Abandoned in the Arctic: Northeast Greenland National Park

There was a time in world history when the coolest thing you could be when you grew up was not an influencer or a music artist or a professional athlete. Back in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the ultimate dream job was an Arctic explorer. These were men who volunteered for suffering. They signed up knowing they might lose fingers or toes to frostbite, that their ships could be crushed like batch sticks by shifting ice, that starvation was not a possibility, but an expectation. They survived months of darkness, attacks from polar bears, and the slow horror of eating their own sled dogs just to stay alive. And when they finally emerged years later, gaunt and scarred, they were treated like legends. Newspapers flashed their faces across front pages. Crowds gathered to hear their stories. They were celebrated as proof of human endurance, courage, and national pride. These expeditions were framed as triumphs over the unknown, even when they left bodies behind. But what those headlines rarely captured was the cost. Not just the physical damage, but the mental toll. The isolation, the hallucinations, the slow unraveling that happened far from cheering crowds and patriotic speeches. And while some Arctic expeditions ended in sudden disasters, others ended in something more drawn out and unsettling. survival that went on for years long after the world stopped paying attention. Welcome to National Park After Dark. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to National Park After Dark. My name is Danielle. I'm Cassie. And we're going to somewhere that I love when we talk about in episodes, the Great North. The Great North. The North Pole, if you will. The Arctic. I'm so excited. The last time we've done an episode up here, I think was my, I don't know. I think of my hot balloon episode all the time, actually. I loved that episode. I love that you bring that up because I won't give it away now, but it comes up in this episode. Oh, crossover. Yeah. So put a little pin in that. It was episode 288 and you named it, Oh, the places we won't go. That's right. Wow. I re-looked it up because there's like a small little tie to that story and the story. Today, I'm going to be telling the story of a Greenland expedition and we're going to the largest national park in the world, which I feel like is about time that we dive into this place. And we are going to talk about some explorers, some Arctic explorers that went up there. We're going to be Arctic explorers in a year and a half. Yeah, we are. Here we come. Svalbard. I'm so excited. I'm ready. Okay, prepare me. All right. Let's jump into it. A young Danish mechanic named Ivor Iverson. I love that name also. Ivor Iverson. It's so funny to me. it's like they couldn't figure out a first name for their kids so they were just like let's just pick the first half of their last name yeah that's like if you were yanni yon yeah yonion yoni yonion or something like that la la rock yeah mine doesn't work as well that yeah yeah i'm glad i'm danielle i guess but yeah i'm also glad i'm not yoni although i think that's a real name yanni oh yeah yeah that's a real name but i feel like it's a boy name i feel like it's a famous musician is it yanni i don't know maybe i'm making i'm losing i don't know iver by itself is strange i feel like you should say iver i've told name together or just iverson maybe that's what they intended yeah like you will refer to our son as his full name iverson which i do throughout this episode. Oh, thank God. I hope. I'm glad. Anyway, a young Danish mechanic named Ivor Iverson found his new hero when he happened to pick up a magazine back in the early 1900s. There, he read about a Danish explorer named Enyar Mikkelsen, who'd just returned from the foreboding ice of Greenland with big news for the world. He had just proven there was no more land north of Alaska. Before this, maps of the North Pole were kind of a blank in the region, but now Michelson had filled in the map just by seeing it with his own eyes. Young Iverson read this news in awe, wondering if only he too could see such a place. And the magazine said that now Michelson was off again on a new polar voyage, this time by finding the lost body of his friend, another polar explorer named Ludwig Myleson Erickson. This friend had gone to northeast Greenland to find out whether it was one landmass or cut through the middle by a channel because that's what the famous American explorer Robert Peary had recently claimed. If it was true, that meant that half of Greenland might belong to the United States. The Danish desperately wanted confirmation that this was wrong. Milius Eriksson and his crew might have discovered the truth, except after setting out across the ice, none of them had ever been seen again. The Danish government wondered, could their bodies, and more importantly to them, could their journals and maps prove that Greenland was one mass, be found? So the government sent Michelson to find out. In June of 1909, young Iverson was stuck doing his job as a mechanic on an Icelandic ship called the Island Folk, or so he thought he was stuck there. Imagine Iverson's astonishment when he found out that his hero, Michelson, had just arrived and was in dire need of a mechanic after his own turned out to be an alcoholic and they had to drop him off at the Merris Island on their way north. Michelson's ship, the Alabama, was mostly a sailing ship, but it also had a small engine that was essential in ice, and that engine was already failing. So Iverson's captain offered him to help. And of course, Iverson was thrilled with this and descended into the belly of the Alabama, loudly singing his usual made-up songs as he tinkered around. Finally, he stuck his head above the deck and said to Michelson, Well, Skipper, just give the word and the motor will start. This was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. With Michelson in desperate need of a mechanic, his captain agreed to loan Iverson to Michelson for the expedition, and Iverson didn't need any time to think about it. He happily hopped onto the Alabama bound for Northeast Greenland on a polar adventure. And when they dropped anchor on the frozen shores of Greenland's Shannon Island, Iverson couldn't believe his eyes. He was seeing a world few ever witnessed, even to this day. Northeast Greenland is now home to the world's largest national park. It's 375,000 square miles. And to give you an example, I should have done this in now in retrospect. I should have done it in Titanic's. It's okay. I forgive you. I kind of want to look it up. I said it's as big as Spain and France combined. But how many Titanics is 375,000 miles? Square miles. Oh, square miles. It's 1.2 billion Titanic ships. Billion with a B. Wow. Yeah, that's a lot. It's really big. Yeah, it's the size of two countries. Yeah, combined. So if anyone ever asks you how big the largest national park is in the world, Fun. I feel like this could be a trivia question. It's 1.2 billion Titanics large. That's so big. If you know anything about Titanics or Titanic. Which is funny because the wild thing about this park is actually only 40 people have all of the space to call for themselves. And those people are kind of modern day polar explorers because they're mostly made up of meteorologists and other Arctic researchers. So it's very, very remote. Other people that are here are military personnel, which include an elite naval crew called the Sirius Dog Sled Patrol. This is a very remote park. You can't fly to an airport or