Danish explorer Einar Mickelson, who spent two brutal winters in the Arctic

Pictured above: Einar Mickelson in 1907, two years before his trip to Greenland .

Ejnar Mikkelsen (1880 – 1 May 1971) and an inexperienced crew were forced into Greenland in 1910 after they were abandoned by the rest of the expedition spent 28 months alone in the Arctic wilderness.

In 1909 Danish polar explorer Einar Mickelson embarks on a mission to retrieve maps and diaries lost during an arctic expedition off Greenland's northeast coast, but he has to spend It takes three years to get home.

In 1891, the explorer Robert Edwin Peary (May 6, 1856 - February 20, 1920, American explorer) sketched the outline of Greenland's east coast and put it on the map. A passage was drawn on the top to separate what he believed to be an island from the mainland, which he called Peary Island, allowing the United States to claim sovereignty over the island. In 1907, Danish sailors launched a deadly voyage to challenge the claim, and Mickelson set out on a quest to find them.

But in August 1909, Mickelson's ship was stuck in Arctic ice some 322 kilometers from where he thought his predecessors had died. According to his autobiography, Two Men Against Ice, Mickelson started with six men, but all but a new crew abandoned him and endured two winters in the Arctic.

Since being adapted into Netflix's 's movie " Journey Against the Ice ", this book attempts to express, in a way, how miserable the adventure world of the early 20th century was. From frostbite and scurvy to predatory wildlife,Einar Mickelson and Iver Iversen endured terrible hardships to survive.

Sailing Young Man Ernest Mickelson

Pictured above: 1906, left to right, Ernest de Cowen Leffenwell de Koven Leffingwell), Ejnar Mickelson, GP Howe and Ejnar Ditlevsen.

Einar Mickelson was born on December 23, 1880 in the Danish municipality of Brenneslev , and he was fascinated by the sea from an early age. Having risked their lives for generations on expeditions, he grew up with stories of Arctic expeditions and unprecedented discoveries. Soon, it became the passion of his life.

Mickelson was 14 when he first went out to sea alone. Although energetic, he was not satisfied until he became a true sailor. It is said that in 1896, he walked 515 kilometers from Stockholm to Gothenburg and persuaded Swedish explorer Salomon August Andrée to take him on a flight in his Arctic balloon.

Mickelson doesn't know yet, but he was lucky enough to be turned down. Ender's dangerous journey came to an end in October 1897 when the hydrogen balloon failed to reach the North Pole, killing all three passengers. In 1900, however, Mickelson was welcomed on Sir George Carl Amdrup's expedition to East Greenland.

Mickelson and 4 others, including American geologist Ernest de Koven Leffingwell,The 805-kilometer journey ended in 1902 with the first survey of a coastline notoriously difficult to reach. The following year he worked as a cartographer on Evelyn Baldwin's expedition to Franz Josef Land , an arctic archipelago that is only used by the Russian army today.

Pictured above: Einar Mickelson on his Anglo-American polar expedition 1906-1907.

In 1906, Reffenville's father launched an Arctic expedition to map the land reportedly discovered in the Beaufort Sea , north of Cape Barrow, Alaska. Armed with $5,000 and a schooner without an engine, they set out to find it, but were forced to stop at Flaxman Island, 322 kilometers from their target.

Fortunately, they befriended the local Inuk people, learned how to drive through the ice and snow, and set off in February 1907. After sailing 193km in 60 days, the pair thought the route was fatal and returned to find their boat sunk. While Leffenville stayed to study the ice, Mickelson had other plans.

To get home, Mickelson trekked 3,702 kilometers in a sled. After Barrow Point and Nome , he continues past Fairbanks , Valdez and Gulf of Alaska . His return heralded the arrival of a truly seasoned explorer, although Mickelson's greatest challenge was yet to come.

The expedition to recover the lost map in Greenland

Pictured above: Summer 1909,Einar Mickelson's ship, the Alabama.

1907, Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, Niels Peter Høeg-Hagen and Jorgen Brown Rand (Jørgen Brønlund) suffers bad luck on an expedition to Denmark where they try to prove that Greenland is a unified island that belongs entirely to Denmark.

