Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition
S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897
Salomon August Andrée (1857—1897)
Knut Fränkel (1870—1897)
Nils Strindberg (1872—1897)
The records
The diaries and exposed films that were found with the remains of the explorers in 1930 form an extensive record of their last few months, and contributed to making the discovery of the lost expedition a media sensation in Sweden. Four exposed rolls of film were found at Kvitøya plus one exposed roll still in the camera.[1] Docent John Hertzberg at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm treated the five exposed rolls of film and managed to save 93 out of a theoretical maximum of 240 (each roll could hold up to 48 exposures). A selection of these photos were immediately published along with diary extracts as Med Örnen mot Polen (1930; "With 'The Eagle' towards the Pole"), a book which credits the three explorers as its posthumous authors. Tyrone Martinsson has in his article "Recovering the visual history of the Andrée expedition" (2004) made renewed claims for the significance of the photos and for the importance of Strindberg for the scientific mission of the expedition, which "was to explore the geography of the north Polar Regions using aerial photography".[2]
Legacy
When the daring, or foolhardy, expedition took flight in 1897 in a blaze of media coverage, it spoke to Swedish patriotic pride and Swedish dreams of taking the scientific lead in the Arctic. The title of "Engineer" — "Ingenjör Andrée" — was generally and reverentially used in speaking of Andrée, and expressed high esteem for the late 19th-century ideal figure of the engineer as a representative of social improvement through technological progress. The three explorers were fêted when they prepared and eventually departed, mourned by the nation when they disappeared, and sought by several expeditions in the early 20th century. When their remains and records were accidentally found in 1930, after the fate of the expedition had been shrouded in mystery for 33 years, the tragic story told by the diaries had all the elements required for a media sensation. The three men were celebrated for the heroism of their doomed two-month struggle to reach populated areas, pulling and carrying a massive load of tools and equipment, and were seen as having selflessly perished for the ideals of science and progress.
Andrée's personal motives have later been re-evaluated, along with the role of the Polar areas as the proving-ground of masculinity and patriotism. Per Olof Sundman's fictionalized bestseller novel of 1967, Ingenjör Andrée's Luftfärd (translated into English in 1970 by Mary Sandbach as The Flight of the Eagle), portrays Andrée as cowardly and cynical, pushed by his sponsors and the media into undertaking what amounted to a suicide mission, despite many warning signs on the trial flights, and thereby risking, or virtually sacrificing, not only his own life but those of two trusting young men. Sundman's interpretation of the personalities involved and of the role of the press in practically enforcing the expedition carries over into the Oscar-nominated movie Flight of the Eagle (original Swedish title "Ingenjör Andrée's Luftfärd") of 1982, which is based on Sundman's novel.
(the English title eschews the ironic Jules Verne-type engineering romance associations of the original title, literally "Engineer Andrée's Airflight")
Films
Flight of the Eagle (Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd, 1982), a film by Jan Troell starring Max von Sydow, Sverre Anker Ousdal, and Göran Stangertz as Andrée, Fränkel, and Strindberg, was nominated for an Academy Award as best foreign language film in 1983.
Their Frozen Dream (En Frusen dröm, 1997), also by Jan Troell, is a "poetic documentary" film about the Eagle expedition which makes large use of Strindberg's unretouched photos.
Footnotes
References
- Martinsson, Tyrone (2004). "Recovering the visual history of the Andrée expedition: A case study in photographic research". In Research Issues in Art Design and Media, ISSN 1474-2365, issue 6. Accessed 27 Feb 2006. This paper is based on Martinsson's doctoral dissertation from 2003.
- Sundman, Per Olov (1967). Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd. Stockholm: Norstedt. Translated in 1970 by Mary Sandbach as The Flight of the Eagle, London: Secker and Warburg. The 1982 film Flight of the Eagle is based on this novel.