Elling Carlsen

Elling Carlsen

Elling Carlsen (born September 8, 1819 in Tromsø ; † April 18, 1900 ibid) was a Norwegian navigator and explorer . Elling Carlsen was a Norwegian seafarer and an important explorer. He was born on September 8, 1819 in Tromsø as the son of Carl Asbjörnsen and Hanna Marie Björvig. He undertook his first trip to the Arctic Ocean in 1843 and served as a sailor for three years. In 1846 he passed his tax man examination with distinction. His first ship was the Skute Alexander . In 1848 he saved the captain Bakken with seven men in Sørfjord on Spitsbergen . With the schooner Nordpolen from Tromsø he commuted between Tromsø and the Swedish, English and North German ports. He was the first to bring news of the outbreak of the Crimean War to Northern Norway. Arrived there on March 17, 1854, it had taken him ten days from Hull to carry the news to The Times in the pre-telegraphic age.

Own trips in the Arctic Ocean

From 1856 to 1860 and 1863 to 1864 he drove with the brig Jan Mayen . He was already considered to be a very experienced polar sea fisherman. In 1859 a company equipped the Jan Mayen with Elling Carlsen to expand their knowledge of the fishing and hunting grounds. In addition to the skipper, there were four to six harpooners on board and a crew of 27 people.

In the summer of 1859 Elling Carlsen was with the Jan Mayen east of Spitsbergen to catch. Among his companions was Sivert Tobiesen, who wintered on Bear Island in 1865/1866 . Coming from the south, on July 21st, an unknown country was in sight in a north-easterly direction, later called King Karl Land . The following day it reached a latitude of 78 ° 25 'north. In 1860 he sailed the eastern Arctic Ocean with the consul Finckenhagen from Hammerfest on the sloop Solid .

In 1863 Elling Carlsen circumnavigated all of Svalbard except Hopen and Kvitøya on the brig Jan Mayen . It was probably the second bypass of the archipelago after Cornelius Gillis in 1707. Carlsen reached 81 ° North on August 2nd. On August 16, Carlsen saw parts of König-Karl-Land again, this time coming from the north. The report of his circumnavigation was published in the newspaper "Tromsø Stiftstidene" in 1863. In 1864 Carlsen was shipwrecked and had to save himself with his crew in the ship's boats.

In 1868 Carlsen, encouraged by his business partner Consul O. I. Finckenhagen from Hammerfest, sailed with the Solid east along the Murman coast and expanded the Norwegian fishing grounds to the area of Novaya Zemlya and the Kara Sea , which was previously considered Russian waters. The return was through the Jugorstrasse , the strait between the Waigatsch Island and the mainland. Thereupon he sailed north and reached the height of Cape Nassau. He made a rich catch in the process. It was found that the Kara Sea was by no means the notorious ice cellar, but an open lake area in summer.

Great discoveries

Groundbreaking was Elling Carlsen's return to the Kara Sea in 1869 on a small sailing sloop. He passed the Waigatsch Strait, sailed along the coast and reached Bely Ostrow ( German  "White Island" ) on the northern tip of the Jamal Peninsula . Carlsen experienced the Siberian coast as flat and covered with scrub. This time he returned through the Matochkin crowd , accompanied by a second ship from Hammerfest. The yield was 238 walruses , 30 large seals and three polar bears , worth a total of 7,500 Prussian thalers. The newspaper "Finnmarksposten" reported on this success and the good catch results. The result was that in the following year no fewer than 18 Norwegian ships were in the new hunting grounds.

In 1869 Edvard Holm Johannesen and John Palliser also went to the Kara Sea, which resulted in considerable gains in knowledge for hunters, traders and researchers. The first circumnavigation of Novaya Zemlya was accomplished in 1870 by the arctic fisherman Edward Holm Johannesen.

The ruins of Willem Barents' winter camp on Novaya Zemlya, discovered by Carlsen in 1871 (photograph from 1881)

In 1871 Elling Carlsen discovered Willem Barents' wintering place with the Solid from 1596/97 near Ledjanaja Gawan on Novaya Zemlya. Captain Carlsen left Hammerfest on May 16 and, fishing Trantiere, reached the southern end of Novaya Zemlya at the end of July. Since at this time the Karische and Jugor Straits were not yet open enough to enter the Kara Sea, he sailed around Novaya Zemlya and reached the “ice port” of the Dutch expedition on September 9th. From there he sailed southwards across the Kara Sea in mid-September and returned to Hammerfest on November 4th.

In the ice harbor, Carlsen discovered the remains of the collapsed winter house made of fir wood. It was 32 feet long and 30 feet wide, and filled entirely with ice that hermetically covered many objects that Carlsen could take with him almost intact. The 150 objects included gun barrels, swords, halberds , lance tips, tools, grindstones , saucepans, candlesticks, pewter jugs, a table clock mechanism, a flute, wooden slippers, pictures painted on sheet metal, locks and a metal bell. An astronomical book was found and a well-preserved copy of Mendoza's description of China in Dutch. Carlsen sold the finds for 10,800 crowns to the Englishman Ellis Lister-Kay, who ceded these relics to the Dutch government at a purchase price. In 1872 the Swedish-Norwegian King awarded him the Order of Saint Olav for his services .

