The South Pole Sled Dogs and Their Teams
On the morning of October 20, 1911 (International Date Line-corrected to October 19, 1911), at the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition campsite near the Bay of Whales, five men exited from their snow-buried home fondly named Framheim. Each man was dressed in the warmest Inuit-inspired clothing and boots to battle the Antarctic elements. And all five men carried skis. Four of the men collected their 52 Greenland dogs from four of the large tents erected around the campsite. And the four teams of 13 dogs each were harnessed to the awaiting sledges. The sledges were light at first, loaded with just enough provisions to get the party to their 80° South depot, where 400 kilograms of provisions awaited each sledge, to be loaded and then pulled by the sled dogs for the Polar journey.
Roald Amundsen, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, Oscar Wisting, and Olav Bjaaland were embarking on the sledge ride of their lives. So, too, were the 52 dogs who were pulling them. Together, the human and canine explorers were ready to depart for the South Pole.
As Amundsen was to lead the party, serving as forerunner for the dogs, he had no sledge or dog team of his own but hitched a ride on Wisting’s sledge. The commander of this snow trek to the South Pole – the believer in dog driving and driven innovator of using dogs – himself had none to drive on this long-awaited Polar journey. The dogs were therefore distributed among the four men under Amundsen’s leadership.
The best and strongest dogs from the over 103 sled dogs at Framheim had been carefully selected to make this historic trip. These 52 dogs all were adults, and they included three females. Unlike the premature start in September, wherein most of the dog population had been employed to take part in that first attempt at the Pole – including the older puppies who had been born on the ship and all of the females – there were no older puppies chosen to be a part of this South Pole expedition, and only a few female adults were included. Most likely, the men did not choose any older puppies due to their being untrained, and they left behind some of the females due to the possibility of their being in heat.
Each man drove a team made up mostly of the dogs for whom he had been caring ever since the early days on the ship Fram, when they had first sailed with their passengers from Christianssand (Kristiansand), plus those dogs whom they had traded from the other men not going with them to the Pole – Hjalmar Johansen, Kristian Prestrud, and Jørgen Stubberud. The lead team was driven by Helmer Hanssen. Amundsen’s favorite team, with whom he rode, and who included his favorite dogs from his former sled team, was driven by Oscar Wisting.
Mylius
Ring
Zanko
Hök
Togo (also Tago)
Hai (also Haika)
Rap
Bone
Uroa (“Always Moving”) – originally Johansen’s
Helge
Isak – most likely went, originally Prestrud’s
Busaren (also Beiseren) – most likely went, originally Hassel’s
Tigeren (“The Tiger”) – most likely went, originally Johansen’s
Mikkel
Ræven (“The Fox,” also Reven)
Mas-Mas (also Masmas)
Else
Ajax – originally Prestrud’s
Knut – originally Bjaaland’s
Svarten (“Blackie”)
Nigger [sic] – originally Prestrud’s
Ulrik – originally Prestrud’s
Bjørn (“The Bear”)
Suvarow (also Suvaron) – originally Prestrud’s
Peary
Svartflekken (“The Black Spot”)
Obersten (“The Colonel”)
Majoren (“The Major”)
Suggen
Arne
Per
Rotta (“The Rat”) – originally Johansen’s
Uranus – originally Amundsen’s
Neptune – most likely on this team, originally Amundsen’s
Lasse (also Lassesen) – originally Amundsen’s
Fix (also Fiks) – most likely went, originally Amundsen’s
Lucy (also Lussi) – most likely on this team, originally Stubberud’s
Rex – originally Amundsen’s
Hans – most likely went
Kvæn (also Kvajn and Kven)
Lap (also Lapp)
Pan
Gorki
Jaala (“Heart,” also Jåla)
Karenius – originally Stubberud’s
Sauen (“The Sheep”) – originally Stubberud’s
Schwartz – originally Stubberud’s
Frithjof (also Fridtjof)
Fisken (“The Fish”)
Samson – most likely on this team, originally Prestrud’s
Fuchs – originally Amundsen’s
Knud – most likely went, originally Amundsen’s
Of Amundsen’s original team of 15 dogs from the ship and from the first two depot runs, only Lasse, Fix, Uranus, Neptune, Fuchs, Rex, and Knud set out on this actual South Pole trek. Four of these seven dogs worked on Wisting’s team. The rest of Amundsen’s dogs were deceased from exhaustion on the ice (five males had died on the second depot run) or from an accident on the ship (one female – Maren – had fallen overboard) or were females he had chosen to leave behind at camp (two – Snuppesen and most likely Katinka – remained at Framheim). (It must be noted here that it is not known for certain if Fix, the wolflike dog with the big bite, continued on this South Pole trek or if he returned to Framheim. Neither Amundsen nor any of the men referred to Fix at all during this trek. Later events, however, lead the author to believe that Fix at least began the trek with the men to the South Pole and then most likely returned to Framheim, as shall be addressed later in the narrative.)
As the 5 men and 52 dogs made ready to start their trek, their comrades at camp wished them farewell. The cook Adolf Lindstrøm, and the Eastern expedition party of Kristian Prestrud, Hjalmar Johansen, and Jørgen Stubberud, stood ready to see the South Pole party off.
The 52 sled dogs represented half of the number of dogs at Framheim, who by this time totaled approximately 103, leaving approximately 51 dogs at camp watching their comrades depart for – well, truth be told, no one really knew where their destination would be. But this did not stop their excitement and enthusiasm in seeing the South Pole dogs off with hearty howls and genial barking.
As for the four men being left behind, they had considerably less to say.
Johansen was self-conscious of his invisible role and his bitterly public ouster from the historic party. He felt he had helped Amundsen tremendously with the journey and the dogs and the depot trips, supporting him all winter long and leading the third depot tour. Now he was watching his own future depart with Amundsen, without him.
Prestrud did not know what to think. On the one hand, he may have been a bit relieved not to be going on this arduous journey with the other men and having to handle a sledge team of dogs for untold miles. On the other hand, he may have been feeling a bit of regret for not going.
And as for Stubberud, he was comfortable in his position and was probably more at peace with himself and his circumstances than his other two comrades at this moment. A few of the dogs he had personally cared for and trained were now going with the South Pole party, and perhaps he felt some satisfaction in that.
Lindstrøm, according to Amundsen, did not even come out of the house to watch the party depart but said his brief and simple goodbye indoors, as though the men would be returning the next day (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 1). Most likely, he was reading the signs that foretold good or bad luck and looking for any foreboding signals, in his superstitious and well-intentioned manner. It would be with these precautions in mind that he bid the Southern party men – and dogs – adieu.
The other three men bid their farewells to the Southern party in front of their home at Framheim.
