Is there a Nation at North Pole?

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17527, 2 May 1925, Page 17

Is there a Nation at North Pole?

What will Captain Macmillan find in vast unexplored area?

( Written for the ‘ ‘ Sla~

ASSAULTS Oil the Arctic are being made at the present j time from two or three points, and all for scientiiic purposes, but of those now under way, that being conducted by Captain Donald B. MacMillan, U.S.N., has the strangest quest of all. His aeroplanes will fly over that vast stretch- of unexplored Arctic lying within a triangle, whose apices are N.E. Cape (Siberia), Point Barrow (Alaska) and the North Pole. Here, in this million miles of sea. ice, or land may lie—who knows what? j It has been hinted that a vast continI ent is here untouched, rich in metals j and minerals and perhaps peopled by ( the lost race of Norsemen, who disappeared from Greenland many centuries ago, and of whom the Eskimos tell as peopling a cuunrtv to the north. Captain MacMillan will make his base at Axel Ileibergland, which lies to the cast of Ellesmere Land, and from there will fiy out into the frozen wastes which stretch from there to the east and away north to the Pole. One of the most amazing theories of scientiiic possibility ever put forward was that contained in an article written by Lieutenant Commander Fitzhugh Green, U.S.N., and published in “ Popular Science Monthly ” some years ago—at the time of the proposed trans-Polar flight of the huge U.S. Navy dirigible, the Shenandoah. As an Arctic explorer i of wide experience, Commander Green made an exhaustive study of the fascinating possibilities of the discovery of , this lost nation. In 1913 Commander Green joined the Crocker Land Arctic Expedition and spent 3i years in Polar regions. In the %pring of 1914. with Captain Donald D. MacMillan, and two Eskimos, he sledged more than 1000 miles northwards across Ellesmere Land and out into the Polar Sea in search of land that tidal experts insisted must lie within the unexplored area. But his party only touched the fringe of this great space. What was his theory? He said. 44 In the centre of the unknown area of the Polar Sea may be discovered a vast continent heated by subterannean fires, and inhabited bj r the descendants of the lost Norwegian colony of Green land!” Here we have something new - and yet the story is close on a thousand years old ! A wild idea, it is yet encouraged and supported not only by * history and tradition, but also by the searching test of scientific analysis. A New Laud? According to Commander Green, there spreads, within the boundaries of the Polar Sea, the greatest unexplored area on the surface of the globe. One million square miles on which no human eye, so far as is known tor certain, lias gazed. Most of this enormous waste of waters (ice —perhaps land) lies on the Alaskan side of the Pole. On the European side lies Iceland, at a point corresponding roughly to the centre of the unknown area opposite it across the top of the world. A significant fact. Experts arc almost unanimously agreed that land lies in this area. Dr Harris, tidal expert at Washington, declared, many years ago, his firm conviction, based on the study of polar ocean currents, that there exists a large land mass near the North Pole. Add to this the array of evidence geologists adduce on the basis of ter-

rific vulcanic activity along a well-de-fined line leading up the North Pacific Ocean, through the Japanese Archipelago, and the fiery Aleutians, thence to the Pole. The seismic axis plotted on the globe, nearly bisects the unknown area. Further, were this line swung Through ISO degrees, it would touch Iceland, one of the most fiercely volcanic spots on earth. Not many years ago, in a particularly open season, Captain Keenan, an American whaler, reported that he saw land north-east of Point Barrow. Peary, the first man to reach the North Pole, from C3.pe Thomas Hubbard sighted distant peaks to the North-WESTI So much for the land The Probable Inhabitants. In 985 A.D., Eric the Red discovered Greenland. He brought back glowing tales of grassy fiords, long sunlit days, game-infested hills, ice-pans burdened with fat seals and bay r s teeming with fish. Colonisation began at once, and so true did Eric’s vivid tale prove that the Vikings prospered greatly. In the archives at Bergen may still be seen the receipts for their contributions in ivory and to the ill-fated Crusades. The last ship known to have returned to Norway from her Arctic colonies arived in the year 1410. We read that it brought back a rich cargo; that its report was of a happy, thriving Norse colony in the far north; of health and growing independence, despite their rigorous environment. Then, as 514 years later, Europe became a shambles, when war and then plague threatened civilisation. In jjthe early Fifteenth Century, pestilential diseaserail a ghastly race with a horde of human murderers, Greenland fell out of the minds of man, the Viking colony was forgotten, even the'sea route north passed out of memory. Where Did They Go? Over 300 years passed. Slowly Nature bred again in man the will to search her world for knowledge and