rent a car to explore. It's not like you can just like go there and be like, hey, I want to come see it. Instead, you have to take a cruise around its perimeter. And if you really want to get into the interior of this park, you have to hire a sled team. And then they'll take you through. And as for wildlife that's here, only the hardiest creatures live there, like polar bears, narwhals, muskox, and walruses, and only some birds like the Arctic tern, the raven, and the ptarmigan. Have you read Migrations by Charlotte? No, but we've talked about it a lot. I feel like it comes up quite often. I read it recently and it just, it reminded me of that because the whole book kind of surrounds following the migration patterns of the Arctic tern. Oh, interesting. So I read about them a lot recently and I really liked that book because of this whole story too, I was feeling and with our upcoming trip for Svalbard, I was kind of feeling Arctic-esque for a book and I read Migrations and I really, really loved it. Maybe a book club read. We've read that author before, Wild Dark Shores for our book club too. That one was good. Well, going back into the park, this landscape hasn't changed much since the time of this expedition, especially in terms of how it's been built up within society. It's not been hundreds, over a hundred years from now, and now there's buildings or things that are there. It's still very, very remote. So what you might see now from a cruise ship wouldn't look much different than what young Iverson saw from the Alabama as he arrived to Northeast Greenland. And you might think of Greenland as flat or ice desert-esque, but in fact, it's a world full of beautiful mountains, bottomless crevasses, crevasses, not crevices, and vast fjords, all of them covered in ice of many colors and shapes. Upon their arrival, Michelson immediately set about preparing a search party to look for his friend, Mileyus Erickson, and his crew. Along with him was the second-in-command, Lieutenant Jorgensen, who would accompany him, but Iverson, even though he joined solely to be a mechanic, immediately volunteered to go as well. He saw this as his opportunity to be like, this is my time to shine. I can be an Arctic explorer. He had no experience with sled dogs, exploring the Arctic, anything like that. He was just eager and they agreed to let him go. They had purchased 47 dogs from an Inuit village on their way north. So they had all of these sled dogs with them. And now those dogs took the three men out to find the bodies, but the rest of the crew stayed behind because the Alabama had actually quickly gotten trapped in ice off the side of Greenland and they needed to stay behind to try and free it. Mickelson, Iverson, and Jorgensen intended to travel 330 miles across the ice to where they believed they'd find the bodies, but they couldn't travel as fast as they hoped because the ice wasn't thick enough. In fact, it was so thin that they could see narwhals swimming under their feet. that's really cool though so cool i would not want to break through the ice but what a sight whoa yeah whoa but despite this they pushed on and it was grueling conditions i meant to say this a little bit earlier but i'll say it now if you are listening and you i want to give kind of a trigger warning because this episode is an arctic exploration that has a lot of gruesome details in it, but some of it does happen to be around dogs and spoiler alert, dogs do die in this episode. So if people are not in a space to hear that, and I totally get that. I love dogs so much. You should know now and you should turn it off right the second because it's about to get dark. It's about to happen. And I'm not going to go into, I'm going to try not to go into too much detail throughout the episode of these instances in particular, because I know it's hard to listen to. But it is important for context of the story. So they're pushing on in these grueling conditions across these ice. These sled dogs are carrying them, their team, all of their supplies. And within the first kind of push, two of their sled dogs died under the strain and just lack of food and the environment. And it's really tough. And by this time, it was night all of the time that they were out there. Eventually, they arrived at the place called Lambert Land, where they did discover the body of Jorgen Broland in a shallow snow grave. Now, Broland had been an Inuit dog sledder and Arctic guide for the Mylas Erikson expedition. The three buried him properly and continued searching for his companions for several more days, but they never found them. Undoubtedly, the sea had thawed and refrozen, swallowing their corpses whole. The men reluctantly turned back for the 330-mile return trip to their ship. But now their supplies were running dangerously low. The sled dogs had so little to eat, they started killing and eating each other. And then Jorgensen's feet got wet and frostbite turned his feet black. When they finally arrived back at the Alabama, they went into emergency mode. They slapped him onto a table, gave him as much whiskey as he could drink, and cut his toes off one by one. Like, whiskey is not anesthesia. Whiskey is not enough. No. Yikes. I would hope he was blackout. Unconscious. Unconscious. One would hope. Arctic exploring is so fun. With this, Mickelson's second-in-command was now out of commission. But as any good polar explorer knows, the more impossible your mission, the more determined you are to achieve it. Mickelson's first attempt to reach the Arctic actually had come at the age of 16 when he walked over 100 miles from Stockholm to Gothenburg. This was an Arctic exploration that might sound familiar to you because he walked here to convince the explorer, S.A. Andre, to let him tag along on a hot air balloon trip to the North Pole. Andre turned him down he said that he was too young and he didn't want him on his crew which actually turned out to be a lucky turn of events if you've listened to Daniel's episode on this because after leaving they crashed into the ice after only two days leaving them to walk back without enough supplies and they starved or froze to death or both but this story didn't discouraged Mickelson. In fact, it only made him think I could do it better. And it encouraged him to get even more. He's like, all right, if you didn't let me on that expedition, fine, fair, that didn't go well. But now I'm going to get out here and I'm going to do it better. Everything's connected. All connected. When I read that, it was like, no way. But the story wouldn't exist if he was on that trip, probably. So basically, he was really inspired to be an Arctic explorer. And when he went out and he found a singular body and figured that most of this expedition with his friend who had been on had died, he wasn't finding them wasn't the end of this expedition because now he was searching for clues that he knew he could not return to Denmark without. He knew his friend, Mylas Erikson, had left behind cairns, which are giant piles of stone visible across snowy landscapes for miles. And for Arctic explorers, these rock piles served as the only form of communication between them to mark their location, but also they would leave behind letters and journals detailing their exploration in case anything happened and to leave kind of markers. So now that he had found the location of one person and figured that the rest of them their bodies were not able to be found now he was on a mission to find these journals and these documents that could detail whether or not they found out if Greenland was a single mass or if