The Making of an Arctic Naturalist

Abstract

One of the greatest impressions of my life was my first visit to Greenland. I was a mere boy at that time, only sixteen years old .... This visit to Greenland changed my life. I lost my heart to the Arctic and realized that I must return to learn more of the secrets behind the Polar beauty. This was not my birth as a naturalist, to be sure, since from early boyhood I had wanted to study nature and its creatures, but during this Greenland trip I received a special challenge: my endeavours were now directed towards a distinct though faraway goal. ... When in 1925 at the age of sixteen I joined Schiøler's Greenland expedition I had been a member of the Danish Ornithological Society and the Danish Natural History Society for two years, admittedly an extraordinarily young member. ... I was interested in most animal groups, although favouring birds and various marine invertebrates. During that time I made the acquaintance of Dr. C. G. Johs. Petersen, director of the "Biological Station", in those days the Danish institute for marine biological research. ... I spent many evenings in Dr. Petersen's home, learning and discussing marine zoology. I was seriously inclined to choose that field, rather than ornithology, as my future specialty, until I met Ejler Lehn Schiøler, and one year later received the offer to accompany him to Greenland. Schiøler was a remarkable man. He was a banker who became very wealthy but in his spare time he was an ardent student of ornithology and succeeded in gathering a collection of more than 25,000 skins of western palearctic birds, besides skeletons and eggs. He built a large museum for his collections with an ornithological library. ... Naturally, I admired this great scientist, and in his study, when he showed me his birds and told me about the problems they posed, I gradually decided to be an ornithologist. When we left for Greenland in 1925, altogether five men, in order to collect and study the birds of the west coast, it was still the old regime. The native population lived literally under stone-age conditions, mildly ruled by the patriarchal Danish government. The Greenlanders had not changed their ancient Eskimo-like habits, living in turf-houses, wearing their seal-skin kamiks and anoraqs, and sailing in kayaks and umiaks. While writing this I am sitting in a hotel in one of the modern Greenland cities, with factories, canneries, noisy motor traffic on the broad streets and in the busy harbour, certainly a far cry from the conditions during my first visit almost 50 years ago. The primitive life of the Eskimos was, of course, something quite extraordinary for a school-boy who had just left his books. I tried to learn as much as possible about these people and their country in the short time, less than four months, in which we stayed in Greenland, and succeeded to a degree. The main thing, however, was the bird life. Series of practically all Greenland species were secured. ... I think it was the solemnity which fascinated me so much, a solemnity effected by the extreme quietness and the purity and severity of the country. ... I felt myself in a forgotten world, remote and lonely, resting in quietness, untouched by man, unspoiled. I could move around hour after hour; nothing disturbed the impression of beauty, and the changing horizons seemed endless. Here I was nearer nature's heart than anywhere else, and here I sensed a strange harmony. I admit that not all people would feel that way. ... the Arctic is so extremely simple and clear! Everything unnecessary has been removed; here there are no forests, no houses, no people; only the very backbone of nature is left. From a biological viewpoint it is significant that the number of animal and plant species is so reduced that their ecology, their mutual relationship, their adaptations to the environment are much easier to study in the polar than in the tropical regions. ... All this makes the Arctic in some respects the ideal working ground for a biologist. ... This rapport with the arctic regions has brought continuing richness and rejuvenation to my life. I have been true to my first love, and I have made several later visits to the far north; it still provides a challenge and an inspiration. By many regarded as a godforsaken waste, the polar regions are to me a place where the divine manifestation is more apparent than in other parts of the world.