The disappearance of Björling and Kallstenius

The expedition of Björling and Kallstenius is one of the least-known of Arctic expeditions.

Mounted on a shoestring budget, it was the type of expedition many young adventurers dream of but few are foolhardy enough to attempt. It came to a tragic end only a few months after it started.

Johan Alfred Bjorling disappeared on an expedition to the High Arctic in 1892-93. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Johan Alfred Björling was a Swedish botanist, only 21 years of age in 1892 when he set out on his fateful expedition. Yet, he had already built a considerable reputation.

Two years earlier, he had been botanist on an expedition to Spitsbergen. The following year, he had attempted an impossible journey from Godhavn (now Qeqertarsuaq), Greenland, by rowboat to Melville Bay.

The farthest north he got that year was the Devil’s Thumb (Kullorsuaq in Greenlandic), a well-known landmark for whalers at the southern end of Melville Bay.

In 1892, he was determined to undertake a botanical investigation of Ellesmere Island. His companion would be a 24-year-old zoologist and fellow Swede, Evald Kallstenius.

The two scientist-adventurers travelled first to St. John’s where they bought a tiny schooner, the Ripple, of only 37 tons, for $665. They recruited a 21-year-old Dane as captain and hired two local men as crew.

They took this small vessel through treacherous ice to Godhavn in less than a month. The plan was for a summer investigation of Ellesmere Island and a quick return that fall to Godhavn.

Unfortunately, nothing turned out as planned.

The expedition left Godhavn on Aug. 2, 1892, and made it across Melville Bay. They continued north as far as the easternmost of the Cary Islands, a group of tiny islands off the coast of northern Greenland, southwest of the present community of Qaanaaq.

In 1875, George Nares, leading a British expedition, had left supplies cached there, and Björling intended to use them.

Sometime before Aug. 17, after the party had loaded stores from the British cache onto the Ripple the ship ran ashore, perhaps under the pressure of drift ice.

Undaunted, Björling and his companions made an attempt to go north to Foulke Fiord in the ship’s boat that they had purchased at Godhavn, but the attempt was unsuccessful and they returned to the scene of their shipwreck.

Stranded on the Carey Islands with no means of going south, and with winter coming on and the hours of daylight noticeably decreasing, the logical next step would have been to use their boat to make for the Greenland coast, plainly visible and only about 60 kilometres away.

There they would almost certainly have met Inughuit who could have ensured their survival through the winter. In fact, before he left Godhavn that summer, Björling had written, “If a wintering should be necessary, I will resort to the Eskimos in North Greenland or the Danes on the west coast.”

When Björling wrote those words, he had not anticipated that a wrecked ship would thwart his plan to reach Ellesmere Island. And he was a man known for his determination and stubbornness. Now more than ever, he resolved to visit Ellesmere Island.

In his last written message, left on the Carey Islands, he wrote, “Forced by bad weather to linger on this island for a long time, I now set out on the tour to the Eskimos… on Ellesmere Island. As I hope that a whaler will visit Cary Island next summer to rescue me and my companions, I will try to reach this island again before July 1.”

He added, “We are now five men, of which one is dying.”

The note was dated Oct. 12, 1892.

Then the expedition, one man short, vanished into the west, four men in a tiny boat heading vainly toward unknown Ellesmere Island. They were never heard from again.

Did they make it? No trace of them or their tiny vessel has ever been found on the Canadian shore. Had they reached it, they would certainly have perished, for no Inuit lived on that coast to assist them. Instead, they almost certainly went to watery graves in the frigid depths of Smith Sound.

In June of the following year, Capt. Harry McKay of the Scottish whaler Aurora spotted a wreck on the easternmost of the Cary Islands. He landed and discovered the Ripple, embedded in the winter’s snow and ice. A man’s body was found nearby, buried under a pile of stones. McKay quickly gathered the relics he could find, including Björling’s final message.

Among the items McKay recovered were a few pages from a book that Björling had taken with him on his ill-fated expedition. That book was Three Years of Arctic Service, by A. W. Greely, who had lost so many men to starvation on the Ellesmere coast a decade earlier.

One wonders if Björling had bothered to read it. If he had, it is all the more inexplicable why he should have made for Ellesmere instead of the more accessible Greenland coast.

Swedish zoologist and explorer Axel Ohlin accompanied the whaler Eclipse on what was hoped would be a rescue mission in 1894, but it was unsuccessful.

Back home in Sweden, the families of two young scientists grieved their loss.

Their mourning was not made any easier by the tactless remarks of another Swedish polar explorer, A. E. Nordenskiold, who wrote in a letter to the Kallstenius family even before the young men’s fate was known: “When young men go in search of adventures, they will have to take the perilous consequences of their action.”

A Swede wrote this summation of the tragic death of Björling and, by extension, Kallstenius: “Björling possessed great energy and a burning desire for research, but lacked the necessary experience for his difficult task, and his expedition was ill-prepared and ill-equipped.”

Taissumani is an occasional column that recalls events of historical interest. Kenn Harper is a historian and writer who lived in the Arctic for more than 50 years. He is the author of “Minik: The New York Eskimo” and “Thou Shalt Do No Murder,” among other books. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.