it was split up by two like the American explorer had said and thought So when spring came and these icy conditions thawed, Mickelson knew he had to go back across the ice and find these cairns and see what his friends had buried in them. Over the dinner table in the ship's hull, he asked the five remaining crew members who would join him on this voyage. Only young Iverson, who hadn't yet reached 30 years old, raised his hand. But he had no idea what horrors he was signing up for. Even though the rest of the crew were not interested in joining the full expedition across the ice, the crew tagged along for the first leg of the journey. Then Mickelson and Iverson parted ways with their companions. The crew returned to the ship, promising to wait for them and see them at the end of the summer. But Mickelson told them, if you don't see us, don't worry. Leave without us. We'll catch a ride on a passing ship. Which is a gamble, I think. That's bold. It's like, just leave us behind. There will be another ship. It's fine. It's like, do you know where you are? You're in the northern reaches of the world. We'll just hitchhike. It's cool. So they left. They went off without a backwards glance, not realizing that they wouldn't see another human other than each other for years. At that point, they had two sledges packed with provisions and sled dogs who could pull over 100 pounds each. By now, both men had become attached to their sled dog leaders. Mickelson even let his dog, Gurley, sleep in the tent with them, but he wouldn't let Iverson bring his own dog, Bjorn, in. The dogs pulled the sledges over steep mountain cliffs and wide expanses of frozen river. They even discovered that if they spit water on their sledge runners, it would freeze and make them move faster along the ice. So each morning they would do this, then set out, eventually getting into a repetitive daily routine that became second nature. But it was only a couple weeks after their departure that Iverson got cocky in his abilities in navigating the landscape and didn't slow his dogs down fast enough. The sledge went off a jagged crevasse, dumping a bunch of their supplies into the icy cavernous steps. Then, from over the cliff, Iverson heard a terrible sound. The howl of his beloved dog, Bjorn. The dog hung from its rope midair. Iverson scrambled to the edge of the crevasse as Mickelson screamed for him to retreat from the edge, but Iverson couldn't stand to abandon him. He tried desperately to pull Bjorn up to safety, but the rope broke with an awful twang and Bjorn fell to his death. Iverson watched him go in agony. Eventually, he realized his blunder had cost them even more than his favorite dog. He gathered the remaining supplies together and evaluated the situation. He had lost about two weeks of dog food, tea, and paraffin. It was a reality check for Iverson. He realized the Arctic could kill you and everything you love in a blink of an eye without a moment's regret. After that, he drove his dogs with a new sense of mortality weighing on his mind. While they had packed a lot of provisions, one thing the men did not take along the voyage was any reading material. They had absolutely nothing to entertain themselves with, but a postcard Iverson happened to bring along of a group of young nurses standing in front of a hospital. It's like, just bring a photo of women. They're still just men. Oh, my God. Something's never changed, truly. Over hundreds of years. Yeah, no. Always the same. So this was their form of entertainment. And in the evening, by light of their waning lantern, they'd study the women's faces. They didn't know them, but they would name them. They would say things like, this one should be called Miss Affection. This one, Miss Sunbeam. This one, Miss Sulky. Miss Long. Miss Short. Miss Steadfast. They came to feel as if they knew these women personally because they would make up personalities for them. It warmed their hearts and their beds a little. and they took their minds off the ravenous hunger eating them from the inside. Then they'd get up and load the sledges and keep heading north, now over 100 miles away from the Alabama. Iverson kept himself company on the sledges, singing his made-up songs, Alone, alone, quite alone, between heaven and earth, alone with dogs and ice, alone, quite alone. I would just sing these with Mickelson being like, I get it, we're alone. i would that i know you ever think about whistling and you hate when people whistle i do i hate when people sing like that to themselves just like making up things do you ever sing to chaska yeah but that's different okay i'm like i sing to the dogs all the time once you be like who's the best boy in the whole wide world you're the best boy and i'll just do stuff like that all the time yeah no that's completely different if he's singing to the dogs or sing but i'm talking about when people just like kind of hum or sing to themselves when they're working away or doing something you know what i mean it's just yeah grating to me yeah that's how this would drive me insane but it's just beginning you said they they're you know just a hundred miles away from the alabama and this thing is going to last years i don't know how they don't kill each other but yeah they try it's not great all the time they're not they're not thriving that is for sure they didn't bring anything to read which is wild crazy although like that would add more weight so i feel like you could bring one book and then you just have to read it over and over again which is something you know yeah or even if they each had a book you could switch No, you switch off back and forth for five years or however long this lasts. I think that every single expedition story we've ever spoken about, they always have reading material. Every single one. Because you're just out there. I feel like I'm one of those people who's like watching the Olympics and being like, you stupid idiot. Why didn't you like whatever? If that were me, I would have never done that. So I feel weird saying this, but I feel like that is such a strange move. I will say this is Iverson's first expedition. Maybe he truly just didn't know. Is he the one that brought the picture of the nurses? Yeah. Okay, he knew enough that he was going to want to look at girls. Yeah. But he doesn't want to enhance his mind. Classic. Classic. so funny almost three months into their journey on may 22nd they finally saw something on the horizon they drove their dogs faster towards it and realized they'd finally found one of the karens left behind by the milas erickson denmark expedition they tore into the pile of rocks to see what was in the hollow center. A note from Erickson from before his journey had gone badly reporting all was well. It was the first of the five Karens come to find out. Then when the men opened up the fifth, they discovered the letter they'd risked their lives for. In Mileyus Eckerson's handwriting, Mickelson read the words aloud to Young Iverson. We reached Perry's Cape Glacier and discovered that Perry Channel does not exist. Navy Cliff is joined by land in Halprin Land. So there you had it. The two men fell against the ice in amazement. America had zero claim on Greenland after all, since there was no channel cutting it in half. Later, suspicions arose that the American explorer Robert Peary had actually lied about seeing such a channel just to make it easier for the country to lay claim to this Arctic treasure. I know that this conversation has come up a lot in conversation recently because we're seeing this administration is also trying to take over again. And