Johansen watched wistfully as the five men departed “with 4 sledges and 13 exquisite dogs each, double rations pemmican for the dogs….” as he recorded in his diary the following day (Johansen Expedition Diary). Bjaaland had made some “flattering” remarks to him in private prior to departing, he said, but they did not make up for the fact that he had been excluded from making history – in a field within which he very much excelled. Amundsen, who had been “polite” but had “never approached” him – without it being absolutely necessary – since the falling-out over the premature start, now bid Johansen a congenial farewell as he left for the South Pole, and Johansen “wished him a good trip.” 1
From his perspective, Amundsen was the gallant warrior taking leave of his subordinates and leading his merry men and brave dogs to the mythical end of the world, ready to slay any dragons that may be encountered along the way, and putting his trust in all the knowledge and skills that he had acquired and learned as an explorer. While each hero has a secret strength or weapon, Amundsen’s was his dogs – they would see him to his goal, literally to the end of the earth. His words, written in his diary about this event, were brief, to the point, and carried a bit of heroic romanticism to them: “At last we could set off…. We saddled our steeds, 13 before each of the 4 sleds, and set out.” 2 If, in his mind’s eye, Amundsen was the gallant knight, his sled dogs were his valiant steeds – but in truth, they were much more than this.
The dog-pulled sledges took off, one by one, sled following sled, in a stately procession, rather than all together, observed Johansen (Johansen Expedition Diary). This departure was a far cry from the jumble that was the premature start.
As the men began to drive down to the sea ice, across to the southern side of the bay, then up onto the Great Ice Barrier, shouting out and cracking their whips over the teams of dogs, Johansen considered their chances for completing the journey, given the food, equipment, and dogs they had taken. “Now they have probably the best selection of [the best] dogs, and the cold is now not bad, so the prospects should be good,” he conjectured, “but even so, [with the provisions from the 80° depot] the loads are far too heavy and they will not, in my opinion, lighten proportionally with the reduction in the dogs’ tractive power, which is unavoidable when feeding on pemmican.” Johansen declared it would “not surprise” him if he were to see Hassel and Bjaaland, and perhaps Wisting as well, back at Framheim within a few months, having split up into two parties – one that would return homeward to the depots and one that would continue to the South Pole and would “take all the best dogs from the others and drive off southward with as much tractive power as possible…. Yes, we will well then see.” 3
One wonders if Johansen knew Amundsen’s true plan for reducing the weight and maintaining traction, that is, for lightening the load along the way.
Nevertheless, Johansen now watched as the party of four sledges speedily departed. Powered by 208 powerful canine legs, the sledges veritably zoomed away. And their speed was captured on film. “The cinematograph [camera] was set up by the drive down to the sea ice of the bay, which we must cross to get up onto the main barrier itself, and each [sled] team was then filmed, as they came up and over,” reported Johansen. “Around noon they were all up [on the barrier] and then they disappeared inward in the old direction [we used to take].” 4
It was Prestrud who preserved this surprisingly speedy departure on celluloid and thus documented the historic event on film. Carrying his cinematograph camera over the ice and snow, and following the South Pole party as far as he could on foot, Prestrud was able to commit the entire departure scene to film. The footage itself (Amundsen Film 2010) speaks volumes. His grainy black-and-white silent movie footage shows a fast-speed cavalcade of four sledges quickly sliding over the ice, the four men driving the sledges and dramatically whipping their respective teams, with the fifth man – Amundsen – seated on the last sledge, right behind Wisting, facing the back of the sledge so that he seemed to be pulled quickly backward over the snow by the dogs behind him harnessed to the front of the sled. The dogs en masse created a montage of motion, each individual dog moving incessantly within the team groupings, resulting in a field of movement and speed. Prestrud managed to film the party’s departure from every angle possible given the logistics – from behind the caravan as they first set off from Framheim, then from the front as each sledge came racing toward and then past the camera, and then from behind as sledge by sledge vanished over the high horizon of the barrier. Amundsen’s bundled-up face was the last thing seen going over the tall edge of the ice. The moving image captured on camera by Prestrud shows an almost apparition-like Amundsen eerily receding from sight. 5
From Amundsen’s vantage point, seated astride and backwards on the last sledge, looking out at the familiar icescape as it grew more and more distant from him, he could see Prestrud persistently pursuing the fast-moving convoy, setting up his camera here and there, and cranking away frantically to film footage of the departure. As Wisting’s sledge underneath him climbed higher and slid over the curve of the barrier, the dogs’ feet behind him pounding and pulling the sledge quickly, the vision before him, of Prestrud and his camera, disappeared out of Amundsen’s sight (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 2).
Going back to Prestrud’s point of view, once Amundsen and Wisting’s dog sledge reached its highest point and vanished over the horizon, Prestrud was left standing below by himself on the ice, uneasy, his hand still on the camera crank. He remained looking out over the now empty expanse of snow, awash in uncertain emotions. “There I stood, utterly alone, and I cannot deny that I was a prey to somewhat mixed feelings,” he wrote in the chapter he penned for Amundsen’s book The South Pole; Prestrud attributed this mixed reaction to the unknown: to not knowing when he would see his “Chief” and his “comrades” again, or what shape they would be in when they returned, or what they would have to say about their journey when he next met them (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 204). But it must have been somewhat painful for Prestrud to know that it could have been he going to the Pole with the party and that now such a once-in-a-lifetime reality would never come to pass. Perhaps the real unknown that unsettled Prestrud at that moment was: what if? What if he had not needed to be rescued by Johansen during the false start? What if he had been allowed to go?
But Prestrud was not one of the chosen ones, and after that silent moment of introspection, out there alone on the ice, 3 miles away from Framheim, he turned to find his way home, burdened with a heavy heart and a heavy camera. To his happy surprise, he spied a small black spot out in the distance, coming his way from across the bay, which, after believing it to be a seal, turned out to be Jørgen Stubberud with six dogs pulling a sledge. They were racing toward him. It would be a speedier return home after all, he thought, now that he had sled dogs to pull him there. His assumption proved to be not likely – or so he claimed. “Stubberud’s team consisted, however, of four intractable puppies, besides Puss [Bjaaland’s dog Pus ‘Kitty’] and another courser of similar breed; the result was that our pace was a modest one and our course anything but straight, so that we arrived at Framheim two hours after the time appointed for dinner,” he wrote in The South Pole (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 205).
The men – and the dogs – left behind at Framheim would have to pull together to see the next few months through.
Thus, Prestrud returned to his fellow rejected expedition members, and together he, Johansen, Stubberud, and Lindstrøm carried on. They would tend to their camp and prepare for the upcoming Eastern journey to King Edward VII Land.
Meanwhile, the chosen four South Pole party members and their completely confident commander, along with their 52 enthusiastic sled dogs, raced to meet their appointment with history. Hanssen and his dogs led the procession, followed by Bjaaland, then Hassel, and finally Wisting, with Amundsen riding on board. Amundsen gave Hassel’s sledge a try during the first part of the journey after summiting the barrier’s edge, but he switched back to sitting on Wisting’s, as he found the dogs pulling Wisting’s sledge more able to accommodate two riders than the other dogs were (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 2). The fact that some of Amundsen’s own dogs pulled on Wisting’s team most likely helped account for this bias held by Amundsen and possibly this preference exhibited by the dogs.
