萨洛蒙·奥古斯特·安德烈1854—1897

Salomon August Andrée (18 October 1854 – October 1897), during his lifetime most often known as S. A. Andrée, was a Swedish engineer, physicist, aeronaut and polar explorer who died while leading an attempt to reach the Geographic North Pole by hydrogen balloon. The balloon expedition was unsuccessful in reaching the Pole and resulted in the deaths of all three of its participants.

Early life and influences

Andrée was born in the small town of Gränna, Sweden; as a child, he was very close to his mother, especially following the death of his father in 1870. He attended the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, earning a degree in mechanical engineering in 1874.

In 1876, Andrée traveled to the United States, where he attended the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, and was employed as a janitor at the event's Swedish Pavilion. While on this trip, Andrée spent his free time reading a book on trade winds and also met with an American balloonist, John Wise. This meeting sparked a lifelong fascination with aeronautics and balloon-travel.

Expedition to the North Pole

Supported by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and funded by various donors (such as King Oscar II and Alfred Nobel), Andrée's polar exploration project was a subject of enormous interest, being seen as a brave and patriotic scheme.

The North Pole expedition made an initial attempt to launch the balloon, the Örnen (eagle), in the summer of 1896 from Danes Island, to the west of the Svalbard Archipelago, but the winds did not permit the expedition to start. When Andrée next tried, on 11 July 1897, together with his companions, engineer Knut Frænkel and photographer Nils Strindberg (a second cousin of playwright August Strindberg), the balloon successfully lifted-off and flew for 65 hours.

Aftermath

Until Andrée's last camp was found in 1930, the expedition's fate was the subject of myth and rumours. At the time of the disappearance, it was noted that a heavy storm had been raging and that the balloon had lost its steering lines at departure. This led experienced polar explorers to surmise that the expedition could not have gotten very far and had probably been forced down onto the ice. In 1898, eleven months after Andrée's first sighting of White Island (which he called New Iceland), a Swedish polar expedition led by A. G. Nathorst passed offshore just 1 kilometre (0.6 mi) from the camp, but bad weather prevented their landing. The remnants of the camp were finally found in 1930 by the Norwegian Bratvaag Expedition, which picked up remains, including two bodies.

Modern assessments

Starting in the 1960s, Andrée's status as a national hero was increasingly questioned and a more critical, skeptical view began to prevail, in a way not unlike the changing assessment of Robert Falcon Scott's South polar journey. Emphasis has been placed on the view that the expedition was bound to fail, and that Andrée refused to take in information that questioned the expedition's feasibility. He also had limited flight experience with large balloons, and none in Arctic conditions. Andrée has been seen as a manipulator of the national emotions of his age, bringing a meaningless death on himself and his two companions. in Gränna, Sweden (see for example p. 131), and it is also a key underpinning of P-O. Sundman's two books, Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd and Ingen fruktan, intet hopp.

Legacy

Andrée Land in Greenland was named after him by Swedish Arctic explorer A.G. Nathorst.

The Italian poet Giovanni Pascoli wrote a poem about Andrée's expedition and death.

Andrée's writings were adapted into the song cycle The Andrée Expedition by the American composer Dominick Argento, written for the Swedish baritone Håkan Hagegård. Swedish composer Klas Torstensson's opera "Expeditionen" (1994–99) is also based on Andrée's story.

Historian Edward Guimont has proposed that the 1930 discovery of the expedition's remains influenced H. P. Lovecraft in the writing of At the Mountains of Madness.

In 1982, the Swedish filmmaker Jan Troell directed a film based on Sundman's book, Flight of the Eagle.