Three Long Christmas Treks, Wilhelm Eberhard’s Disappearance, and Captain Alfred Ritscher’s Stressful Journey Across the Ice

When Alfred Ritscher, Wilhelm Eberhard, Christopher Rave, Hermann Rüdiger, Einar Rotvold, and August Stenersen left Polhem, the temperatures were between – 20 °C and – 30 °C, which did not exactly make it easier to move forward. In addition, they left behind more and more luggage, including finally the methylated spirits and the cooking apparatus, although now they would get neither a warm meal nor warm tea. In the morning “there was a piece of frozen cheese. Afterwards one could nibble a piece of Plasmon chocolate. In the evening there was uncooked hard pemmican, which is not much of a treat, while it tastes excellent when cooked in pea soup” (Rave, 1913, 28). Instead of leaving the Nansen sledge behind as well, Rave shortened the frame by half and was thus able to pull his luggage. In front of the sledge, of the three dogs they had, only “the big yellow Caesar proved itself excellently as a pulling dog” (Rave, 1913, 28). Then, leaving a large sleeping bag behind, only four men could sleep at a time, while the other two stood guard outside for three hours and twenty minutes. Finally, they reached a wooden hut in Second Valley (Wijde Bay), where the Norwegians who had hurried ahead had already lit a warming fire and where hot tea was waiting for them (Fig. 4.1). They arrived there on October 4 (Aftenposten, 1913, evening: 1–2; Tahan, 2021).