The sledging was serious business, and soon after this seating change to Wisting’s sledge, while briskly en route, Amundsen witnessed the appearance of a great maw in the ice as it opened without warning beside the moving sledge. The sledge slid right by the crevasse as it opened and luckily escaped the danger in stride. Had the dogs pulled the sledge a few inches closer to the spot where the gaping hole subsequently opened, the ice would have canceled Amundsen’s pre-scheduled appointment at the South Pole. Perhaps the dogs knew this, their quick senses alerting them to the otherwise invisible danger ahead, and they worked in unison to avoid the crevasse.
Realizing from meeting this crevassed area that the party had traveled too far east, Hanssen course-corrected, using his compass, and the party proceeded out of these unfamiliar grounds upon which they had stumbled. Once they had passed the dicey area, Amundsen jumped off the sledge and onto his skis – skis would easily bridge any crevasse that opened in the ice, and alternating from sledge to skis would give the dogs a bit of a rest from the burden of pulling a second body on top of their load.
But as the initial journey proceeded, exhaustion set in. Over the course of that first day on the snow, many of the dogs exhibited extreme fatigue and an inability to keep up. Amundsen was puzzled by this, but some of the men chalked it up to the dogs’ being overfed or too fat. “Several of our dogs: Neptun [Neptune], Rotta, Uranus, Ulrik, Bjørn, Peary and Fuchs are exhausted,” wrote Amundsen in his diary on the following day, further explaining that “some have pain in the feet; the others, the reason was unknown.” 6
According to Amundsen, Neptune – originally one of his dogs – had to be let go after only 6 miles of the trek. In his book The South Pole, he credited this necessity to Neptune being “so fat that he could not keep up.” Thinking that this “fine dog” would follow the caravan, Amundsen set him loose on the snow. Neptune did not follow, however. Indeed, he remained behind as the caravan moved forward. When he did not show up later, Amundsen believed that Neptune would return to Framheim to feast at the “flesh-pots, but, strangely enough, he did not do that either. He never arrived at the station; it is quite a mystery what became of him” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 4).
Indeed, Neptune was never to be seen again. He was the first casualty of the South Pole trek.
That same day, the first day of their journey to the Pole, Hassel also had to release some of the dogs on his team. These were Peary and Ulrik, whom Amundsen had reported as “exhausted” and whom Hassel characterized as having eaten too much and as being out of shape (Hassel 2011). Amundsen described Peary as “incapacitated; he was let loose and followed for a time, but then disappeared” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 5).
Wisting, too, untied some of his own dogs and set them free to follow as well. These two were Rotta and Uranus, who could not keep pace with the team. Wisting reported that Rotta – whose name it seems he erroneously wrote as Ratta in his diary on the 20th (as appears in the published diary) – caught up with the party at their camp that night; Uranus, however, had not yet made it to camp (Wisting 2011). Rotta was Johansen’s dog and the best friend of Uroa – Rotta (“The Rat”) had saved Uroa (“Always Moving”) when the two had fallen into a crevasse outside Framheim in late May. Wisting’s erroneously calling Rotta “Ratta” in his diary may explain why Amundsen would later refer to Rotta as “she” in his book The South Pole and would most likely confuse Rotta with another dog, saying that Rotta went back to Framheim, as Amundsen’s book at times seems to be a compilation of some of the stories from the other crew members’ diaries. Uranus was Amundsen’s singing dog, who liked to sing to Lasse, and was a friend of Neptune, who had now ultimately disappeared.
Bjaaland’s take on the first day’s progress was that some of the dogs were teeming with boundless energy and were untied, whereas others needed to be carried along (Bjaaland 2011).
The men made camp that night of October 20 at the spot where they had shot Kaisa during the premature start on September 9. This location was 20.2 nautical miles (17 miles) from Framheim. In his diary, Amundsen landmarks this spot by referring to it as the location of the shooting of Kaisa, who had been in heat and had disturbed his sleep during that awful September night (Amundsen Expedition Diary). But in his book The South Pole, in which he does not mention the death of Kaisa at all, he recalls the other casualties of that ill-planned start, stating that “many memories clung to the spot – cold and slaughter of dogs. It was there we had killed the three puppies on the last trip,” referring to Camilla’s three fine puppies who had followed the premature party and had been executed for their curiosity and loyalty (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 3). Perhaps, in his book, Amundsen wanted to sound more sympathetic, as one who regretted having to shoot puppies who had followed him into danger rather than giving the full picture of also shooting a female who happened to be noisy and in heat. At any rate, he only mentioned the puppies in his book, but his diary told the complete story. Now, one and a half months later, at the very spot where both Kaisa and the three puppies of Camilla had been killed, the men set up their tent for the first night of the actual trek to the South Pole.
They unharnessed and fed the dogs and set about making their own sleeping and eating preparations. Amundsen reported that all the ski bindings were removed – this was in order to prevent the dogs from attempting to consume them – and loose snow was shoveled up against the sides of the tent in order to serve as a protective boundary; according to Amundsen, “the dogs respected it” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 4).
The following morning of October 21, the men found many of the dogs still hurting and still unable to journey with them. Bjaaland reported between 10 and 15 dogs doing poorly that day (Bjaaland 2011), and Hassel reported that all of the dogs who had been straggling the previous day had been left unleashed overnight (Hassel 2011). Rotta, who had been let go during the previous day and was reported by Wisting to have come on his own to camp the previous night, now simply could not go on. When the men broke camp and harnessed their dogs, Rotta could not participate, and the party went on without him. Wisting reported on Rotta’s remaining behind and lamented that he now had only 11 dogs on his team on day number two of sledging (Wisting 2011). The party headed out and managed to stay on course this second day of the journey, following their tracks and flags and finding a snow cairn awaiting them that had been built during their depot trips. They traveled another 17 nautical miles (19-1/4 miles) in a not-too-cold −24.2 °C (−11.5 °F) weather (Amundsen Expedition Diary; Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 5.) Unfortunately, they continued to shed dogs along the way. Peary and Ulrik again had to be unharnessed from Hassel’s team, as they were too weak to keep pace, while Bjørn managed to painfully follow the sledge off-leash during the day (Hassel 2011).
