Explorers kept diaries mainly to publish them. Even when they accepted that they weren’t going to return, they often wrote in the hope of the diaries’ being found and having their last thoughts known. Like the notes of some suicides, explorers’ diaries sometimes followed their subject to the moment he lost consciousness. Andrée’s last entry might have been only a prelude to a gap in his attentions. He might have felt that he needed to establish a shelter and that he would write when he had, the way Nansen interrupted his narrative. After all, there was little else to do but write while waiting for the winter to pass. Or something may have happened to weaken him or make him despair and give up.
When they died isn’t known, but they probably didn’t last much longer. The evidence of their provisions and belongings remaining in the boat suggests that they had never really established their camp. There was also the driftwood that had been gathered in a pile but not used. Strindberg’s diary has a final notation, for October 17, “Home 7:05 a.m.,” but it is made in ink, whereas all the other entries are in pencil. Ink freezes. A persuasive explanation offered by scholars is that Strindberg made the notation before they left, expecting to arrive home in Stockholm by train at 7:05 in the morning.
What killed them isn’t known either, or even if they died from the same cause. People thought lead poisoning from the metal cans might have done it. Or an accidental gunshot wound. A drowning after a fall through the ice while chasing a bear or looking for driftwood. Dehydration. A psychotic episode of murder. Suicide using opium. Scurvy, or trichinosis, or vitamin A poisoning from polar bear livers, which are rich in it, or maybe botulism. A polar bear attack, or asphyxiation caused by fumes from a cookstove in a tent that was covered with snow and therefore unventilated.
Murder and suicide are unlikely, since their spirits appeared to have held to the end. On none of their clothes were any bullet holes found, nor did the skulls have any. Andrée’s gun was beside him, and his back was against a wall, so it isn’t plausible that a polar bear crept up on him. Strindberg’s vest and shirt had tears on one shoulder, suggesting a polar bear attack, but the tears were more likely caused by the bear that separated his skull from his corpse. They knew about the danger of eating polar bear liver and avoided it. In the late 1990s, a fingernail was found in one of their mittens and tested for lead, and it turned out to have a lot of it, but not a sufficient amount to kill someone. Three months isn’t long enough to die from scurvy, and they would have recognized its symptoms, prominent among which are bleeding gums, sunken eyes, and severe fatigue. Also the fresh meat they ate should have been sufficient to protect them. Trichinosis, which is common in polar bears, is not likely, either, because the diaries mention none of the symptoms of a severe infection—muscle pain and fatigue especially. (The runs are a symptom of its onset, but theirs disappeared once they began eating bear fat.) Asphyxiation doesn’t seem probable, because Andrée had wrapped his first diary in sennegrass and placed it at his back, against the rock, a gesture that he would likely have been unable to make if he had lapsed abruptly into unconsciousness. Furthermore it is not entirely certain that Andrée and Fraenkel were both within the boundaries of the tent. Botulism is prevalent in Arctic seals and might have killed them if they hadn’t been able to cook their food properly, and there is a question of whether the bacteria responsible for it can prosper in such cold.
Perhaps they simply wore themselves out dragging three- and four-hundred-pound sledges on long days through the Arctic for nearly four months while often not having enough to eat. The sailors from the Bratvaag, seeing the woolen jerseys and cloth coats that the three men were wearing, decided that they had died of cold and exhaustion.
A peripheral mystery is the order of their deaths. It is generally assumed that Strindberg died first. His being the only one buried supports this notion, but Andrée felt responsible to Strindberg’s family for bringing him home safely. It may be that Fraenkel, to whom Andrée felt no special obligation, died first and that Andrée and Strindberg might have been planning to bury him when Strindberg died and Andrée had the strength only to bury him. Or Andrée might have died before having a chance to bury Fraenkel. Something about the shared nature of Andrée and Fraenkel’s deaths, however, their being found in similar postures of resignation, as if they had awaited their ends, and close to each other, suggests that the assumption that Strindberg died first is true.
Their ashes were buried in Stockholm on October 9, 1930. For years Gurli Linder had kept a flower in a vase by Andrée’s photograph. “Then you came to Stockholm,” she wrote. “The King himself was there to hold a speech of welcome. I attended with Greta and Signe”—her sisters—“It was strange. I did not actually feel anything. It was as if it was not you, as if it did not concern me. All that happened since became unreal and irrelevant.”
Andrée had kept Linder’s letters in a box. Atop them he placed a note, meant to be read when the box was opened. “Thanks my dear for all the happiness you have given,” he wrote. “Forgive me for all the pain you have got. Forget me, but not totally! Farewell! Farewell! Your truly devoted.”
Linder wrote, “I can still feel the pain I felt when you said, ‘You or the expedition—it must come first.’ ”