this is kind of like a full circle moment. So I kind of wanted to just talk about a little bit of why America is so and has been so interested in Greenland as a whole. Okay. So if you've been wondering why we're so interested in the 1900s and now, why do we want it so badly now? It's because ice and ice melts. And if and when a channel ever does open through its center, it'll give the US greater military access to the Arctic to protect the country against Russia and China. So it's a strategic military move. Plus, underneath all the melting ice, the land holds a vast wealth of minerals. Now, perhaps more valuable than ever. The climate crisis is accelerating this melting of Greenland's glaciers, and scientists are terrified that huge chunks of ice could break off and cause major sea rise around the world. In fact, the Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the world. So Greenland's riches will soon be laid bare for the taking. The U.S. wants to lay claim to all the rare earth's minerals necessary to build the batteries and electric vehicles for the future. So although it's kind of funny if you really think about it, because this administration a lot of times claims that climate change is a hoax. But in fact, just the fact that they're going after Greenland is kind of them admitting that it's real. Because if climate change is real and Greenland melts, we're going to get all of these resources to build a lot of non-renewable energy resources that we could claim to. But we'll only get that if climate change is real. So the fact that this administration wants Greenland is them admitting that climate change is real. Yeah, it's very indicative of what they're true. Yeah, it's going against what they're saying. you know, but it's like, okay, well, your actions are telling another story. And you're benefiting from. Yeah. I'm just kind of looking at the map here. Just, I don't exactly know where this supposed passage was supposed to be on this big landmass, but I'm kind of looking and I know it's definitely not close, but relatively based on my little dot here in Southern Maine, the Southern tip of Greenland doesn't look that far. it's really not so I have never been to Greenland but I've flown over it when I went to Iceland and the flight from Boston to Iceland I believe was six hours and we flew over Greenland not to get there yeah to get there so I mean for a flight from here to Greenland is not from the east coast is not that far what have we been doing what why am I want to go there so badly especially ever since I flew over it I flew over it during the day and it was a crystal clear bluebird day I could see right down to Greenland I could see like I could see so clearly the ice floating around the actual continent and I could see the breakage I could see boats down there I could see home like the colorful homes and stuff when they flew over and I could see the vast stretches of mountains and glaciers. And it was so beautiful. And I've had Greenland on my mind ever since. I actually have a picture on my phone from when I flew over Greenland. I have actually like 50 photos on my phone of when I flew over Greenland because I was like, what is this place? It's so beautiful. Okay, so this can be a conversation afterwards. But why don't we like go there? Well, yeah, because you know, I'm going to Nova Scotia in May. Yeah. Are we still out there with all this stuff going on? I don't know. I hope so. I don't know. I'd like to visit. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. Because if I'm in Nova Scotia, I'm even closer. I love that this story is inspiring our own travels. We hope that people listening right now are also like, wait a second. Should I go see the Arctic? The answer is yeah, for sure. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let's we'll talk about it after. Sometimes I forget we're in the middle of a recording. But okay. Yeah. I forgot what we were even talking about. Oh, yeah. So basically, I was just talking about why Greenland is so sought after. And it's because just to pull it all together, it's because one, it's a military, it's a strategic military position. If there is a channel that opens up for that reason, but also the minerals that are lying beneath the ice. And going back into the story, he just discovers that the Percy Channel does not exist. And this is the news that Denmark had been looking for. And they're very excited that they found the evidence that they were looking for. But all Mickelson and Iverson knew at the moment was that Denmark needed to have secure ownership of Greenland then and for the future. With the proof in their possession, they knew their country urgently needed to see this letter. they immediately set off on their 200 mile return trip back to the alabama but now at this point they only had seven dogs left one of them was mickelson's cherished dog girly who he refused to sacrifice to feed the other dogs and who got extra food and slept in his bed with him at night you're building up girly i feel like something awful is going to happen to girly and I'm mentally bracing myself. I call Ember girly. Oh, do you? Yeah, all the time. But they had very little food left. So little, in fact, that Mickelson soon started showing signs of scurvy, a sickness from his lack of vitamin C. at bed at night iverson saw his friend's skin mottled with black bruises his teeth grew loose in his gums and started bleeding he could barely walk across the ice anymore let alone climb up and down the mountains his legs and joints had become swollen like rotting melons and even when iverson urged his hero to eat, the man refused. Would this be the end of the great Mickelson? Iverson couldn't bear the thought. When they'd found some mold inside one of the Cairns, they nibbled at it. It counts as a vegetable, Iverson reassured his captain, but the mold didn't contain enough of the one thing Mickelson needed most, which was vitamin C. And I think this kind of paints a picture of Iverson too, because throughout this whole thing, he's singing, he's cheery, he's like upbeat, and he's like trying to keep things together and mickelson is very much more like this serious arctic explorer and even now in this time where he's seeing the guy who knows what he's doing and he's just kind of there for more it kind of feels like iverson is there more for moral support and he's doing all this too but golden retriever black hat yeah totally and now he's the one having to kind of take over. Iverson in this moment realized what he needed to do. He dumped some of the heaviest supplies so the weekend dogs could pull the sledge with Mickelson strapped on top. And never had Iverson felt so terribly alone. The only person who really knew what to do and his only companion was now pretty much down for the count and he couldn't even walk or help with the expedition anymore. They trudged on constantly in search of something to eat. Soon, Iverson could contract scurvy himself, and that deeply worried him. Their only hope was for him to hunt something down, but they saw no muskox, no walrus, nothing. Then one day along the shore, he spotted a flock of gulls. He snuck up and shot several of them. Then he brought the carcasses back and laid them at his friend's feet and started ripping into their flesh. He and Mickelson ate the birds, only slightly cooked, guts and all. At first, Mickelson seemed apathetic, his gums bleeding when he chewed, but Iverson prodded him until his body realized that this was what he needed most Then they gobbled the meat down picking at the carcasses But Iverson could tell right