Rotta, who for a second time was left behind by Wisting, this time at camp on that second day, was not mentioned by him again. And Amundsen, in his book The South Pole, while describing the events of the previous (first) day, wrote that “Rotta, another fine animal, was also set free; she [sic] was not fit for the journey, and she afterwards arrived at home” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 4). Later events, however, lead the author to believe that Rotta possibly did indeed return to the men and make the trek to the South Pole. Those events will be seen later in the story. (Besides the question of Rotta’s return, there is also the matter of Rotta’s gender. The statement made by Amundsen in his book The South Pole was the only reference to Rotta as a female dog. Rotta was described many times by Johansen in his diary, and Rotta’s return to Framheim with Uroa, after they had fallen into a crevasse, was written about extensively by Johansen on June 4, 1911. Their disappearance was also recorded by Amundsen on May 26 and May 29, 1911. But neither of them had ever referred to Rotta as female. And both of them had referred to Uroa as male. Johansen wrote quite a lot about Camilla and her puppies, and Snuppesen and her lovemaking, and the other females and their news, but he never mentioned Rotta in conjunction with being a female, or having puppies, or being a mother, or cavorting with the males. Furthermore, when first naming and describing all his dogs on the ship in his December 18, 1910 diary entry, Johansen left out Camilla because she was female – he had already written about her in August in regard to her having puppies – but he included Rotta and Uroa along with all his other male dogs in that list. Rotta was best friend to Uroa and the two seem to have both been males. While the name may be grammatically feminine – it is the Old Norse term for “Rat” – Rotta, for some reason, possibly his looks, inspired Johansen to name him after the rodent. Uroa is also grammatically feminine and means “Lively” or “Always Moving,” but Uroa is definitely a male dog as described by both Johansen and Amundsen, as, for example, when Johansen, writing about Uroa, referred to “his handsome coat” in the diary entry dated June 4, 1911, and when Amundsen referred to Uroa as being “with his friend ‘Rotta’” in the diary entry dated May 29, 1911. But Johansen never referred to him as female – only as the neutral “it.” Therefore, this reference by Amundsen – referring to Rotta as “she” – is quite puzzling. This brings Amundsen’s contention that Rotta returned home to Framheim also into question. If Rotta did return home, he would be the only dog to have done so from the South Pole party – with the possible exception of Fix; the other loose dogs all stayed with the party, except Peary, who remained near the 80° depot, and Neptune, who disappeared. Furthermore, both Thorvald Nilsen and Sverre Hassel later would refer to Rotta without mentioning a female gender. In regard to the South Pole trek, Rotta would later be mentioned in such a way that would indicate that he did indeed remain with the South Pole party, as will be seen later in this narrative.)
In his book The South Pole, Amundsen summed up the sorry state of some of the dogs during that first leg of the trip (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 4–5): “Ulrik began by having a ride on the sledge; he picked up later. Bjørn went limping after the sledge. Peary was incapacitated; he was let loose and followed for a time, but then disappeared …. Uranus and Fuchs were out of condition. This was pretty bad for the first day, but the others were all worth their weight in gold.”
On the 22nd, the South Pole party was missing at least five dogs – Rotta, Uranus, Peary, Ulrik, and Neptune – and so was also missing these dogs’ pulling power. To make matters worse, the thick fog around them, stiff breeze coming at them from the south, and snow drifting all about them, limited the party’s mobility and decreased surrounding visibility. “It was not a fine day on which to travel,” wrote Amundsen in his diary that day, but he rationalized that since they had found their old tracks from the premature start, and could follow those, he felt confident and “completely safe” to continue: “We drove on at a gallop,” he reported. “The dogs were simply mad to go forward.” 7 Hanssen’s team led the racing party, followed by Hassel’s, then Bjaaland’s, and then Wisting’s, who came up last, towing Amundsen on skis behind Wisting’s sledge. They drove this way for 2 h. The high velocity of travel even startled skiing champion Olav Bjaaland (Bjaaland 2011). The dogs’ game spirit and ready enthusiasm carried the party along quickly, but the men’s mistaken direction caused them to be too far west. Before they knew it, they were in a heavily crevassed area, and suddenly, Bjaaland’s sledge turned over and disappeared into a crevasse.
Luckily Bjaaland’s athletic instinct and healthy reflexes allowed him to act quickly. He threw himself off the sledge to one side and onto the ice and then quickly reached out and grasped the sledge’s towing rope as it slipped past him. He then hung on with all his might. Bjaaland’s strength was all that kept the sledge from plummeting further down the crevasse, taking all his dogs with it. Still hitched to the hanging sledge, the 13 dogs immediately laid themselves down in the snow to the side of the crevasse, digging into the ice with their claws and not moving a muscle. Bjaaland hollered for help, and the other men frantically went to his aid, searching for another rope. The sledge grew heavier and heavier in Bjaaland’s hands, slowly sinking further and further into the crevasse. The sled dogs must have known they were in a precarious position, tethered to an anchor that could plummet at any moment, taking them with it into a bottomless pit. According to Amundsen, “The dogs, too, seemed to understand the gravity of the situation; stretched out in the snow, they dug their claws in, and resisted with all their strength” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 7). Finally, after a full 5 min, the other men found a rope and tied it to Bjaaland’s tow rope, attempting to pull the sledge up. It was still too heavy and was continually dropping into the crevasse. While Bjaaland and Amundsen held the rope with the sledge suspended, the others untied the dogs so they could no longer be dragged down. Another mere few seconds, and these 13 dogs would have gone into the abyss after the sledge: Kvæn, Lap, Pan, Gorki, Jaala (“Heart”), Karenius, Sauen (“The Sheep”), Schwartz, Frithjof, Fisken (“The Fish”), Samson, Fuchs, and Knud. Fortunately, they were untethered from their anchor. The men then placed Hassel’s sledge across the narrow end of the crevasse to serve as leverage and as a pulley system to stabilize and pull up the sledge. Meanwhile, Wisting climbed down into the crevasse and lightened the load of the sledge, handing items up to the men one by one through the crevasse and then tying the lower sledge to the upper sledge. Bjaaland’s dogs, each one of them in jeopardy, stood by carefully and patiently as the men worked for 1.5 h to secure them and to haul the sledge back up out of the crevasse. Fortunately for all, they were able to save the dogs and the sledge (Amundsen Expedition Diary; Bjaaland 2011; Amundsen 1912, vol. 2).
No sooner had the party come through this harrowing ordeal, and had the dogs begun running “with lightning speed” 8 again, when another accident occurred. It seemed that the men had course-corrected incorrectly and now found themselves in an even more crevassed area. This time it was Hanssen’s four lead dogs who suddenly fell through a crevasse wide enough to devour all the other dogs and the entire sledge as well. Fortunately, Hanssen stopped the sledge in time, and the other dogs, too, stopped immediately when they saw their teammates go into the crevasse, so that only the first four dogs remained hanging below. Also, fortunately, the dogs’ harnesses did not break, so that the dogs were still tethered to this side of the earth. Most likely it was Mylius, Ring, Hai, and Rap who were left dangling below the ice and who almost lost their lives. Together, and with strenuous energy, the men pulled the dogs out of the crevasse, hauling them back up and onto solid ice (Amundsen Expedition Diary; Bjaaland 2011; Hassel 2011; Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 12). It had been a close call. The party had narrowly escaped intact.
