Bea Uusma · 2013 · survival

Bea Uusma's award-winning account of the 1897 Andree expedition and her own decades-long obsession with solving it. The Swedish engineer S.A. Andree and two companions set out to fly a hydrogen balloon over the North Pole; the balloon came down on the pack ice after three days, and the three men trekked south across the drifting ice until they died on a remote Arctic island. Their fate stayed a mystery for thirty-three years. The route traces the doomed flight and the long walk that followed.

1. 1
   Gothenburg

   In the spring of 1897 the expedition sails north from Gothenburg aboard the steamer Virgo, carrying the deflated balloon and its hydrogen apparatus toward Svalbard.

2. 2
   Danes Island

   From a launch shed on Danes Island in the far northwest of Svalbard, Andree, Strindberg, and Fraenkel lift off in the balloon Ornen and drift north toward the Pole.

3. 3
   The Crash Site

   After only three days the gas-leaking balloon settles onto the pack ice far to the northeast, leaving the three men unhurt but stranded on a shifting, melting world of ice.

4. 4
   Kvitoya

   For nearly three months they haul their sledges south across the drifting floes, until, exhausted, they come ashore on the desolate White Island and die there, their camp and diaries lying hidden until 1930.