6 Explorers from
The Literary Expedition to Greenland 1902-04:
Knud Rasmussen (school teacher, author and explorer)
Ludvig Mylius Erichsen (author and journalist)
Jørgen Brønlund (translator and sled driver)
Count Harald Moltke (painter)
Dr. Berthelsen (doctor)
Gabriel Olesen aka Gaba (hunter)
Knud Rasmussen (1879 -1933)
Danish polar explorer and anthropologist. He has been called the "father of Eskimo" and was the first European to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled. He remains well known in Greenland, Denmark and among Canadian Inuit.
Rasmussen was born in Ilulissat, Greenland, the son of a Danish missionary, the vicar Christian Rasmussen, and an Inuit- Danish mother, Louise Rasmussen (née Fleischer). He had two siblings, including a brother, Peter Lim. Rasmussen spent his early years in Greenland among the Kalaallit (Inuit) where he learned from an early age to speak the language (Kalaallisut), hunt, drive dog sleds and live in harsh Arctic conditions. "My playmates were native Greenlanders; from the earliest boyhood I played and worked with the hunters, so even the hardships of the most strenuous sledge-trips became pleasant routine for me." He was later educated in Lynge, North Zealand, Denmark. Between 1898 and 1900 he pursued an unsuccessful career as an actor and opera singer.
He went on his first expedition in 1902–1904, known as The Danish Literary Expedition, with Jørgen Brønlund, Harald Moltke and Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, to examine Inuit culture. After returning home he went on a lecture circuit and wrote The People of the Polar North (1908), a combination travel journal and scholarly account of Inuit folklore. In 1908, he married Dagmar Andersen.
In 1910, Rasmussen and friend Peter Freuchen established the Thule Trading Station at Cape York (Uummannaq), Greenland, as a trading base. The name Thule was chosen because it was the most northerly trading post in the world, literally the "Ultima Thule". Thule Trading Station became the home base for a series of seven expeditions, known as the Thule Expeditions, between 1912 and 1933.
Rasmussen's "greatest achievement" was the massive Fifth Thule Expedition (1921–1924) which was designed to "attack the great primary problem of the origin of the Eskimo race." A ten volume account (The Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-1924 (1946)) of ethnographic, archaeological and biological data was collected, and many artefacts are still on display in museums in Denmark. The team of seven first went to eastern Arctic Canada where they began collecting specimens, taking interviews and excavations. Rasmussen left the team and traveled for 16 months with two Inuit hunters by dog-sled across North America to Nome, Alaska - he tried to continue to Russia but his visa was refused. He was the first European to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled. His journey is recounted in Across Arctic America (1927), considered today a classic of polar expedition literature. This trip has also been called the "Great Sled Journey" and was dramatized in the Canadian film The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (2006).
Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen (1875 -1907)
Danish author, ethnologist, and explorer, from Ringkøbing. He was most notably an explorer of Greenland. With Count Harald Moltke and Knud Rasmussen he formed the Danish Literary expedition (1902-04) to West Greenland, and in the early stages (1902) discovered near Evigheds Fiord two ice-free mountain ranges. Later the party proceeded to Cape York and for 10 months lived native fashion with the Eskimo. The return journey of the expedition to Upernavik across the ice of Melville Bay was the first sledge crossing on record.
As commander of the Denmark expedition (1906-08) Mylius-Erichsen undertook and carried out the task of exploring and charting the entire coastline of unknown northeast Greenland by three months' field work. The expedition made sledge journeys of more than 4000 miles (6,436 km), exceeding the record of any single Arctic force. The main travel, excluding duplications, of Johan Peter Koch was some 1250 miles (2011 km), and that of Mylius-Erichsen must have exceeded 1000 miles (1609 km). Their explorations showed that Robert Peary's chart of a coast turning southeast from Navy Cliff was radically incorrect. Instead the shore ran to the northeast, adding about 100,000 square miles (259,000 km²) to Greenland and extending it about halfway from Navy Cliff—where the maps wrongly placed Greenland Sea—to Spitsbergen. Mylius-Erichsen's own exploration disclosed the nonexistence of Peary's Channel, and thus established the continuity of Greenland from Cape Farewell, 60° N, to the most northern land ever reached, 83° 39' N. He also discovered and explored the great fjords of "Denmark", "Hagen", and "Brønlund".
Misled by existing maps, Mylius-Erichsen with Niels Peter Høeg Hagen and the Greenlander Jørgen Brønlund so prolonged his journey that a return to the ship that spring was impossible, and they were forced to spend the summer in the area without the necessary foot gear for hunting in the stony area.
The need for food for men and dogs forced them to reduce their three sled teams to one. Finally in September they were able to start their return journey on the new frozen sea ice, but en route Mylius-Erichsen and Hagen perished of starvation, exhaustion, and cold. Hagen's map material, the body of Brønlund together with his diary were found next spring by Koch. Some cairn reports, left at Denmark Fjord by Mylius-Erichsen, were found and brought to Copenhagen by Ejnar Mikkelsen in 1912.
