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Book Review
| Antarctic Challenges: Historical and Current Perspectives on Otto Nordenskjöld's Antarctic Expedition 1901–1903. Edited by Aant Elzinga, Torgny Nordin, David Turner, and Urban Wråkberg. Göteborg, Sweden: Royal Society of Arts and Sciences, 2004. 330pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, list of contributors, index.
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| It seems that most countries engaged in the so-called "heroic" age of polar explorations have their icons. This is a series of reflections on the leading Swedish figure in Antarctic exploration in the early twentieth century, Otto Nordenskjöld and in particular the impacts of his 1901-1903 Antarctic expedition. A collection of papers from a symposium held in Göteborg, Sweden, in 2001 on the occasion of the centenary of the expedition, this volume provides a rare opportunity to examine the impact of an expedition not only on the scientific and political environment but also in terms of the social and cultural milieu in which it occurred. |
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The expedition itself was, and arguably still is, probably more famous in the public mind for the account of the voyage and the problems it faced which reads like something from a "boys own" comic. Otto Nordenskjöld's expedition left Gotebörg in the ship Antarctic on 16 October 1901. The ship was never to return, becoming icebound and finally sinking in the Wedell Sea off the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. The captain, the crew and a scientist found their way over sea ice to Paulet Island, where they overwintered. Nordenskjöld and a few of his men had to spend two winters on a research station they had established on Snow Hill Island, not knowing what had happened to the rest of the ship's company. Another group of three men who had attempted to reach Nordenskjöld also were marooned and wintered in a location called Hope Bay. By concidence, both the Hope Bay and Paulet Island parties reached Snow Hill Island at the same time that an Argentinian ship came to rescue them, allowing all the expedition to escape. |
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