away the meat was getting them the vitamin C they needed so urgently So off he went to kill more gulls. The bloody bones of dozens of birds soon piled up around their camp, and it wasn't long before Mickelson was back on his feet again. And just the fact that his teeth were loose and like falling out. And that's all I could think of during this whole thing. I'm like, Oh my God, no wonder he doesn't want to eat. Like, God damn. Yeah. You have to chew this, but the only way to get better and you're eating half cooked meat, but you have to be so hungry to be eating half cooked bird meat and your gums are falling out and you bruises all over your body. And yeah, but within this, I mean, they're eating all the food because they need it really bad. And the dogs weren't doing nearly as well as them. Iverson had to keep killing them to feed the others, which was just one of the most horrific parts of the story, I think, to have to choose the dogs that are the weakest and then feed those dogs to your dogs. It's brutal. One night, still starving and lacking so much food because they're only hunting occasionally, they ate dog meat for themselves. Iverson set aside the dog's liver and said, we shouldn't eat that because it was surely toxic since the dogs had been exhausted and starving. but it felt like such a shame to waste such a large slab of meat. Mickelson said he had heard of an old wife's trick to test whether the liver had gone poisonous. He said all you had to do was put a silver spoon in a dish with the liver, and if it didn't turn green, it was okay to ingest. Mickelson unwounded a silver chain he wore around his neck and then hovered over the pot watching to see if it changed color. Nothing happened, so they cooked the liver up and ate it. They went into bed and didn't wake for over 24 hours after that. When Iverson finally came to his head felt like he drank way too much at the pub and they had gotten severely sick. So it was clear that this liver, the old wives trick that didn't work, did not work even slightly. You don't say it seemed like hard and fast to me to knock you out for 24 hours. and then you wake up feeling like you just died and had the worst. It sounds like they woke up feeling like they had just gone on a binge. Yeah. Gone on a binge and woke up and were like, where am I? Just feeling like absolute shit. And I was like, oh, that liver was not the best. I guess it was bad. But they woke up, so that was good. And they woke up and they're like, well, we got to keep going. So they just trudged on. Meanwhile, Iverson kept hunting for gain. One night while out stalking walrus, he heard a bone chilling sound and ran back to camp. He found a polar bear dragging Mickelson across the ice and dead dogs scattered around the camp. Shut the fuck up. What? Just attacked by a polar bear. The polar bear killed a bunch of dogs. And then he was dragging Mickelson across the ice. Sorry, I feel like I kind of knew the story. I don't know this detail. yeah it's the story is wild and there is a movie on it and they just don't they don't include all the detail no they don't the movie doesn't include a polar bear attack which is crazy they include a polar bear instance but not this no not this and not that i've watched the movie recently i watched it a couple years ago but i would have remembered this part okay sorry yeah i watched it recently and it is not in there iverson's hands could barely hold his gun because he was so afraid of what was happening, but he took aim and fired. The bullet hit the bear's shoulder and he reared up on two feet, then turned back to Mickelson, his humongous paws stomping into the middle of his chest, and again, young Iverson fired. And the mortally wounded bear reluctantly retreated, diving into the ocean where he eventually died. But Iverson had to save Mickelson's life now. He got Mickelson into the tent and tended to his wounds. But now, after this attack, there was only one dog that remained, and that was Mickelson's beloved dog, Gurley. Gurley's sole survivor. Sole survivor. How injured is Mickelson after a polar bear attack? He was really caught up, and he had a lot of claw marks and stuff on him. But it seems like from the description that he hadn't like torn into his body as much, didn't bite him. It sounds like he really just like grabbed him and started carrying him away. So he had a ton of deep wounds, like scratches and stuff all over him. But he wasn't mortally wounded. I just envision this guy just basically incapacitated. His teeth are falling out. His legs are his legs are melons or whatever the hell. He is black and blue everywhere. and he's just probably hallucinating after the bad liver and then he's just laying there he's not doing well and then he's just being dragged away by this polar bear and i feel like he's just like jesus take the wheel if this is what you know like finally someone just take me out yeah oh my god and then yeah iverson comes and shoots the bear he's like god oh my god that was my out michelson not again why do i have to keep saving you keep going i'm worried for girly i'm stressed yeah girly is the sole survivor but she was in the advanced stages of starvation and also traumatized by the bear attack the next day mickelson put girly on the sledge and pulled her himself but one morning Gurley didn't wake up. She died next to him in her sleep. Oh, my God. Okay. I thought it was going to be a lot more tragic than that. That's a peaceful passing. It's like still awful, but it is a peaceful passing. And she was in bed with him. Yeah. Like sleeping next to him. In this moment, Mickelson wished that he could have buried her properly and leave a gravestone. And he wished that he could have written, Here lies Gurley, her little life of faithful and untiring service ended. But of course, he wasn't able to do that because they're in the middle of the Arctic. Following that, Mickelson burned the sledge and left behind most of their supplies. And onward, they inched because now they had no dogs to carry their supplies. So they just kind of had to leave it. I just can't believe this guy is on his two feet. He just got dragged by a polar bear. What? He got dragged by a polar bear. He had scurvy, but he's doing better because he got food. He's missing some teeth. Iverson's still just hanging out Iverson seems like he's doing okay have you seen the new Frankenstein I haven't okay it's just it's giving me a visual in this version of or this telling of the story in this movie there are scenes of Frankenstein like being blown up on the ice and stuff and just still staggering back to life and just dragging on he's like god like just can't die type of thing and that's what i'm envisioning michelson as jacob lordy as frankenstein but i do want to see it i just watched weathering heights oh my god i had a dream last night of jacob lordy oh i'm riding that high honey i'm riding that high still to this the moment you know how sometimes dreams linger with you yeah and you're like god that was a good one yeah good one have you watched Wuthering Heights? No. I watched Dracula and that was enough for me to fucking, I know I hyped it up. I'm still recovering. I can't watch Wuthering Heights right now. Yeah, I have not read the book. I did try to read the book or I tried to listen to the book, but I was just having some trouble. Just the way it's written in the old timey language is kind of hard for me sometimes. But so I haven't read the book and I've heard that people who read the book don't like the movie, but it's an adaptation. It doesn't follow the book. which I thought was made