t wealth, and Greenland was rc-diseover-ed. Hans Egede established the first modern settlement there in 1721. BUT —the Norwegian colony of 10,000 people (perhaps 100,000) had. to a soul, disappeared! Tt has been called “The greatest riddle in the history of the world ” —this baffling mystery of the lost Norse colony. Where did they go? It is easier to say where they did not go! They did not go to sea, for they had but one or two ships, and Greenland, lying above the tree-line, did not provide timber for building more. They were not slain by Eskimos ; for the Eskimos are the most peace-loving people in the world, knowing no.thing of the art of war. It is doubtful that they were decimated hy pestilence, for germs do not thrive in the frozen north. What then? Examine the Eskimo tradition. It paints in vivid terms the white men swarming suddenly north to a wonderland, long known to the natives, but, because of the evil spirits there, shunned by the Eskimo. Even to this day they say: “The land is warm; it is clothed in summer verdure the year round; it is populated by fat caribou and musk ox. It lies in the direction of the coastal trade route north.” This is the route taken by most American explorers. Peary, Kane and Ilayes used it, as it was not only the easiest but also productive of natural food in seal and walrus. Hard as is this roiffce, it must have been less so to the hardy Norwegians whose forebears had spent ten generations within the Arctic circle. Lured to the North. Turn now to the ancient Norse colony. Picture the terrible position in which the deserted Norsemen in 'Greenland found themselves when no ships arrived from their kinsmen in the south. They had no outlet for their trade; no source of supply for the little but indispensable luxuries of life; no access to friends and families back

home. A generation—two, perhaps—of heartbreak and longing; unhappiness goading the younger men to seek a way out, to travel north in the hope that that way might be a route to southern lands. Suddenly, like a bombshell, there breaks upon the weary colony the wonderful news; “We have found a Polar Paradise! Sunshine! Game ! Grass! One moon's easy journey north! A short lap on the sea of ice! Come! ” What had they to wait for? A century had passed since the last ship sailed. The last man who had seen one from the Fatherland had died. The homeland was but a myth. So, as the Eskimo legend says: “ They packed and, singing songs, departed suddenly to the northward. They never returned.” This fact is not surprising whichever way we look at it. Think of 10,000 people on trek. Either they found a land of milk and honey in the centre of the polar pack—or they perished in the ice. But we can dismiss the latter surmise, for, even after one thousand years, traces of the lost Norsemen should have been found by our explorers of the arctic circle. It is perfectly logical to suppose that, instead, they found their polar Paradise and that their descendants are still there! Let us return to the scientific data upon which this assumption is based. Iceland’s collection of volcanoes is unsurpassed. She has 107 major craters within her tiny limits, and thousands of minor ones. Despite its arctic situation, Iceland has a temperate climate. The peace, health and prosperity of its inhabitants were sustained by its natural warmth during the 200 years of isolation from Europe that it suffered at the same time and for the same reasons that the Greenlandie Norsemen were deserted. Moreover, Iceland’s lava floxvs are not always from conventional craters. The greatest of them have come quietly from fissures in the level land, pointing to subterranean fires smouldering near the surface. Hot springs and boiling mud pools are found in every part of the island. Its mean annual temperature is 34deg Fahr., compared with Greenland’s (at the same latitude) minus 15deg Fahr. It is no idle dream to claim that Iceland has a mate across the Pole. Geographical twins are common on our globe-—Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope; tlie Mediterranean and the Caribbean Seas; islands off Alaska and Japan; New Zealand and the British Isles.

Weighing carefully all the facts available, the area of the new land should approximate 50,000 square miles. Its perimeter may be bulwarked by a 'quake-distorted range of mountains whose outer slopes are buried in eternal snow and ice, with twisting fiords penetrating the ice-gnarled frontier. Inside the mountains there may hang a veil of fog, the vapour of contrasting temperature. For here we may imagine the aspect changes sharply. Heat from a nether world defies the cold, and the white of snow and ice shades swiftly to the green of verdant pastures. We can imagine a land of human habitations where the descendants of the Greenlandic Norsemen live out their existence—this world of ours forgotten and by the world forgot! Does, a polar Paradise exist? If so, are the vanished Viking's descendants to be found there? Perhaps MacMillan or Amundsen may yet answer these questions.