Voyages into the Arctic regions turned into a literary vogue, fashioning what came to be called “polar literature,” which had a wide readership in American and British metropolises and, in the second half of the 19th century, in Scandinavian countries as well.164 Among the polar genres, accounts from ←56 | 57→expeditions described as journeys of discovery and science enjoyed particular popularity.165 Wherever their writers came from, a common feature of such texts was that they tended to inscribe themselves in their respective contemporaneous national discourses and to frame their authors as fulfilling a special mission in the Arctic peripheries for the sake of the worldwide progress of Western knowledge. In this respect, the role of the Royal Geographical Society as “the greatest promoter of travel and exploration” must be mentioned. In spite of its president’s, Sir Clements Markham’s official pronouncements that exploration should preserve the model of “disinterested science plus brave endeavor,” in reality it was most eager to promote the heroism of the explorers who triumphed against an extremely harsh and threatening nature166. As a result, the expedition accounts produced well into 20th century retained their anachronistic character in spite of the new tendencies in Western travel writing that followed and reflected the developments on the international arena167.
American historian Beau Riffenburgh points, however, to a distinctive way in which the Arctic and expeditions were discursivised by the Scandinavian polar explorers and highlights their different understanding of their environment, respect for human life and freedom from constraints of nationalist supremacy.168 These features add up to what can be called a specifically Nordic matrix for representing the Arctic and its inhabitants. In this book, three narratives of such journeys are particularly relevant as important points of reference in examining Rasmussen’s representations of North Greenland and the Inughuit. These depictions include, chronologically, an account of the Umiaq Expedition to Ammassalik on the east coast authored by Danes Gustav Holm and Thomas Vilhelm Garde, entitled Den danske Konebaads-Expedition til Grønlands Østkyst. Populært beskreven (1887, The Danish Umiaq Expedition to the East Coast of Greenland. A popular description); Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen’s ←57 | 58→report from the first successful crossing of Greenland’s icesheet, entitled Paa ski over Grønland. En skildring af den norske Grønlandsekspedition 1888–1889 (1890, the first English edition: The First Crossing of Greenland, 1890); and Norwegian Eivind Astrup’s account of the expedition under the command of Robert Peary and his stay among the Inughuit in the area of Smith Sound, entitled Blandt nordpolens naboer (1895, English edition: With Peary near the Pole, 1898). To keep my argument lucid, I address Rasmussen’s intertextual references to these works in footnotes.
Although each of the three texts is anchored in another national context,169 they were all authored by Scandinavian writers, and they all revolved around pioneering expeditions into as-yet unexplored areas of Greenland (East Greenland, the icesheet, North Greenland) which were launched in the last decades of the 19th century170. As popular editions based on original travel diaries rather than official expedition reports, all three texts exemplify a hybrid genre which interweaves depictions of the journey, elements of a scientific report, a mapping narrative, hunting tales and ethnographic data about the indigenous population encountered along the way. When published, these works won immense popularity, which was largely linked to their affinity with fiction.171 Rasmussen’s direct predecessors, their authors established a particular model of the discursivisation of the Greenlandic Other at the end of the 19th century. According to the principles of so-called “salvage anthropology,”172 Greenlanders from the east coast ←58 | 59→and the Inughuit from North-West Greenland, who lived outside the European system, were perpetuated as “noble savages” and a true “nature people” – symbiotically attached to nature, unparalleled in their knowledge of Arctic conditions and perfectly adjusted to living in the polar zones. At the same time, the uninhabited icesheet and North-East Greenland came to be represented as a predominantly delightful and compelling unique site of male adventure. This image stood in stark contrast to the earlier representations of the area as a terrifyingly perilous environment.
Since the authors of these expedition accounts hailed from countries which cultivated expansionist aspirations173 and their ventures in Greenland were associated with the rivalry of Western countries in and for the exploration of the Arctic, which spiralled in the late 19th century, I believe that their texts should be regarded as a species of colonial or colonialist literature, as discussed by postcolonial scholar Elleke Boehmer.174 The Scandinavian reports also sought to legitimise Western presence in the areas under exploration and their subordination to the Western system of knowledge, which was sometimes followed by physical territorial expansion, as was the case with East and North Greenland. As a variety of colonial travel literature, the writings about polar expeditions are, to use Arne Melberg’s expression, an “ecumenical” genre175 which mediates between facts and fiction, and autobiography and ethnography as well as interlacing various discourses, literary categories and social codes.176