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Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition

Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 was a failed Swedish effort to reach the North Pole, resulting in the deaths of all three expedition members, S. A. Andrée, Knut Frænkel, and Nils Strindberg. Andrée, the first Swedish balloonist, proposed a voyage by hydrogen balloon from Svalbard to either Russia or Canada, which was to pass, with luck, straight over the North Pole on the way. The scheme was received with patriotic enthusiasm in Sweden, a northern nation that had fallen behind in the race for the North Pole.

Andrée ignored many early signs of the dangers associated with his balloon plan. Being able to steer the balloon to some extent was essential for a safe journey, but there was much evidence that the drag-rope steering technique he had invented was ineffective. Worse, the polar balloon Örnen (Eagle) was delivered directly to Svalbard from its manufacturer in Paris without being tested. When measurements showed it to be leaking more than expected, Andrée failed to acknowledge the risk.


After Andrée, Strindberg, and Frænkel lifted off from Svalbard in July 1897, the balloon lost hydrogen quickly and crashed on the pack ice after only two days. The explorers were unhurt but faced a grueling trek back south across the drifting icescape. Inadequately clothed, equipped, and prepared, and shocked by the difficulty of the terrain, they did not make it to safety. As the Arctic winter closed in on them in October, the group ended up exhausted on the deserted Kvitøya (White Island) in Svalbard and died there. For 33 years the fate of the expedition remained one of the unsolved riddles of the Arctic. The chance discovery in 1930 of the expedition's last camp created a media sensation in Sweden, where the dead men had been mourned and idolized.


Andrée's motives and mindset have been the subject of extensive fictional and historical discussion, particularly inspired by his apparent foolhardiness. An early example is Per Olof Sundman's fictionalized bestseller novel of 1967, The Flight of the Eagle, which portrays Andrée as weak and cynical, at the mercy of his sponsors and the media. Modern writers have been generally critical of Andrée.

(in Swedish). Gränna, Sweden: Grenna Museum. Archived from the original on 9 February 2009. Retrieved 5 February 2009.

"Andréexpeditionen Polar Centre"

; Frænkel, Knut; Strindberg, Nils (1930). Med Örnen mot polen: Andrées polarexpedition år 1897 (in Swedish). Stockholm: Bonnier. SELIBR 1313686. A digital version is available at Project Runeberg (accessed on 16 April 2014). The London edition of the English translation, by Edward Adams-Ray, is The Andrée diaries being the diaries and records of S. A. Andrée, Nils Strindberg and Knut Fraenkel written during their balloon expedition to the North Pole in 1897 and discovered on White Island in 1930, together with a complete record of the expedition and discovery; with 103 illustr. and 6 maps, plans and diagrams (1931); while the New York edition of the same translation is Andrée's Story: The Complete Record of His Polar Flight, 1897, Blue Ribbon Books, 1932.

Andrée, Salomon August

Stefansson, Vihljalmur (1939). Unsolved Mysteries of the Arctic. New York: MacMillan.

. www.ballong.org (in Swedish). Swedish Balloon Federation. Retrieved 16 July 2011.

"Andrées färder"

Bellows, Alan (2013). . Damninteresting.com. Retrieved 9 September 2013.

"Andrée and the aeronauts' voyage to the top of the world"

(in Swedish). Grenna Museum. Archived from the original on 1 March 2007. Retrieved 5 March 2006.

"Andrée biography"

Kjellström, Rolf (1999). Wråkberg, Urban (ed.). "Andrée-expeditionen och dess undergång – tolkning nu och då". The centennial of S.A. Andrée's North Pole expedition (in Swedish). Stockholm : Center for History of Science, Royal Swedish Academy of Science (Centrum för vetenskapshistoria, Kungl. Vetenskapsakad.), cop. 1999: 44–55.  3072403.

SELIBR

Lundström, Sven (1997). "Vår position är ej synnerligen god-": Andréexpeditionen i svart och vitt (in Swedish). Stockholm: Carlsson.  91-7203-264-2. SELIBR 7622239. Lundström is the curator of the Andreexpedition Polarcenter in Gränna, Sweden.