It was time to camp and to call it a day.
The Three Depots, the Furthest South, and the First Sacrifices
On the next day, October 23, the expedition men and dogs reached the depot at 80° South, and the dogs were rewarded richly for the past three grueling days they had endured, for the four rough trekking segments they had undertaken, and for the 99 miles they had traveled. There was seal meat at the depot on which the dogs could gorge themselves, which they did over the 3 days that the men took refuge at the depot (Amundsen Expedition Diary; Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 14). This was all a part of Amundsen’s plan, to feed the dogs to their absolute fill at the first depot, so that they could start their trek with a bang of power and make as much progress as possible before wearing down. So, meat was chopped up for the dogs, and seal carcasses were laid out on the snow where the dogs could take as much as they liked over the course of the next 3 days (Wisting 2011; Hassel 2011). Most likely, they ate snow for water. “[The dogs] are having a good time now,” wrote Amundsen on the 24th, the second day at the depot. “As much fresh meat as they can eat. And they can sleep also to their hearts’ desire.” 9
Amundsen took great “pleasure,” he said, in watching the dogs enjoy themselves, and delighted in observing them eat to their satisfaction (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 15). He was amused by their calmness which could quickly turn into chaos and particularly relished watching their efforts to construct social order, as well as their attempts to dominate each other. In fact, he would on occasion enter into the fray, tipping the balance of power among two dogs. This was the case with Hai and Rap, two of the dogs from Hanssen’s team. Previously, during a depot tour, Amundsen had watched Hai, whom he described as a “fine dog, but fearfully obstinate” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 15), steal food from his friend Rap, and Amundsen had hit the dog over the nose, believing this would induce him to relinquish his ill-gotten gains. It did not, however, and Hai and Amundsen ended up in a tug-of-war. What ensued was a wrestling match between Hai and Amundsen, with the two of them “rolling over and over in the snow struggling for the mastery” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 16). Amundsen ultimately won and gave the food back to Rap. Now, at this well-deserved rest at the 80° depot, during the trek to the South Pole, Amundsen once again watched as Hai eyed his friend Rap’s food. This time, however, it was Hanssen who put an end to the theft and caused Hai to mind his manners (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 15–16).
Amundsen wrote of the dogs enjoying themselves immensely and of them being in great shape and good health, during those 3 days spent recuperating at the 80° depot (Amundsen Expedition Diary). His diary entries of October 24 and October 25 reflect his desire to make this point. Whether the sad irony of his planning to end their lives occurred to him at this time is unknown.
Meanwhile, the men loaded up their sledges to the brim with provisions they would need for their trek and deposited into the depot the food and items that they no longer needed. The party loaded approximately 400 kilograms of supplies per sledge from the depot. The supplies they deposited into depot, reported Amundsen on October 25, included 200 kilograms of dog pemmican, which remained behind for the return trip; and with them, loaded onto the sledge, was one case of dog pemmican that they would feed to the dogs along the way (Amundsen Expedition Diary). His lists, later published in his book The South Pole, reflect a total of 371 rations of pemmican for the dogs (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 18).
Oscar Wisting was certain that, with this rest and recuperation, and with the plentiful feeding of meat, the dogs were now in fine form, and the teams would now be able to make the journey (Wisting 2011). While agreeing with the other men regarding the current state of the dogs, there was one dissenting voice who questioned the weight of the loads they would carry. This was Olav Bjaaland, who, in his diary entry of the 25th, wrote that, while the dogs were vigorous and healthy, he believed that it was an error and a shame that they were being overburdened with such a tremendously heavy load (Bjaaland 2011). This sentiment from Bjaaland echoed the opinion Johansen had written in his diary, regarding the loads being too heavy, soon after the South Pole party’s departure. And yet, this fact could not be changed. Amundsen had decreed it so. He himself reported the provisions’ weights as being 668 pounds per sledge; adding the weight of the equipment and the sledge itself, this totaled 880 pounds per sledge – pulled by 11–13 dogs each (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 18).
After depositing, in the depot, a letter from Amundsen to Kristian Prestrud, updating the Eastern party – who would follow him to the depot prior to heading east to King Edward VII Land – that all was well with the South Pole party, the men and dogs set out from the depot at 80° with their heavy loads. It was the 26th of October. They now had four dogs less than when they had begun their journey. Four of the five dogs who had been set loose, and who had straggled along the way, still had not caught up to the caravan. But the fifth – Uranus – had by this time caught up. Amundsen, now, as of October 24, counted 48 dogs – 4 teams of 12 dogs each, he recorded (Amundsen Expedition Diary). Both Hassel and Wisting recorded that they lacked 2 dogs each, making their respective teams 11 dogs instead of 13 (Hassel 2011).
Uranus may have been back, but he was in bad shape – the professional singer who liked to sing to Lasse was now skinny and slow and weak and lacked the spirit he had once had. And Jaala (Jåla – “Heart”), Bjaaland’s peppy female who had been in heat and had escaped for a romantic getaway with her male suitors at the beginning of the premature start, back on September 1, now was large and heavy with child. Her size and weight had increased with the puppies inside her, and yet she marched on. Jaala did her very best to keep up, desperately pulling the heavy load with the rest of the dogs, but Amundsen had his eye on her. He decided that if she did not reduce her size and lose the weight – that is, have her puppies – before the party had departed from the third depot, then she would be done for and would be joining skinny Uranus in an end to life, “she would have to accompany Uranus to another world,” as he put it (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 15). Perhaps he believed that another realm existed for these dogs, who toiled for his discoveries.
Despite the plight of Uranus, Jaala, and those few dogs who could not keep up and thus were left behind, the sled dogs were well beyond valuable. The men made sure to check all their dogs before departing from the first depot on October 26. It was crucial for Amundsen’s plan that the dogs now be healthy and well fed and energetic to make the all-important first leg of the trip. “The dogs were completely wild,” he reported after traveling 15 nautical miles that day. 10 It took them only 4 h to cover that amount of distance. Bjaaland wrote that the sled dogs were in a fantastic humor and ran insanely fast (Bjaaland 2011). Hassel reported that both the conditions and the dogs were in very good shape (Hassel 2011). And Wisting proclaimed that the dogs had reached a pinnacle of performance that would be hard to surpass (Wisting 2011).