Franz Josef Land

The commander Carl Weyprecht of the Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition of 1872 hired Elling Carlsen as a harpooner on the Admiral Tegetthoff in early 1872 . The conversation between Carlsen and Weyprecht was in Norwegian. Weyprecht had acquired knowledge of this language in May / June 1871 in Tromsø. Elling Carlsen was the only Scandinavian on board. He was singled out from the crew because of his nautical fame and lived in a small room of his own with the boatswain, Pietro Lusina. Both of them had their own bottle of petroleum at their disposal during the winter months. Carlsen was able to speak to Lusina in English, as did all the officers. The team spoke Croatian among themselves and Italian on duty . Carlsen had adopted a dialect for them that consisted of Norwegian, English, German, Italian and Slavic.

In the last days of August 1872 the Admiral Tegetthoff froze forever in the ice. In addition to other regular activities, a meteorological observation service was set up by Brosch, Orel , Krisch , Lusina and Carlsen. The observations consisted of reading the thermometer for two hours , determining the humidity in summer, reading the psychrometer, measuring the wind, measuring the clouds and measuring the precipitation. Carlsen's particular attention and love was directed to the appearance of the northern lights . The year 1872 passed without further events. The pious and devout Elling Carlsen made the last entry of the year in a pious manner in the logbook: “Önsker at Gud maa vare med os i det nye aar, da can intet vare imod os” ( We wish that God be with us in new years; then nothing can be against us ).

On August 30, 1873, the ship drifting with the ice discovered unknown land and explored it on extended sleigh journeys under the direction of Julius Payer until May 1874. It was named Franz-Josef-Land . On May 15, 1874, the expedition ship Admiral Tegetthoff was abandoned. The team wanted to try to reach the open sea over the ice. Carlsen was the second in command of the third boat. Its team consisted of Brosch, Carlsen, Cattarinich, Lettis, Sussich, Marola and Fallesich. Carlsen was the oldest on board, but showed a commitment that led Julius Payer to admiration "The old Nordland driver carried this burden without complaint, but it was painful to see the signs of exhaustion on him". On August 17, 1874, the shipwrecked reached Novaya Zemlya. Carlsen entered the Matochkin Hive four days later in search of fishing vessels, but to no avail. On August 24th, when the provisions were sufficient for nine days, the expedition was rescued by the Russian schooner Nikolaj .

Carlsen disembarked in Tromsø on September 8, 1874. He had actually hoped to return via the Bering Strait . He carried his hard-earned wages with him, his white reindeer fur, his wig and his walrus lance. In 1874, the Emperor of Austria awarded him the Knight's Cross of the Franz Joseph Order for his services . The Austrians invited him on a trip to Vienna in 1879 to express their thanks for his work on the great expedition. On the way back he stopped in Christiania , where the local seaman's association honored him at a meeting.

Last years

On June 23, 1876, Elling Carlsen and Charles Gardiner left Hammerfest on the Glowworm to Barents' winter quarters on Novaya Zemlya. Gardiner undertook major digs in the ruins from July 29th to August 2nd and was able to collect a significant number of objects. For example the inkwell and quills, twenty wax candles, a ship's flag, three Dutch books, two coins and a powder horn, containing a short report of the expedition signed by Barents and Heemskerk . These objects came to the government of the Netherlands through a generous gift from Gardiner . On October 28th, a big festival in honor of Elling Carlsen was held in Bispegarden in Tromsø, with over 120 guests.

In 1881 the first tourist trip to Spitsbergen took place with Elling Carlsen as the local guide. Captain Gran on the Pallas mainly sailed the west coast of Svalbard. From 1879 to 1894 he was a fire tower guard in Skaaven in southern Lofoten . In 1894 he retired at the age of 75. After Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen returned, the city of Tromsø held a festival in honor of the two returnees on Saturday, August 22, 1896. Elling Carlsen was invited as a guest of honor. He died on April 18, 1900 in Tromsø. After it was Carlsenøya ( 78 ° 56 '  N , 21 ° 28'  O ) designating one of the Rønnebeckinseln in the Hinlopen Strait .

literature

• Petermanns Geographische Mittheilungen 1872, pp. 177-192; 390f .; Pl. 20.
• Elling Carlsen, Optegnelser fra den Austrian-Hungarian polar expedition , Tromsø 1875, reprint 1997.
  • German: Notes from the Austro-Hungarian polar expedition 1872–1874 . Books on Demand, Frankfurt am Main / Oslo 2010.
• Julius von Payer, The Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition 1872–1874, together with a sketch of the second German North Pole expedition 1869–1870 and the polar expedition of 1871 , Vienna 1876.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Carlsenøya . In: The Place Names of Svalbard (first edition 1942). Norsk Polarinstitutt , Oslo 2001, ISBN 82-90307-82-9 (English, Norwegian).