Ejnar Mikkelsen (1880–1971)

Originally published in Danish in 1955 as “Two Against the Ice,” “Against the Ice” is the incredible arctic exploration story of author Ejnar Mikkelsen, a Danish explorer, and Iver Iverson, his “compatriot,” in 1910. Their journey spanned 2,500 miles round trip over three years during which the two experienced the absolute worst of arctic exploration: life threatening frostbite, unspeakable hunger, scurvy, and a despondency that would have caused any other human beings to just lie down and die. I listened to the audio book, beautifully narrated by Tristan Wright. The purpose of their trip was to locate maps and journals of previous explorer Mylius Erichsen leader of a failed Danish expedition. The two found the diaries in a cairn and took them back to the site of their ship, which was crushed by the ice with no sign of their fellow expedition crew. Mikkelsen and Iversen waited two years in a small, broken down hut for a sealing vessel to rescue them. The significance of Mikkelsen and Iversen’s exploration was to prove through the diary and cartographic drawings that the land explored by American Robert Peary in 1892 was Denmark’s rather than American’s. The story is difficult to read and/or listen to because of the incredible suffering the two men endured. I kept wondering how the story got out to be told since, surely, they could not have survived. Then it dawned on me that, of course, they did survive. The book is beautifully written, and that alone, aside from the amazing story, is worth the time it takes to read it. If, however, you do decide to read “Against the Ice,” be prepared to have your emotions challenged. It is a difficult story to read.… (més)

Published in 1955, and based on the diaries of the participants, this is the true story of an expedition to Greenland in 1910-1912, led by Danish explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen and accompanied by mechanic Iver Iversen. Their goal was to find the journals of a previous expedition, whose members did not survive. Their journey took them through severe terrain in extreme cold. They faced starvation, scurvy, exhaustion, and polar bear attacks. It is a story of the golden age of exploration, prior to any form of technology that could have assisted in their rescue. It is a gripping tale of the limits of human endurance and how a positive mental outlook helped them endure. It is amazing that these two men were able to maintain their camaraderie for almost three years alone on the Greenland ice cap. It is a remarkable tale of survival and highly recommended.… (més)

The Publisher Says: The harrowing, amazing, and often amusing personal account of two mismatched Arctic explorers who banded together to keep themselves sane on an historic expedition gone horribly wrong

Ejnar Mikkelsen was 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 an incredible journey during which they would suffer every imaginable Arctic travail: implacable cold, scurvy, starvation, frostbite, snow blindness, plunges into icy seawater, impossible sledding conditions, Vitamin A poisoning, debilitated dogs, apocalyptic storms, gaping crevasses, and assorted mortifications of the flesh. Mikkelsen’s diary was even 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 as well as their humor.

Indeed, what may have saved them was their refusal to become as desolate as their surroundings…

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who co-adapted the book into a screenplay, provides a new foreword to this brand-new edition of the classic exploration memoir, which was one of The Explorer’s Club’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century.

Originally published as Two Against the Ice: A Classic Arctic Survival Story and a Remarkable Account of Companionship in the Face of Adversity. Translated from the Danish by Maurice Michael.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: It was the Postscript that did me in.

Ejnar, a man I'd come to see as a massively egotistical narcissist and manipulative user by now, became an old, old man out of his time and out of his element. Writing in the 1950s about the world he had thought inviolable forty years before, he sounded like I feel in this hideous, distorted Hellscape of a 21st century, hag-ridden by preachers and haters and assorted other lowlife scum empowered by their lack of opposition to usher in Armageddon seemingly at will. His awe at a 12,000-horsepower diesel motor that powered US forces (whose presence as saviors there must have rankled at least a bit, given the impetus for his entire ordeal in 1910) to victory over the Nazi regime's outpost in Greenland, was unbearably poignant to me.

This world has never stood still. It is hard for me to remember that punch-card tabulating machines were the dernier cri, unimaginably advanced tech, to Mikkelsen. He died in 1971, so he lived to see Humankind step on a different world. A man whose life was almost lost because his technology was not up to the job of taking him to a very harsh and hostile environment here on Earth watched people walk on a place that makes Greenland look like the Riviera.

Wow.

But what made this read come alive for me, what caused the whole exercise in storytelling to be extraordinarily enhanced, was the extraordinarily beautiful and accurate adaptation. I don't like Mikkelsen any more than I did...he plays Iver's heartstrings like a virtuoso violinist...but he, as Coster-Waldau embodies him, truly reciprocates the devotion and affection Iver offers to him. That he found this in the text, that he saw the truth of their mutuality and interdependence was enough for me to overlook the sheer absurd heteronormative gloss of the thing. Days in the film version are numbered, and the count becomes astonishing...Day 793 is memorable...and a deeply affecting and effective way to offer the experience as the supreme ordeal that it truly was.

Maurice Michael, the translator whose work was largely unsung for generations, rendered Mikkelsen's prose so beautifully that there were moments I sat still and just...was...in the moments depicted. No, quoting them out of context won't do a damn thing because there's just no way to being their most important advantage...interrelationship...with them.



These photos are in the book, and are astounding to me...that they survived, that they made themselves records like this, what a miracle that must've seemed to the men of the 19th century! And I, stuck to my bed by disability, can not only reproduce the photos with a few clicks of a computer's mouse. These are the two men themselves...the resemblance of Coster-Waldau to Mikkelsen is remarkable.



The film, the story of it, is also very interesting, and I encourage you to look into it. More important to me than that is to say that I, who absolutely abhor animal cruelty in my reading, was deeply upset by the treatment of the dogs in this tale...not because it was cruel, but because it was necessary and because the men were quite upset by it on more than one level. This is not a straightforward triumphalist tale of Conquering The Elements. This is the reckoning of a life lived on his own terms delivered by the man who grew and changed, who resulted from the brutalizing battle to survive that would've killed anyone not as powerfully self-motivated and indomitably self-willed as Mikkelsen was.

Truth be told, it's just the fact that had such good luck in his filmic avatar that rescued him from my "that whole postcard thing is a stupid, bad smokescreen" judgment of his manipulative and overbearing character. Had I not been made to see the vulnerable side of him, I'd've stuck with "what a relic of a bad time" and missed the subtle and worthwhile nuances.… (més)