A tale of survival in the Arctic tells the story of Ejnar Mikkelson's 1910 search for the diaries of a previous expedition, describing how Mikkelson and mechanic Iver Iverson suffered through three years of every Arctic misery, including starvations, storms, and shipwreck. - (Baker & Taylor)
First published in Danish as Farlig Tomandsfaerd in 1955 by Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag A/S, Copenhagen, Denmark, this tale of survival in the Arctic tells the story of Ejnar Mikkelson's 1910 search for the diaries of a previous expedition, describing how Mikkelson and mechanic Iver Iverson suffered through three years of every Arctic misery, including starvation, storms, and shipwreck. B&w historical photos are included. There is no subject index. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) - (Book News)
TWO AGAINST THE ICE is a classic tale of survival by an unheralded but important figure in the history of Arctic exploration. First published in Danish in 1955, it has never before been published in North America.
Ejnar Mikkelsen was a man devoted to Arctic exploration. In 1910 he decided to search for the diaries of the ill-fated Mylius-Erichsen expedition, which had set out to prove that Robert Peary’s outline of the East Greenland coast was a myth, erroneous and presumably self-serving. Iver Iversen was a mechanic who joined Mikkelsen in Iceland when the expedition’s boat needed repair. Several months later, Mikkelsen and Iversen embarked on a journey during which they would suffer virtually every travail in the Arctic repertoire: implacable cold, scurvy, starvation, frostbite, snow blindness, plunges into icy seawater, Sisyphean sledging conditions, Vitamin A poisoning, debilitated dogs, apocalyptic storms, gaping crevasses, and assorted mortifications of the flesh. Mikkelsen’s diary was eaten by a bear. Three years of this, coupled with seemingly no hope of rescue, would drive most crazy, yet the two retained both their sanity and their humor. Indeed, what may have saved them was their refusal to become as desolate as their surroundings.
“A classic of Arctic survival and a remarkable account of companionship in the face of adversity. ” -- From The Foreword - (Random House, Inc.)
Born in 1880, EJNAR MIKKELSEN was a veteran of expeditions to Arctic Greenland, Siberia, and Alaska before directing the ill-fated Alabama expedition. Following that ordeal, Mikkelsen continued to visit a realm that, for him, was an earthly paradise. He returned to Greenland in 1925, and again in 1932 as leader of an expedition that explored the same stretch of inhospitable coast he’d seen twenty years earlier. In 1964 he made his last trip; by this time Greenlanders were addressing him affectionately as “Grandfather.” He died in 1971. - (Random House, Inc.)
