Thorild Wulff

Thorild Wulff (born April 1, 1877 in Gothenburg , † late August or early September 1917 in Inglefield Land , Greenland ) was a Swedish botanist and polar explorer. He studied the arctic flora in particular, but also traveled to Asia, where he collected objects for Swedish museums. Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " T.Wulff ".

Life

Thorild Wulff was the son of the wholesaler Thomas Thorild Wulff and his wife Alfhild, geb. Hartman. He attended high school in Gothenburg from 1888 and studied botany at Lund University from 1894 . In 1899 he took part in the Swedish-Russian degree measurement expedition to Spitsbergen , whose Swedish department was headed by geodesist Edvard Jäderin (1852-1923). After studying in Jena and Leipzig, he received his doctorate in 1902 with the treatise Botanical Observations from Spitsbergen . In 1902 and 1903 he undertook a botanical research trip to the Indian suburbs and then published on Indian horticulture and Indian architecture. From 1906 to 1909 he was an assistant at the Central Institute for Agricultural Research ( Centralanstalten försöksväsendet på jordbruksområdet ) in Stockholm , where he dealt with parasitic fungi . In 1909 he was appointed professor at Stockholm University. After a few short trips to Lapland , Wulff visited Iceland in 1911 with the artist Albert Engström (1869–1940) .

In 1912, Wulff received an order from the Röhss'schen Kunstgewerbemuseum in Gothenburg to take a trip to China and purchase art objects for the museum's collection. Before that, he went on a study trip through Europe to familiarize himself with the collections of Chinese art in the capital's museums. He spent a year and a half in Beijing and acquired over 3,000 objects, some of them ancient or archaeological, not always by legal means. In 1914 he traveled to Hokkaidō , where he conducted ethnographic studies on the Ainu . From there and from Sumatra , Java , Bali and Lombok he brought valuable ethnological collection objects to Sweden.

In 1916 he went to Greenland and joined the Second Thule Expedition led by Knud Rasmussen as a botanist and photographer. He also shot short film sequences. The expedition team also included the geologist Lauge Koch and four Inuit hunters and dog sled drivers . In 1917 the expedition advanced over the northwest coast of Greenland to the DeLong Fjord. The unexpected poverty of huntable game in the region visited turned the way back into a race against death. On August 29, Wulff, exhausted from hunger and exertion, who already suffered from both malaria and syphilis , could no longer follow the others. His body was never found, but Wulff's diaries and botanical collections were saved.

Familiar

Thorild Wulff's marriage to Ida Ottonia Ljungquist in 1901 and divorced in 1912. Their daughter Gunvor was born in 1902.

Works (selection)

Botanical observations from Svalbard . Dissertation, University of Lund 1902 ( digitized version )
Indisk arkitektur . Stockholm 1907
Grönländska dagböcker . Stockholm 1934
Resa till Kina år 1912 . Gothenburg 1966

literature

Wulff, Thorild . In: Theodor Westrin, Ruben Gustafsson Berg, Eugen Fahlstedt (eds.): Nordisk familjebok konversationslexikon och realencyklopedi . 2nd Edition. tape 32 : Werth – Väderkvarn . Nordisk familjeboks förlag, Stockholm 1921, Sp. 1194-1195 (Swedish, runeberg.org ).
Knud Rasmussen: In the home of the polar people. The second Thule expedition 1916–1918 . FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1922, pp. 337-351 ( digitized version ).

Individual evidence

↑ Entry in the International Plant Names Index
↑ ^a ^b Anders Larsson: Thorild Wulff - ett hundraårsminne . Grenna Museum, August 21, 2017, accessed April 17, 2020 (Swedish).
↑ ^a ^b Kalle Lekholm: Thorild Wulff . In: Vårt Göteborg on 2018-06-18, accessed April 17, 2020 (Swedish).
↑ Film recordings from the Second Thule Expedition , accessed on April 17, 2020.
↑ Thorild Wulff . In: Vilhelm Ljungfors: Helsingborgs-Landskrona nation i Lund under professor Martin Weibulls inspectorat . Lund 1903, pp. 139-140 (Swedish).

personal data
SURNAME	Wulff, Thorild
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Swedish botanist and polar explorer
DATE OF BIRTH	April 1, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH	Gothenburg , Sweden
DATE OF DEATH	August 1917 or September 1917
Place of death	Inglefield Land , Greenland

[1] Entry in the International Plant Names Index

[Larson-2] Anders Larsson: Thorild Wulff - ett hundraårsminne . Grenna Museum, August 21, 2017, accessed April 17, 2020 (Swedish).

[Lekholm-3] Kalle Lekholm: Thorild Wulff . In: Vårt Göteborg on 2018-06-18, accessed April 17, 2020 (Swedish).

[4] Film recordings from the Second Thule Expedition , accessed on April 17, 2020.

[5] Thorild Wulff . In: Vilhelm Ljungfors: Helsingborgs-Landskrona nation i Lund under professor Martin Weibulls inspectorat . Lund 1903, pp. 139-140 (Swedish).