pretty clear yeah I mean it's in quotes on the movie poster allegedly I really like the movie there's definitely some weird parts in it but I cried in the theater yeah and everyone around me was also crying so okay so I'm gonna stay away for now yeah like I said yeah Dracula was not my finest moment I went in high hopes and I crashed out so hard. I really wanted like a yearning love story. And so I wanted to go see it. I made Al go with me and I didn't tell him what it was about until we got there. And he liked it. Oh, good. Yeah. Is there yearning? Oh, there's so much yearning. Like I said, I'm riding this dream high. It was so nice. I actually woke up and that moment of you're still you're awake, but not enough that if you try hard enough, you think you could fall back into the same dream you were just having. Yeah. I tried really hard. Like I wanted to be, well, if you want more of him, I do. He, it's a, it's a really good movie. Okay. I really, he did great. Margot Robbie is just fantastic. He was just voted the most beautiful woman in the world or something. Like I believe it. I believe it. She is really beautiful. And have you ever, I forget this actress's name, but have you ever watched Joe dirt? no there's an actress in joe dirt and i can't think of her name at the moment but she looks exactly like margot robbie but she's older than her now because joe dirt's a pretty old movie and she was the same age as margot robbie is now in that movie and i thought forever they were the same person and then i did the math and i was like wait a second but they are identical it's crazy oh no i have no idea who you're even talking about they're not related or anything but they look exactly the same it's crazy if you ever watch joe dirt you'll see her and be like is that margot robbie it's not okay robbie i'll keep it in mind yeah okay well going back into the story after that so mickelson's fucked up mickelson is fucked up but they have to keep going and they're really hoping that they're gonna see the alabama soon and they gotta get back so onward they went scouring the horizon in hopes of seeing the mass of the Alabama or maybe even some smoke from their cruise fire, they had forgotten entirely that Nicholson had told them to leave them behind if they did not make it back by August. But August had long ago come and gone. They kept listening for the cruise voices, and they couldn't wait to see human faces other than each other's. With only 130 miles left to go, the explorers made it to Dan Markshaven, an outpost where the Milius Erickson crew had stashed some supplies in a cairn. The two wary travelers ripped open the rock pile hungrily. Inside, they couldn't believe their luck. Their friends had left them a huge feast. They left porridge, sardine biscuits, and even chocolate inside this can. The calories gave them fuel they needed for the last leg, but only barely. They eventually became so weak, they stashed all their belongings in a hole, their tent, sleeping bags, and even the captain's own journal and attempts to lighten their load enough to reach the ship. And this is the journal that they had been searching for this whole time. They left it behind because they're like, we can't carry a single thing further. Finally, on September 19th, 1911, they saw the mast and knew they'd arrived. But they didn't hear anything. They didn't see smoke from a fire. And when they reached the mast, they saw it was no longer attached to a ship. In fact, the Alabama was nowhere in sight. Mickelson knew right away what must have happened. The ship had started to sink, and so the crew had disassembled it. Now in its place stood a small hut the crew had built from the old wood from the ship. Above the door, they nailed the ship's sign reading the Alabama. And if you visit Northeast Greenland National Park, you can actually still visit this hut. A reminder of this real history, this hut is still very much in place. But so they got there and realized that their crew had built them a cabin, but their crew was not there anymore. The crew had actually caught a ride by a passing Norwegian whaling boat in mid-August and left them behind, just as Mickelson had given them permission to do. So a month before, because this is now September. Yeah. Okay. But they did also leave something else behind. They left plenty of provisions for another winter on the ice. Mickelson and Iverson moved into the hut to wait for a ship to come rescue them. They took turns scanning the horizon for someone, anyone to pass by. Iverson did his best to serve as a cook for his captain, but wasn't particularly talented at the task. Plus, they were constantly defending their food stores from wildlife. A family of Arctic foxes turned out to be especially clever at sneaking in and stealing their food. But then a larger scavenger came to their door, a polar bear. They used one of their few remaining bullets to scare it off. but maybe it wasn't that terrifying encounter with the bear that gave Mickelson an especially prophetic nightmare. In his dream, he saw the crevice in the rocks where they'd stashed all their supplies on their return trip, saw a polar bear nuzzling its nose down inside and tearing its claws to dig it out, and worst of all, saw his logbooks and diary devoured by the beast. When he awoke, he knew he had to go back to get his books. They all had his notes and maps and drawings, every detail of what they'd witnessed crossing Northeast Greenland. So I mentioned earlier, it was the notebook from the last expedition, but it was also his, all of his notes from the entire months that they had been here. And he had been meticulously detailing everything to come back with proof for Denmark of what he had found and they had left it in this Karen and now he had this dream of a polar bear just ravaging it and he was like we gotta go back we can't leave this any longer pay attention to your dreams and I've always said that I just don't understand it's like that is the entire point of you being here and you left them I know it's it was just the way of doing things clearly it's the way that the arctic explorers have been doing it but it just seems like the entire that is why you're there why are you leaving yeah behind and it's like what it's a few journals and notebooks it's not that heavy to carry yeah but you have to remember too is that they're they have almost no food they're trying to get every pound off of them every piece of weight. And also I imagine that their thinking just wasn't all there. I think maybe if they were well fed and hadn't been alone for months at a time, maybe their thinking would have been a little bit differently and a little more rational. But I think in this moment they were like, we just got to get rid of everything. We've got to, we got to make it to our crew. And maybe they were hoping their crew would be there and could go get it or something, because they were just in such bad shape. So they decided they need to go back. So they packed up and headed back to find their belongings, which was 130 miles away. And when they arrived, they saw that a bear had indeed shredded all of their stuff just as his dream had predicted. He found his precious diary in tatters. Mickelson cried out in dismay, digging in search of the log books. Nothing mattered more than this for him. There were no copies, just these fragile documents. He felt himself sweating inside his thick fur leather coat and pants but then his hand fell on the familiar logbook and pulled it into the light It was a little damaged but still in one piece He took off his mittens and flipped through