Henry Rudi

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Henry Marentius Rudi (born March 12, 1889 in Tromsø ; † June 15, 1970 ibid) was a Norwegian fur hunter known as the " polar bear king " ( Norwegian Isbjørnkongen ) . He wintered in the Arctic 27 times and killed 713 polar bears between 1908 and 1948 .

Life

Henry Rudi was born in Tromsø in 1889 as the son of Ole Olsen Rudi (1859-1935) and Marie Wilhelmine Henriksen (1863-1934). After primary school, he went on to become a commercial apprentice and became a salesman. Following the example of his older brother Olaf, however, at the age of 19 he decided to live as a trapper in the Arctic.

Since the 1890s, an increasing number of Norwegian fur hunters have wintered on the islands of the Svalbard Archipelago . The main prey animals were the arctic fox , the polar bear, the walrus and the reindeer . The hunters and trappers overwintered in small groups under harsh conditions, threatened by cold and scurvy , in primitive wooden huts. From 1895 to 1940 357 people were counted who carried out a total of 900 hibernations, only 33 of them hibernated more than five times, and quite a few perished.

Shot trap as used by Rudi

Henry Rudi experienced his first wintering in 1908/1909 on the island of Hopen, part of Svalbard, as a member of a team of six around the Swede August Olofsson. It was the first ever wintering for trappers on this island. With the help of poison bait ( strychnine ) and ten gunshot traps they managed to kill 89 bears. As in later years, Rudi took a polar bear cub, whose mother had been killed, as a pet on Hopen and raised it. He later sold such animals, including to animal parks . In the winter of 1910/1911 Henry Rudi lost his brother Olaf while they were wintering together at the Krossfjord on Svalbard when he went on a walrus hunt with Samson Fylkesnes from Ålesund and never returned. For the Northern Exploration Company of the English businessman Ernest Mansfield (1862-1924) Rudi built Camp Zoe on the Tinayrebukta. Until the outbreak of World War I, he spent every winter at the Krossfjord.

It was only after a seven-year hiatus that Rudi resumed wintering from 1921 on McVitiepynten on Prins Karls Forland , where he built a new hunting lodge. In the summers he used the cutter to hunt seals . In 1924/1925 he changed territory and spent the winter in the trapper's hut Hageruphytta he built on the northern tip of the island of Jan Mayen at the foot of the Beerenberg . From 1928 to 1933 he moved his hunting ground to East Greenland , which was partially annexed by Norway as Eirik Raudes Land in 1931 . Then he was back in Svalbard by the Rijpfjord and on Halvmåneøya , but went back to Greenland in 1939 . In 1942 he joined the Nordøstgrønlands Slædepatrulje ( German  Schlittenpatrouille Nordostgrönland ), which was set up by the Danish authorities in agreement with the USA to clear up activities of the German Wehrmacht in northeast Greenland. In 1943 there was a confrontation with the weather troop from Operation Holzauge , which was led by Rudi's former colleague Hermann Ritter . During the German attack on Eskimonæs station , Rudi escaped unharmed.

After the war, Rudi returned to Spitsbergen and spent two more winters in the Andréetangen cabin in the south of Edgeøya , which he rebuilt for this purpose. His yield was once again extraordinarily high: 138 polar bears in winter 1946/47 and 114 in winter 1947/48. Rudi then worked for two more years as a cook at the coast station Isfjord Radio before retiring in Tromsø.

Rudi was extremely popular in Norway. The fact that he had overwintered 27 times in mostly the simplest accommodations in the Arctic, and in particular the extreme catch rate of 713 polar bears and many other animals, earned him the admiration of his compatriots and the nickname “polar bear king”. For his work as a trapper, he received the Royal Medal of Merit in Silver in 1953. In 1956 Lars Normann Sørensen brought out Rudi's memories as a book. The most recent edition was published in 2001. In the Polar Museum in Tromsø there is a separate room dedicated to Henry Rudi (right next to Roald Amundsen's ).

A fjord in the northwest of Clavering Ø in the Northeast Greenland National Park , where Henry Rudi had his hunting lodge Revet (today Moskusheimen ), is called Rudi Bugt ( 74 ° 23 ′  N , 21 ° 46 ′  W ).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rossnes: Norsk Overvintringsfangst på Svalbard 1895–1940 , 1993, p. 10.
  2. ↑ Rossnes: Norsk Overvintringsfangst på Svalbard 1895-1940 , 1993, p. 159.
  3. ↑ Odd Lønø: The polar bear (Ursus maritimus PHIPPS) in the Svalbard area (PDF; 4.1 MB), Norsk Polarinstitutt Skrifter No. 149, Norsk Polarinstitutt, Oslo 1970, p. 31 (Norwegian).
  4. ↑ a b Article Henry Rudi on www.polarhistorie.no, accessed on December 15, 2013.
  5. ↑ Rossnes: Norsk Overvintringsfangst på Svalbard 1895–1940 , 1993, p. 111.
  6. ↑ Kristin Prestvold: Kongsfjorden's history and cultural remains , Cruise Handbook of Svalbard, Norsk Polarinstitutt (English).
  7. ↑ Odd Lønø: Norske fangstmenns overvintringer , part 2: Jan Mayen (PDF; 2.2 MB), Norsk Polarinstitutt Meddelser No. 103, Norsk Polarinstitutt, Oslo 1974, p. 94ff. (Norwegian).
  8. ^ A b Jens Fog Jensen, Tilo Krause: Wehrmacht occupations in the new world: archaeological and historical investigations in Northeast Greenland (PDF; 2.0 MB). In: Polar Record 48, 2012, pp. 269-279 (English), doi: 10.1017 / S0032247411000180 .
  9. ↑ Marit Anne Hauan: Henry Rudi . In: Norsk biografisk leksikon .
  10. ↑ Info Guide of the Polar Museum in Tromsø, accessed on December 17, 2013.
  11. ↑ Rudi Bugt . In: Anthony K. Higgins: Exploration history and place names of northern East Greenland. (= Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin 21, 2010). Copenhagen 2010, ISBN 978-87-7871-292-9 (English), accessed December 28, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Rudi, Henry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rudi, Henry Marentius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Norwegian fur hunter
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Tromso
DATE OF DEATH June 15, 1970
Place of death Tromso