The fact was that the dogs were exceeding even Amundsen’s expectations. These 48 sled dogs – including 1 weak and 1 pregnant – outperformed and outran any team or motorized transport conjured by Amundsen’s wildest imagination. They made a mockery of his attempt at being forerunner, passing him by and running him nearly off his skis as they made a mad first dash from the depot. Off they went – Hanssen’s, Wisting’s, Bjaaland’s, and Hassel’s dogs – virtual turbo-speed teams made up of bounding, surefooted canines who loved the speed and enjoyed the feel of pulling the men and the loads to the end goal way off in the distance. Amundsen was left behind the rest, with nothing to do but hitch his rope to Wisting’s sledge once more and be towed along with the sledges. “We had never dreamed of anything of the sort – driving on ski to the Pole!”, he marveled in his book The South Pole (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 21). Despite the heavy loads they pulled, the dogs showed tremendous drive and discipline. Amundsen credited much of this success to Hanssen for his abilities as lead dog driver. “Confirmations” – the pulling out of the team, and giving a hiding to, individual dogs who misbehaved – were now seldom administered (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 20–21).
But some credit, one would think, needed to go to the dogs themselves, who gave their all and more to pull loads that experienced explorers and champion skiers like Johansen and Bjaaland had feared to be too heavy: dogs like Jaala and Uranus, who put aside their physical complications and ran like the wind with their mates and dogs who worked together and took intense delight in making this otherwise arduous journey a joyful ski ride for their humans.
The next few days continued to go swimmingly, and the sled dogs were full of fresh life and spirit, according to Amundsen (Amundsen Expedition Diary). “The dogs are in better vigor with every day that passes,” he wrote in his diary on the 27th. 11 They were working off their extra layers of fat and using their boundless energy to make great headway. The party made their 15 nautical miles each day in only 4-1/2 h and rested the remaining time after making camp. The men gave the dogs double rations of food on the 27th (Hassel 2011). The tent system was working well, as was unhooking and hiding the ski bindings from the dogs, although on the 28th, Bjaaland must have forgotten this little ritual, as he reported that a dog had eaten his ski binding (Bjaaland 2011). Otherwise, all was well. Following Amundsen’s plan, the men also began building snow cairns along the way, with the first one erected at 80° 23.5′ S (Amundsen Expedition Diary). These would be used for storing supplies, leaving distance measurements, and sighting on the return journey as “beacons” or land markers (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 22).
At some point during this time, another of the five dogs who had remained behind returned to the men. Although it was not reported in the diaries for these dates, Ulrik caught up with the party and resumed his place in Hassel’s team. Amundsen later mentioned him returning to the men in his book The South Pole (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 4). Still at large were three dogs – Rotta, Peary, and Neptune.
The 30th of October turned ugly weather-wise, and this was a premonition of what was to be in terms of developments regarding the dogs. For on this day, Amundsen and his men conducted the first intentional killing of a dog on the actual trek to the South Pole. It was Bone, a dog from Hanssen’s team, who, according to Amundsen in his The South Pole book, “was too old to keep up, and was only a hindrance” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 22). Despite their team spirit and exceptional service, it seems that the dogs were “worth their weight in gold” – as Amundsen had said at the start of the trek – only up to a point. Bone was simply bone-tired. He had given all his strength to Amundsen and had nothing left to give. To Amundsen, Bone was now only an obstacle, in the way. Helmer Hanssen shot the dog that morning before the party left camp. Amundsen gave a little bit more detail in his diary, about this dog, who on that day was ordered shot by his commander: “It [Bone] was too old and could not follow with (us). It was thick and fat. It was opened – the entrails taken out and the carcass added under the snow cairn we built.” 12 It was that simple. Bone, it seems, was now worth more dead than alive. He was being squirreled away for later, when his bones would be stripped for meat.
The other men wrote about the demise of Bone in their diaries as well. Hassel and Wisting reported that Bone’s body was left in cairn no. 4 (Hassel 2011; Wisting 2011), and Bjaaland specified that the cairn was located at 80° 45′ (Bjaaland 2011). It was indeed a landmark for the expedition.
The day that had begun with Bone’s slaughter ended with the South Pole party reaching their second depot. On October 30, at 2:00 in the afternoon, the men and dogs camped at 81° South. They were now traveling at an average speed of 3 nautical miles per hour (Amundsen Expedition Diary; Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 22–23). This was quite good for 48–49 dogs pulling heavy sledges holding 400 kilos of provisions each. For their efforts, the dogs were fed meat pemmican (Hassel 2011).
The party remained and rested at 81° the following day, with Amundsen reporting in his diary that the dogs were “doing excellently” and that the men were filling their sledge cases with dog pemmican from the depot. 13 Hassel further enlightened his diary that the dog pemmican was being loaded in order to ensure that the dogs had enough food to reach the next depot at 82° (Hassel 2011). It seemed that Amundsen had planned out the dogs’ feedings and provisions to the nth degree.
The party resumed their journey on November 1, in thick fog and deceptive terrain filled with covered crevasses that fully appeared only once the sledges were on top of them. Add to these nasty conditions deep, loose snow, and the traveling was quite challenging that day. The dogs especially had a hard time, as they had to step quickly and carefully through the deep snow (Wisting 2011). But on that day, the real drama lay with Hanssen. As lead sledge driver, he navigated the route and attempted to find the safest path. After all, it was in this very same area back in early March, during the second depot trip, that three of his dogs – Mylius, Ring, and Helge – had fallen into a crevasse and had been hanging over the abyss until they were pulled back up. Today, it was Hanssen’s turn to take the plunge. Just as he had successfully driven his team over the narrowest portion of a crevasse, his ski tip stuck in the dogs’ reins, and he fell over, his body stretching across the yard-wide crevasse like a human bridge. It seemed that the dogs, who had safely gotten across to the other side of the crevasse, now sensed that something was wrong, but, instead of lying down patiently as Bjaaland’s dogs had done, they began to fight furiously among themselves. Possibly this was a nervous reaction to knowing they were in a dangerous situation, although Amundsen attributed it to their sensing that their “lord and master” was incapacitated for the moment and thus could not mete out a punishing whipping (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 24). The danger was, however, that the sledge they were still hitched to was stretched across the crevasse at an angle almost parallel to the crevasse’s edges and could fall in at any second. In fact, as the dogs fought and moved about, the sledge turned to become more and more parallel with the crevasse. If it went in, so would the dogs. Amundsen lunged for the dogs immediately, crossing over the crevasse into their midst and making them cease their struggles. Meanwhile, Wisting threw a rope to Hanssen and pulled him back to safety, after which the men pushed the entire sledge safely over to the other side of the crevasse. Amundsen relayed to his diary, later that day, his thoughts about the extreme proximity to peril in which both he and his men had found themselves. They risked their lives every day, he mused, but no one would even consider turning away from the mission. “No, these are boys who want to [proceed] forward – cost whatever it may want to cost.” 14
Amundsen had left the dogs out of that equation – yes, whatever the cost applied to both the men and the animals.