the pages feasting his eyes on his scientific observations safe and sound. Imagine it's like like the excuse my dog just ate my homework. I don't I don't know what to tell you. A polar bear ate my you're never gonna believe me but you know that really important thing my entire assignment the whole reason i'm here and the polar bear got to it i don't eat it it's gone like what have you been doing for the past oh you didn't safeguard that with your life weird the whole reason you were there so he tucked the log book deep into his pack not leaving it behind this time, and they started the long cold walk back to their hut. They reached the little house and built a fire out of some of the ship's remaining wood, but still the temperatures never got much above freezing. They fell back into old habits around the place. It started to feel kind of like a home eventually. They even adopted some baby rabbits, putting them in a box and bringing them inside to care for and play with. They also tamed an arctic fox calling him their house fox and naming him prutt the boredom was its own kind of torture for iverson when he got a toothache he almost relished in it because it was something new for him to pay attention to something that broke up just this boring time here and for a toothache to be a form of excitement is is bad yeah you're in a dark place you're in a dark place if you're enjoying a toothache because it makes your life a little more interesting but imagine a house fox oh i know so cute and it just shows how much companionship they need i mean and they do have supplies now and provisions so they don't need to kill these animals to survive anymore but you're just all you have is to take care of yourself here and you're voluntarily taking care of a bunch of baby bunnies yeah and and you're hanging out with a fox which is really cute And then another breakup of just this, because I'm not going to go into their day to day because it was literally them just like sitting there, like looking at the horizon, looking for help, not really leaving because all their food's right there. But there was another time where Mickelson developed a boil on his neck and Iverson had to take his big hunting knife and lance it, draining the pus from it and bandaging it, nursing him back to health. So that was kind of this excitement that was happening for a little while because it was infected and it was this bad thing. So again, Iverson had to come to the rescue for Mickelson. Did Iverson ever get sick? Iverson's thriving. Okay. I mean, I wouldn't say thriving because he's like going through it too, but he's pretty. It appears like he's doing well. Yeah. All said and done. We'll get into it a little bit in a minute because mentally it starts to get tough. Of course. I'm sure. And of course, in this, their worst nightmare was having to spend another winter in this hut. They kept making trips out to an American depot called Bass Rock in hopes of catching a ship there. Twice, they discovered messages from ships that were searching for them. In return, Mickelson chiseled his initials and dates on a piece of driftwood. Then one time when they came, they found that a ship had just been there. So they're going back and forth and just missing. they had only missed this one by 25 kilometers and of course this news devastated them they returned from this depot just silent and glum and they're like i'm gonna have to be here for another winter we just missed this boat that's been out here looking for them and all they did was put out a piece of driftwood writing their date and name like we're here and hey don't Chuck is going to find them. Yeah, they're like, hello. Don't you dare leave. Come find us. We're right over here. It's like, we need you. By this time, Iverson started feeling himself going a little mad. Maybe it was the incessant howling wind, or maybe it was living on the verge of starvation so they could ensure they had enough food for another frigid winter. But one day, while out on duty watching the skyline for boats, he saw something out of the corner of his eye and turned to squint at the shape. He found it was his old grandfather sitting on a rock looking out to sea, huddled in his threadbare sweater, his long white beard ruffling in the wind. Iverson knew it was a hallucination or an apparition. The vision faded into a swirl of blowing snow, and Iverson thought, my grandfather has died. And later, he would come to find out that was true. Even their cherished postcard with all the lady nurses couldn't cheer the two men up. In fact, it became a source of sour resentment between them. They'd begun telling each other ever more detailed stories about their love affairs with their favorite nurses. The captain's girl of choice was Miss Steadfast, who he said was, quote, a pretty girl in a white dress and a free and easy attitude. But Iverson liked Little Miss Sunbeam best of all. In fact, surrounded by all the frigid white, he could barely think of anything else. She looked so young, so happy and smiling that it warmed Iverson's heart. But as Nicholson described his romantic exploits with Miss Steadfast, Iverson found himself dreaming of the captain's girl instead of his own. In fact, one day while he was cooking some porridge up for breakfast, he found himself singing one of his made up little tunes describing his own romantic adventures with Miss Steadfast. Maybe he thought he was making a joke or maybe he just admired the captain so much he wanted whatever Mickelson wanted. Either way, when he turned around to look at his friend sitting at the table, he saw an expression on his face he'd never seen before. Heartbreak and betrayal. It's getting bad. they're just dreaming of women they've laid claims on women they've never met before and they're getting jealous over each other like pining after each other's women from a postcard yeah they don't even know it's getting weird morale's low i'm morale is on the ground yeah It's in hell. All that day, stuck in that one room hut together in the middle of a polar winter, they didn't speak a word to each other. Iverson hadn't realized how much he'd begun to hold dear Nicholson's friendship. He felt like he had just done the worst thing in the world and he felt like he totally betrayed him and his captain would never forgive him. and as the day wore on and the silence became thicker Iverson felt worse and worse it's like dude you fucking saved this guy's life so many times you're the only reason he's alive but you just sang a song about his fake girlfriend or whatever girlfriend and now you've done the worst thing you could it's giving vibes of like the people that you see on my strange addiction with the dolls that they they're like oh this is my life and everyone has to believe it yeah because it's their thing or whatever it's yeah it's creeping me out actually yeah it's it's getting weird so he felt worse and worse so bad in fact that he couldn't he couldn't bear to even talk to him in person about it so he got up early and wrote him a note that said i'm so sorry i took your girl take her back take my four as well take the whole damn lot only to be cheerful again all right dude it's do they get saved soon i can't take it tell me a boat comes they got they got it it's getting bad they're not gonna make it too much longer that morning iverson went about making their breakfast tea waiting for his captain to finally find the note and soon iverson heard him chuckling and turning around. They both broke into laughter, realizing how an Arctic madness had taken over their sanity for a minute there. Iverson finally