chartering their own vessel, except for the final leg of their sea approach.
Nor could they afford to overwinter in Greenland. Besides, the expedition leader, the meteorologist Alfred de Quervain, had to get back to his job in the autumn. So speed wasn’t just safety – it was enforced by the expedition’s finances.
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| The expedition's cost estimate: not much change from SFr 30,000 |
Nor could they afford to overwinter in Greenland. Besides, the expedition leader, the meteorologist Alfred de Quervain, had to get back to his job in the autumn. So speed wasn’t just safety – it was enforced by the expedition’s finances.
In a single summer month, the four members of the so-called eastern party crossed the ice sheet from west to east, driving their dog-drawn sledges some 640 kilometres. This was the original lean, light and fast polar expedition.
Meanwhile, a “western party” of three other scientists stayed on the west coast to study glaciers and the high-altitude winds, tracking pilot balloons through a theodolite like the one exhibited here. Their findings overturned a then-popular theory of stable wind circulation around the Arctic.
On the wet Sunday morning when Project Hyakumeizan took in the exhibition, it was introduced by Matthias Huss. Nobody could be better qualified for the task. As the moving spirit of GLAMOS, the project for Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland, Huss stands in a direct line of scholarly descent from de Quervain.
Like de Quervain, Huss has made his own scientific expeditions – by camel once to inspect a remote glacier in China. And among the Swiss glaciers that he monitors is the Claridenfirn, a medium-sized iceflow in the Glarus Alps that de Quervain started surveying in 1914. During last year’s torrid summer, Huss had to make an unscheduled visit there in order to replace measuring poles that had melted out.
Swiss glaciers lost about 6% of their ice in 2022, Huss reported. At this rate, only remnants will be left at the end of the century, depriving the surrounding regions of their summer water supply. The good news, if any, is that sea levels won’t be much affected by the loss of ice cover in the Alps and all other mountain ranges together. Greenland, though, is different – when its ice sheet melts, the oceans will rise by about seven metres.
The effects of this melting are already dramatically apparent. When a descendant of one of the 1912 expeditioners attempted to follow his grandfather’s track - almost exactly a century later - a GPS reading close to the edge of the ice sheet suggested that his party stood 130 metres lower than their predecessors had been. In the end, the grandson's expedition had to turn back when their sledge started breaking up on the rough ice.
Fortunately, the 1912 expedition used all available technologies to record what they saw: diaries, sketches, black-and-white glass slides, colour plates and even short clips of cinefilm, as displayed and replayed at the exhibition. Yet even at the time, de Quervain sensed the limits of these social media. Apropos a spectacular sunset seen from the deck of the Hans Egede in 1912, he wrote:
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| A theodolite, as used for tracking weather balloons |
Meanwhile, a “western party” of three other scientists stayed on the west coast to study glaciers and the high-altitude winds, tracking pilot balloons through a theodolite like the one exhibited here. Their findings overturned a then-popular theory of stable wind circulation around the Arctic.
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| Glacier landscape photographed by the 1912 expedition |
On the wet Sunday morning when Project Hyakumeizan took in the exhibition, it was introduced by Matthias Huss. Nobody could be better qualified for the task. As the moving spirit of GLAMOS, the project for Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland, Huss stands in a direct line of scholarly descent from de Quervain.
Like de Quervain, Huss has made his own scientific expeditions – by camel once to inspect a remote glacier in China. And among the Swiss glaciers that he monitors is the Claridenfirn, a medium-sized iceflow in the Glarus Alps that de Quervain started surveying in 1914. During last year’s torrid summer, Huss had to make an unscheduled visit there in order to replace measuring poles that had melted out.
Swiss glaciers lost about 6% of their ice in 2022, Huss reported. At this rate, only remnants will be left at the end of the century, depriving the surrounding regions of their summer water supply. The good news, if any, is that sea levels won’t be much affected by the loss of ice cover in the Alps and all other mountain ranges together. Greenland, though, is different – when its ice sheet melts, the oceans will rise by about seven metres.
The effects of this melting are already dramatically apparent. When a descendant of one of the 1912 expeditioners attempted to follow his grandfather’s track - almost exactly a century later - a GPS reading close to the edge of the ice sheet suggested that his party stood 130 metres lower than their predecessors had been. In the end, the grandson's expedition had to turn back when their sledge started breaking up on the rough ice.
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| Alfred de Quervain's diary entries for 1-2 May 1912 |
Fortunately, the 1912 expedition used all available technologies to record what they saw: diaries, sketches, black-and-white glass slides, colour plates and even short clips of cinefilm, as displayed and replayed at the exhibition. Yet even at the time, de Quervain sensed the limits of these social media. Apropos a spectacular sunset seen from the deck of the Hans Egede in 1912, he wrote:
We felt at the time that this gigantic experience was inalienably ours. Prattle about it, promote it as we will, we can convey to others but a feeble gleam, and the fire remains ours alone. The real experience cannot be recreated, here or elsewhere.
These words carry even more force today. For nobody will ever again see the glaciers of Greenland as they revealed themselves to the 1912 explorers – the real experience cannot be recreated, here or elsewhere. But, like fragments of a distant memory, this exhibition’s photos and memorabilia hint at how those experiences might have been.
The Greenland 1912 exhibition runs until 12 March 2023 at the Swiss National Museum's Forum of Swiss History, Zeughausstrasse 5, 6430 Schwyz, Switzerland
References
Alfred de Quervain, Across Greenland's Ice Cap: The Remarkable Swiss Scientific Expedition of 1912, with an introduction by Martin Hood, Andreas Vieli and Martin Lüthi, McGill-Queen's University Press, May 2022
Christoph Haemmig, Matthias Huss, Hansrudolf Keusen, Josef Hess, Urs Wegmüller, Zhigang Ao, Wubuli Kulubayi, “Hazard assessment of glacial lake outburst floods from Kyagar glacier, Karakoram mountains, China”, Annals of Glaciology, vol 55, no 66, 2014
Postscript about polar bears
Relentlessly, as if it were still alive, the same stuffed polar bear has stalked into both iterations of the Greenland 1912 exhibition, the one now showing in Schwyz and its predecessor at the Swiss National Museum in 2020. For the record, during the actual 1912 expedition, no polar bears were harmed or even encountered. Yet, as August Stolberg, a member of the 1912 western party, observed: “people who come back from arctic trips should always be able to tell tall tales about their battles with polar bears!” So perhaps this musty beast does belong in the exhibition after all.
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