Over the next few days, the men and dogs traveled at 5 nautical miles per 2-1/2 h and averaged 17 nautical miles per day (Amundsen Expedition Diary). “The going has been overwhelmingly heavy and the dogs have struggled to bring the sledges forward,” wrote Amundsen on November 3. 15 The snow was extremely loose, and the dogs were strenuously battling the terrain (Bjaaland 2011; Wisting 2011). They were sledging in a gale blowing toward them from the south, but this wind eventually decreased, and the temperature rose to −10 °C (+14 °F). The relative warmth of November 4 inspired the dogs to “break into a brisk gallop,” according to Amundsen, but the visibility was still low (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 26). Amundsen by now was wearing snow goggles to protect himself from snow blindness.
By November 5, Amundsen’s expedition had reached their third depot, located at 82° – their farthest south so far. Amundsen felt assured that they were now prepared to venture on further south all the way to the Pole, and he was equally confident that they had the right amount of provisions to do so. He reported having 100 days’ worth of supplies – presumably for both humans and animals – and that the dogs were in the best shape. The third depot had held just the right amount of supplies, he claimed, referring to the provisions that had awaited them there, both for themselves and for their dogs. “No dog pemmican was left behind,” he wrote – which means that they had just enough dog pemmican at that depot to feed the dogs. 16
Hassel, however, sang a different tune in his diary that day. He reported that, although the men had intended to feed double rations of pemmican to the dogs at this third depot, as they had done so at the second depot, in fact, they could not do so, because Amundsen had not calculated accurately the amount of pemmican they had fed to the dogs en route to the second depot. Because they had left the second depot with an insufficient number of rations for the dogs, they would now be able to feed the dogs only one ration of food here at the third depot. Regarding the amount of food that the men loaded onto their sledges at this third depot, Hassel reported that they took on enough dog pemmican for 47 dogs to last over 32 days (Hassel 2011).
Thirty-two days’ worth of food for 47 dogs, said Hassel – not 100 days as Amundsen had said. And Amundsen had miscalculated the dog provisions, according to Hassel. It would seem, then, that there was less pemmican taken on the sledges than what would have been required for the dogs. The prospect of Amundsen miscalculating anything was rather far-fetched, and yet this is what Hassel’s diary entry revealed. The question, then, is – was it a miscalculation, or was it Amundsen’s intention that they not carry enough pemmican for all the dogs along the entire route? Less pemmican would mean less weight and less time spent on the journey. This question will be revisited later.
“The dogs are now in a much better condition than when we [first] traveled,” wrote Amundsen on the 5th. “All the sore feet are fine. And a bit of the excess obesity has gone.” He chose this day to kill skinny Uranus, the dog who had finally caught up to the party after being let go at the beginning of the trek. “W. [Wisting] shot Uranus today,” wrote Amundsen in his diary entry that same day. Uranus, he claimed, was not worth anything and ate an inordinate amount of food. “It was fat like a pig,” he wrote. 17 This seeming contradiction – Amundsen had described Uranus earlier as “thin” and “lanky” or “bony” – is explained away by Amundsen in his book The South Pole, where he says that Uranus turned out to have “masses of fat along his back” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 27). They must have found this when they had cut him open. Skinny or fat, it seems that Amundsen had preordained that Uranus would be killed at 82° and would be left there at this third depot to be eaten by the dogs on the way back. There was no dog pemmican remaining at this depot – “Only Uranus.” 18 The men would rely upon fat-backed Uranus to provide sustenance for the dogs on their return trip back from the Pole. As for people food, Amundsen left enough human pemmican at this depot for the men’s return trip from here to 80° (Amundsen Expedition Diary). It seems he was trying to lighten up his loads as much as he could.
Wisting reported in his November 5 diary entry that Uranus, whom he said he shot because he felt the dog did not work enough to earn his food, had great-looking meat that would provide a good feed here at the 82° depot (Wisting 2011).
And so it was that Uranus, the “professional singer” who sang for Lasse and who was always eager to please, was now silenced forevermore.
Jaala (“Heart”), the mother-to-be who still had not yet given birth, had continued to work and pull diligently in her extremely pregnant condition. Amundsen decided to give her one more night to meet his “conditions” or else it would be curtains for her as well (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 27).
The party spent that night at the 82° depot and remained there the next day, November 6, as well. This third depot now served as the expedition’s final home base from which they would sprint to the South Pole. The men continued to load and unload provisions as they deemed necessary. According to his comments in The South Pole, Amundsen was very pleased with himself for having successfully transferred everything from Norway on the Fram to the Bay of Whales camp at 78° 38′ and on to this 82° southern latitude (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 27–28). The three depot trips accomplished before winter were now paying off for him. And so, on that day of the 6th, the Norwegian expedition basked in the calm weather, dazzling sun, and warm temperature of −14° C. “The dogs all are lying stretched out and enjoying themselves,” wrote Amundsen in his diary that day, describing their day’s activities of organizing, packing, and measuring (Amundsen Expedition Diary). Moving forward, they planned to establish a depot at each degree and erect a snow cairn every 3 nautical miles (5 kilometers), he reported. But then his entry turned from a sunny disposition to a somewhat ominous tone: “At the last calculation it turns out that we cannot count on pulling power [i.e., dog tractive power] further than back to 86°. From there we must pull ourselves.” 19
Could it be that Amundsen was laying the groundwork for the accelerated elimination of dogs?
Bjaaland’s diary sheds more light on this, stating that the party did not have enough dog food and would now attempt to travel one degree every 3 days in order to arrive at 86° as quickly as possible (Bjaaland 2011).
The shortage of food for the dogs was thus brought up here again, this time by Bjaaland. It is difficult to fathom how an organized, calculating, meticulous, and methodical person, such as Amundsen had proved himself to be, could now miscalculate the amount of pemmican to carry for the dogs. This seems to be a rather large lapse and very unlike the explorer, who had earlier stated that one’s plan was the most important thing, that every millimeter of space must be utilized wisely, and that what others may call luck is in actuality precise preparation.
Hassel’s diary gave the final insight on this mystery. His words drove the nail into the truth. The plan now was to aggressively drive 20 nautical miles a day until the party reached 86°; then, once there, kill all the dogs who were deemed the weakest or least efficient, keeping only 12 dogs; and then proceed the final four degrees to the Pole with those 12 selected dogs pulling the sledges (Hassel 2011).
And so there it was. Amundsen’s true plan, devised several months prior, was beginning to see the light of day and to become more concrete. He had earlier decreed that the slaughtering of the dogs would occur at 87°. And now it seemed that even this harsh plan was to be made even more extreme, as he had not brought enough food to last the dogs any further than 86°, and would thus commit the slaughtering there. The essence of the plan, however, remained intact: Amundsen would slaughter most of his dogs once they had taken him the necessary distance to reach the South Pole. All that would remain of the 52 dogs would be a dozen of the strongest dogs to make the final leg to the Pole and then transport him back home. Again, whether the accelerated plan to slaughter the dogs at 86° rather than 87° was a result of the food miscalculation may never be known; either way, he had already planned to slaughter the dogs. He had mentioned more than once that the dogs who helped him to the South Pole would pay with their lives. This had been the plan all along.
