I. Account of explorations by the Swedish arctic expedition at the close of the season 1868, in a letter to the President. By Professor A. Nordenskiöld. Communicated by the President

• Published in: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Royal Society 1869
• Subjects: Anchorage; Arctic; Greenwich; Amsterdam Island
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspl.1868.0018; https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspl.1868.0018

Sir,—The second geographical part of our expedition anchored a few days ago in the harbour of Tromsö, after a difficult and adventurous autumn cruise of a month in the polar basin north of 80° lat.; and as these regions were never before visited in such a late season, I hope that our observations will be of interest for the arctic men of Great Britain, as contributing to settle some points of the polar question recently much debated. According to the plan adopted for the Swedish Expedition, five of its naturalists returned, in the middle of September, to Tromsö with one of the small ships that brought coal to our depot at Amsterdam Island, and the same day the ‘Sofia' with the remaining part of the expedition (consisting of v. Otter, Berggren, Nyström, Palander, Lemström, and myself), steamed northward for Seven Islands, where it was our intention to wait for a favourable occasion to go further. But finding these islands so surrounded by ice that no anchorage was accessible, we were compelled to abandon this plan and go directly northward, following a tolerably large opening in the pack. After a cruise of some days among the ice we, on the 19th of September, at 171/2° long, east of Greenwich, reached 81° 42' N. L at.; but, as may be seen by the adjoined photograph, the ice further northward was so closed that it was impossible even for a boat to advance. We turned westward, in vain looking for another practicable opening. Following the border of the pack, we were, on the 24th September, at a longitude of 2° W. already south of 79° lat., after often having passed fields of drift-ice covered with particles of earth, which seems to indicate that land is to be met with further northward. Despairing of finding the ice westward more favourable, and anxious to make a new survey later in the autumn of the position of the ice-field between 0° and 20° long., we returned to our coal-depot.