Jørgen Brøndlund (1877 -1907)
Brønlund, an Inuit and the son of a hunter, was born in Ilulissat, Greenland, then known as Jakobshavn, on 14 December 1877. He was a childhood friend of Knud Rasmussen whose father was a priest in Jakobshavn. Trained as a teacher, Brønlund graduated in 1901 from Nuuk College and was employed as a catechist at a trading post near the Nuup Kangerlua estuary.
Along with Rasmussen, Harald Moltke, and Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, Brønlund was a member of the 1902-1903 Danish Literary Greenland Expedition. At its conclusion, Brønlund went to Denmark. Here, he studied drawing with Kristian Zahrtmann and taught in Askov at Denmark's largest folk high school.
An expert interpreter, one of Brønlund's responsibilities during the 1906 Danish Expedition of Northeast Greenland under Mylius-Erichsen was to keep a travel diary, and to drive the dogs. He died in November 1907 of hunger and freezing while traveling back from the Independence Fjord and attempting to return to their base camp. He was found in a crevasse at 79-Fiord (named after the 79th latitude) on 13 March 1908 along with his diary that recounted the fate of Mylius-Erichsen and the expedition's cartographer, Niels Peter Høeg Hagen, both of whom died before Brønlund. He was buried where he was found.
Count Harald Moltke (1871 -1960)
Danish painter and author, who was educated on the Royal Danish Academy of Art 1889–1893. Among his activities Moltke participated as draftsman in four Arctic expeditions.
From May to November 1898 he participated in a geological expedition headed by K. J. V. Steenstrup (1842-1906) to the Disko Bay region at the west coast of Greenland. From this expedition Moltke made paintings of geological structures, the coast line of Nugsuark Peninsula, and of the Inuit, "Greenland women in umiak".
During July 1899 to April 1900 Moltke joined an aurora expedition to Akureyri in Iceland. The expedition was arranged and headed by the director, Adam F. W. Paulsen (1833-1907), of the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI). Further participants were Dan Barfod la Cour (1876-1942), director of DMI 1923-1942, and Ivar B. Jantzen (1875-1961). In Akureyri, Moltke made 19 paintings of auroras and 5 portrait sketches of the expedition members.
In the winter 1900-1901 Moltke participated in another DMI aurora expedition; this time to Utsjoki in northern Finland. This expedition was headed by Dan B. la Cour. Further participants were Carl Edvard Thune Middelboe (1875-1924) and Johannes K. Kofoed (1877-1939). Here, Moltke made, 6 paintings of auroras. The aurora paintings from the two aurora expedition belong to and reside now with the Danish Meteorological Institute.
During 1902-1904 Harald Moltke joined "The Literature Expedition", headed by Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, with Knud Rasmussen, Jørgen Brønlund, and Alfred Bertelsen. The expedition was a dog sled journey along the unmapped north-west coast of Greenland from Upernavik to Cape York close to Thule.
From this expedition his main works are a set of 30 portraits of Inuit, issued in 1903, and with Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen as first author the book (in Danish) Grønland (Greenland) (1906).
During the later years of his life, Moltke made numerous paintings, particularly portraits and landscapes, and published his memoirs (in Danish) Livsrejsen (The Life Travel) in 1936.
Dr. Alfred Bertelsen (1877-1950)
Born in Roskilde. Immigrated 1902 to Greenland with the literary expedition, but came only to Upernavik. The rest of the team went to Thule while Bertelsen returned to the south and then stayed in Greenland as a doctor, with brief interruptions until 1927, the most time as a district doctor in Umanaq and circle doctor North Greenland.
Bertelsen acquired a thorough knowledge of the population and studied the health conditions. The results came partly in the form of a series articles in professional journals on Greenland's medical problems, partly as a package Greenlandic Medical Statistics and Nosografi I-IV, Mail. on Greenland CXVII 1943, a major work on the subject and a treasure trove for anyone dealing with it.
Another scientific interest was the Greenland birds which he partly practical noticed and explored, partly described in several papers in Msg. Greenland, so Umanaqs birds XCI, 1932, marking the CXXXXII, 1948, and named after birds in XXII, 1966. During the same work CVL 1945 published, "Greenlanders in Denmark". Contributions for Lighting Greenlandic Colonial history from 1605 to the present day. A completely different side of his authorship is educative writings of the Greenlandic population and especially the medical staff on general hygiene and health conditions, as "Remembrance of Greenland midwives."
An accomplished photographer Bertelsen's photos record many sides of a now vanished Greenland, see Keld Hansen: "Greenland Photos". After his return to Denmark in 1927 he worked as a pharmaceutical consultant for Greenland until his retirement in 1947.