finished cooking up their breakfast and they sat down to eat it and just kind of laughed about it. They're like, yeah, that was weird. That was fucking weird. Sorry, man. I don't know what got into me. We got to get out of here. It had now been 28 months since they had seen any other people. The summer was halfway over and there were still no ships. They invented a card game and grew snippy with each other when they tried to agree on rules. Mickelson swept his hand over the table, sending the cards flying. And again, Iverson later apologized, but it was just another sign that they were at their wit's end. They needed help badly. They can't play cards. They can't talk about girls. Things are getting bad. And one morning, still asleep in their beds, they heard a commotion outside their door, and both men took up their rifles, sure it was another polar bear. They desperately needed meat, and a big bear would feed them for a long time. Mickelson ran barefoot for the door, but when it flew open, it was no bear at all. It was a crew of Norwegian sealers. They had found Mickelson's driftwood note, and the hunters had heard the Danish government was offering a reward for their rescue and thought to check Shannon Island. Mickelson and Iverson were saved at last. Give us your rifles, boys. We come as friends. The ship's owner, a big-shouldered fellow named Paul Linnaeus, said in a booming voice. And Mickelson laid it down gratefully, but the two men were such a shock to lay eyes on that one of the shipmates fled back to their boat in terror. the norwegians took a photo of these half wild polar beasts mickelson's eyes looked ready to pop out of his head his beard and hair like matted fur young iverson hadn't grown much of a beard just scraggly sprigs from his chin and upper lip but what if his eyes seemed swollen shut his hair standing straight on end i'm looking at this photo because you attached it to our like our management board that we use yeah and do you know that because i saw it you know a couple days ago i'm like oh she's doing this story coming up yeah so it's iverson on the left you said with the beard and stuff mickelson has the beard mickelson does not have the beard okay mickelson looks like no do you know who he looks like joe from you oh i could see that he looks like a really disheveled version you know when he like starts to go i mean he's always kind of nuts but like when he starts actually going crazy and he has like a beard growing in and stuff yeah i need to hear from people like because you're gonna post this right yeah this post this picture it's all i could think i'm like oh my god what are you doing here you're reincarnated as what's his i don't know the actor's real name the more you look at it it's not but like at first glance i can see it a little bit his eyes that's the eyes of somebody who's going through a life's journey for sure and the other one's just like oh my god i'm not even of this world like get me out of here i've been taking care of this man who was supposed to be my hero this polar expert who i've been taking care of for for a long time. Sorry, I just had to point that out because I was hoping you would bring this up so we could talk about it. But yeah, he looks like that guy. Yeah, I could see it for sure. So they're looking wild. But once they returned home to Denmark, the two cleaned up. Their homecoming made news worldwide. Now photos of Iverson himself appeared in those magazines that he loved so much, but their excursion wasn't as celebrated as perhaps Iverson would have wished. They didn't even get much credit for proving that Greenland was one landmass. Another explorer, an Inuit and Danish man named Nud Rasmussen, went down in history for doing that since he actually saw with his own eyes the bay that Perry had mistaken for a channel. He'd reached the bay right around the same time as Mickelson and Iverson were being rescued. In fact, Rasmussen had been trying to rescue them himself, but he got back before they did and reported the news that Greenland was one landmass before they even got there. Oh, an insult to injury. Why don't you? Not only are you not getting credit for it. It's like, yeah, we already know this, guys. It's like someone already did that. Old news. Old news. What are you doing? But for Mickelson, it wasn't about the glory anyway. It was about spending as much time as possible in the Arctic. His two years and two months stuck in Northeast Greenland with Ivor Iverson didn't deter him from returning one bit. In fact, only a few years later, he helped launch a scientific study of Southeast Greenland. And when he became Greenland's inspector general, he helped establish several Inuit villages in Greenland that still exist today. But young Ivor Iverson, his days of polar exploration were finished. He stayed in touch with his good pal Nicholson for decades afterwards, but his name disappeared from those magazines he loved to read. If you ever visit Northeast Greenland National Park, though, you might listen to the wind. Maybe you'll still hear his voice singing one of his made up little songs. Alone, alone, quite alone between heaven and earth alone with dogs, ice alone, alone, alone. yeah I don't blame him you know it's just like cut your just leave it as is don't push your luck it could have been so much worse he's like I had my arctic adventure that was the arctic adventure I'm good yeah it's like I'm just a mechanic that went on a side quest it lasted a little too long and it's so funny that Nicholson's the one who went back out because arguably he had it way worse Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's like, oh, I'm back. And I was like, I'm good. I did it. I did the most, actually. I'm good. And that's my story of their polar exploration of Greenland and how Greenland is one landmass and belongs to Denmark fully. and we've known that for centuries since the 1900s just in case anyone needed to be reminded yeah these two guys risked their lives to to tell us all do you want to plug the netflix movie that we both watched about it yeah it's called against the ice and it is on netflix you can watch it right there and it it's interesting because it doesn't follow the it doesn't give as much detail as I did today. There's also, Mickelson wrote a book about the whole journey. So you could read his firsthand account as well of what they went through. But the movie is, it's a good movie. It's intense. And you see kind of the hallucinations. They don't follow everything to the T, but they do really hone in on the hallucinations of the girlfriends and the theories of the girls. Yeah, I vaguely remember that. And I do remember, I don't know which one he played because again it's been years since I've seen it but the foe is one of them I don't know names of actors oh he always looks evil he looks like an evil guy I think that's Mickelson okay yeah yeah yeah cool nice well thank you everyone for joining and we hope you enjoyed it we'll see you next week in the meantime enjoy the view but watch your back see ya bye thanks for joining us for another episode we hope you learned something new and have another location to put on your list if you want more mpad content make sure to follow along with our adventures on all socials at national park after dark for more stories just like this one with the added bonus of exclusive content you can join us on patreon or apple subscriptions if you prefer to watch our episodes head over to our youtube channel and if you're enjoying the show please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite listening platform.