However, they relied on Peary's map of northeastern Greenland, which included a hypothetical "Peary Strait" that bisected the area. These people were misled by the incomplete map, and even when they tried to disprove the map, had lost their way in the North Pole and were soon trapped in the ice.

In 1908, Brownland's body was found along with his map and diary, but the bodies of Erickson and Hagen were never found. When British newspaper tycoon Lord Northcliffe offered to finance an expedition to find them in 1909, fellow explorer Mickelson couldn't say no.

However, due to the patriotic nature, Mickelson requested that the trip be funded by Denmark. His government agreed to fund half of it and the rest to be raised by the public. Mickelson picked a crew of six and a 45-ton sloop called the Alabama, which uses a 15-horsepower engine. The ship left Copenhagen on June 20, 1909.

Although captains Vilhelm Laub and CH Jørgensen, shipmates Hans P. Olsen and George Poulson and carpenter Carl Carl Unger was a good fit for the job, but Mickelson's mechanic was an incompetent alcoholic. On the way to Greenland, the "Alabama" stopped at Iceland ,A young mechanic named Ive Iverson volunteered to replace him.

Pictured above: Einar Mickelson (left) and Iverson were hailed as heroes when they finally returned to Copenhagen in 1912.

The expedition suffered a setback when they reached Faroe Islands . They had planned to ride the sled dog so they could drive across the Greenland ice, but the animals were infected with rabies . While they found a replacement on Amasarik, their arrival in Greenland was delayed until the end of August.

In late summer, this wooden dhow is stranded in the ice on Shannon Island. On August 27, 1909, Mickelson was forced to have his crew set up camp on land. Unfortunately, they are now 322 kilometers from Denmark Harbor, where Erickson reportedly spent the winter before his death.

On September 25, Mickelson and Iverson set off, while the rest of the crew stayed behind. After learning that the rest of the crew had sailed about 805 kilometers north, they returned to the Alabama for the winter and decided to set off the following spring.

How Einar Mickelson and Ive Iverson fought the ice

Pictured above: Einar Mickelson in 1912, he was in Shortly before Ivor Iverson was rescued.

According to his 1913 book Lost in the Arctic, Mickelson and Iverson left the ship again in March 1910. By May, they discovered Erickson's diary, confirming that the "Pearrie Strait" did not exist, however, their struggle had only just begun.

Summer is here,The ice through which they came here in the sleigh was rapidly melting. It took them eight months to get back on the ship. Along the way, they survived by eating sled dogs, and after the last dog died, they had daily hallucinations.

When they finally returned to the Alabama, they found themselves abandoned by their companions, who were heading home in a sealed boat.

Mickelson and Iverson are forced to endure two more winters in Greenland, surviving on rations abandoned by previous expeditions and evading predatory wildlife.

The explorers stayed on Shannon Island for as long as possible, but it proved not enough to survive the long winter ahead. So they built a cabin out of wood and planks from the ruins of the Alabama. On July 19, 1912, when all hope seemed to be lost, the two were rescued by the Norwegian steamboat "Sjøblimsten".

In 1924, the Danish explorer led an expedition to the city of Sermersooq in eastern Greenland. He then settled in what would become one of the most remote settlements on Earth in Scotsbysson, with no more than 345 inhabitants in 1920.

Pictured above: Nikolai Coster-Waldau (left) as Einar Mickelson in The Ice Age.

In 1932, he led a crew of eight on the "Second East Greenland Expedition" to identify the geological area between Dalton Headland and Kangerug Sooke.

Wherever Mickelson goes, he recounts his harrowing experiences in countless books, one of which has been made into a movie by Netflix about his winter in Greenland. The film, titled "Across the Ice," starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Einar Mickelson, will premiere in North America on March 2, 2022 .

In 1970, the Danish government paid tribute to Einar Mickelson on his 90th birthday. Just a few months later, on May 1, 1971, he died. With a Danish patrol boat and Greenland mountains named after him, this explorer really became the famous explorer he dreamed of as a child.

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