ISBN

Martinsson, Tyrone (2004). . Research Issues in Art Design and Media (6). ISSN 1474-2365. Archived from the original on 3 October 2011. Retrieved 27 February 2006. This paper is based on Martinsson's doctoral dissertation from 2003.

"Recovering the visual history of the Andrée expedition: A case study in photographic research"

Archived 4 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine, an extensive archive of American daily newspaper articles 1896–1899, from reports of the preparation and the launch to guesswork and rumours about the explorers' fate. Accessed on 5 March 2006.

"The Mystery of Andree"

Personne, Mark (2000). (PDF). Läkartidningen (in Swedish). 97 (12). Stockholm: Sveriges läkarförbund: 1427–32. SELIBR 8257938. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 March 2009. Retrieved 13 March 2006.

"Andrée-expeditionens män dog troligen av botulism"

Stefánsson, Vilhjálmur (1939). . London: G.G. Harrap & co. ltd. SELIBR 1787910.

Unsolved mysteries of the Arctic

Sörlin, Sverker (1999). Wråkberg, Urban (ed.). "The burial of an era: the home-coming of Andrée as a national event". The centennial of S.A. Andrée's North Pole expedition. Stockholm : Center for History of Science, Royal Swedish Academy of Science (Centrum för vetenskapshistoria, Kungl. Vetenskapsakad.), cop. 1999: 100–11.  3072412.

SELIBR

(1967). Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd (in Swedish). Stockholm: Norstedt. SELIBR 8216860. Translated in 1970 by Mary Sandbach as The Flight of the Eagle, London: Secker and Warburg. The 1982 film Flight of the Eagle by Jan Troell is based on this novel.

Sundman, Per Olof

Tryde, Ernst Adam (1952). De döda på Vitön: sanningen om Andrée (in Swedish). Stockholm: Bonnier.  1449025.

SELIBR

Pavlopoulos, George (2007). . New Reviews. Archived from the original on 2 April 2012. Retrieved 13 May 2008. A novel in Greek about the echo of that expedition today, in Western societies. "Alexandria Publications" (in Greek). Alexandria-publ.gr. Archived from the original on 4 March 2012.

""300 Kelvin degrees in the afternoon". ("300 βαθμοί Κέλβιν το απόγευμα")"

Sollinger, Guenther (2005), S.A. Andree: The Beginning of Polar Aviation 1895–1897. Moscow. Russian Academy of Sciences.

Sollinger, Guenther (2005). S.A. Andree and Aeronautics: An annotated bibliography. Moscow. Russian Academy of Sciences.

(1968). Ingen fruktan, intet hopp: ett collage kring S.A. Andrée, hans följeslagare och hans polarexpedition (in Swedish). Stockholm: Bonnier. SELIBR 884831.

Sundman, Per Olof

(2014). The expedition: the forgotten story of a polar tragedy. Head of Zeus. SELIBR 17213401.

Uusma, Bea

Wilkinson, Alec (2012). "The Ice Balloon. S. A. Andree and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration".

Andrzej M. Kobos , high-quality photos from the expedition. (in Polish)

"Orłem" do bieguna

by MacDonald Harris, New York, Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1976, is a fictional account of a polar expedition that bears a striking resemblance to and was presumably inspired by, S. A. Andrée's expedition. ISBN 0-374-10874-9 ISBN 0-380-01739-3.

The Balloonist

drawing of ill-fated Andree balloon flight top page 26

"Why Go To The Arctic", January 1931, Popular Mechanics

bbc.co.uk video

"Ice Balloon: Doomed Arctic expedition to the North Pole"

Bellows, Andrew (24 June 2013). . DamnInteresting.com. Retrieved 9 September 2013.

"Andrée and the Aeronauts' Voyage to the Top of the World"

at Dartmouth College Library

William Hillman Collection on S. A. Andrée's ill fated balloon expedition