As a sign that Amundsen meant serious business, his reprieve for Jaala ended on that day. The healthy and strong female dog, who had been a companion of Bjaaland, had not given birth quickly enough for Amundsen, and so he, true to his words, had her killed as well, along with her eight puppies who were still inside her. A short, concise statement about this in his diary was all the sentiment or regret that was offered: “Shot ‘Jåla’ [Jaala] this evening,” wrote Amundsen on November 6. “She was very pregnant and could not follow. She is lying in the depot.” 20 Bjaaland wrote of the sacrifice of his dog Jaala in his diary on the following day, expressing remorse that she had had to be killed for not giving birth quickly enough in an opportune time for the expedition and stating that she had had eight children inside of her when she was shot (Bjaaland 2011). Wisting further specified, on November 6, that the eight little ones were placed in the depot as well (Wisting 2011).
The image of vibrant Jaala, named after the emotional “Heart” by Bjaaland, now cut down in her pregnancy and cut up for consumption, with her little pups lined up alongside her as small motionless balls, all lying together in the snow depot, must have been a difficult one to witness.
In his book The South Pole, Amundsen summarized the killing of Uranus and Jaala over that 2-day period as part and parcel of what was required to do at the third depot, concluding that the two dogs “were both laid on the top of the depot, beside eight little ones that never saw the light of day” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 28).
As for the shortage of dog food addressed by the men in their diaries on November 6, Amundsen did not broach this subject at all in his The South Pole book. Instead, he provided a justification for carrying less food, thusly: “During our stay here we decided to build beacons at every fifth kilometre, and to lay down depots at every degree of latitude. Although the dogs were drawing the sledges easily at present, we knew well enough that in the long-run they would find it hard work if they were always to have heavy weights to pull. The more we could get rid of, and the sooner we could begin to do so, the better” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 28). He did not mention the plan to slaughter the dogs at 86°.
Indeed, Wisting also reported on that day that the dogs were fed all the food they could consume (Wisting 2011). It seemed that Amundsen was not saving food for later, as he knew that by then he would have a significantly lower number of dogs.
The expedition began their march of 20 nautical miles (23 miles) per day, in order to make the one degree traveled every 3 days. This began on November 7, which proved to be a good day weather-wise and skiing-wise and which was their first day venturing beyond familiar ground. But even as they left the 82° depot that morning, the dogs took on more casualties. It was the women who were now in the crosshairs. No matter their strength and loyalty and hard work, their mere presence, and the male dogs’ natural reaction to them, doomed these females. And the first to be targeted was Lucy (Lussi). Based on Bjaaland’s concise reporting of the killing of Lucy, in his November 7 diary entry (Bjaaland 2011), the string of events seems to have been a bitter irony of cause and effect. The party had set out at 8:00 a.m. in fine weather and good ski conditions and gathered excellent momentum that allowed them to go at a brisk speed. While pulling Hassel’s sledge, Bjørn (“Bear”) – the dog whom Hassel had almost left at camp due to his traumatic experience in the premature start – accidentally fell under the sledge and subsequently capsized the sledge and its cargo. With all the commotion and distraction of righting the overturned sledge, Sauen (“The Sheep”) – who pulled on Bjaaland’s team – sexually advanced himself onto Lucy, who was in heat. As a result of Sauen’s actions, Lucy was shot dead by Hassel, who turned the gun on her and shot her in her forehead. The killing of Lucy was committed at the first snow cairn that the men erected just a few miles south of the third depot, at 82° 3′, and her body was placed on top of the cairn – presumably as meat reserves for the trek back home. While Bjaaland seemed to have recognized the sad irony of the chain of events that led to Lucy’s shooting, Hassel only matter-of-factly reported the event in his diary, specifying that it was he who had shot her at the first cairn (Hassel 2011). Wisting, who also reported the killing in his diary, gave Lucy’s being in heat as the cause of the shooting and counted down the number of dogs to now currently being 45 (Wisting 2011). As for Amundsen, he put the blame squarely on Lucy. “At the first cairn from 82° we had to shoot ‘Lussi’,” he wrote in his diary. “She had just begun to be in heat and caused such mayhem in the [dog] teams, that I found executing [her] the only way to resolve it. She was placed in depot on the top of the cairn.” 21 For the public’s sake, Amundsen later wrote a sanitized account of this execution in his book The South Pole – an account which was a bit more poetic, as well as apologetic, and which did not mention the reason for the killing of Lucy: “At the first beacon we put up we had to shoot Lucy. We were sorry to put an end to this beautiful creature, but there was nothing else to be done. Her friends – Karenius, Sauen, and Schwartz – scowled up at the beacon where she lay as they passed, but duty called, and the whip sang dangerously near them, though they did not seem to hear it” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 28).
Lucy, Jørgen Stubberud’s dog along with Karenius, Sauen, and Schwartz, had been known and loved by those three males. The four were fast friends. It was Lucy who had been the last female to give birth on the ship – in late December 1910 – and the first mother allowed to keep her female puppy. She was now survived by this daughter, Lussi – also known as “Miss A.A.” – who had remained at Framheim during this South Pole trek. Amundsen’s description of Lucy’s death conveyed an almost sacrificial significance, wherein she was laid upon the altar of the depot, and her three friends, with funereal somberness, formed a funeral procession past her lifeless body. But just as Lucy was remembered by these three friends, her progeny – her daughter Lussi – would also live to be remembered, as shall be seen later in this narrative.
Once Lucy had been shot and placed on the cairn, Amundsen proceeded to list all the provisions left at depot 82°, which now included “2 dogs” as part of the provisions. 22 Uranus and Jaala – and Lucy – had now become a part of the food and supplies, along with the chocolates and biscuits and dried milk – they were just another quantity of items deposited in the depot.
The day of Lucy’s killing was Amundsen’s first real milestone in terms of the approach to the South Pole. He was now on totally unfamiliar ground, having left his last depot that morning which had been built before the winter and thus leaving behind all familiarity he had with this icy land. On the afternoon of this day of the trek, Amundsen succeeded in passing Robert Falcon Scott’s furthest south, reached during the British National Antarctic Expedition of 1901–1904 – known as the Discovery expedition – in December 1902: the location was 82° 17′. Amundsen made sure to march well past that mark before he made camp that day, at 82° 20′. He reported the terrain here as flat and the speed traveled as quarter of an hour per nautical mile, in −19° C weather. As for the dogs, they were “now fully trained and in fine vigor,” 23 meaning that they were running and pulling well, had begun to lose the fat they had consumed, and were growing more lean and athletic.
This moment was the turning point for Amundsen, where all sentiment was set aside and focus was set on winning. With his mathematical mind and strategic approach, he must have visualized his goal – actually seen it in his mind – as those who succeed in accomplishing a set goal tend to do. The flat white plain of Antarctica, seen as a blank slate with the naked eye, must have been overlaid with figures and degrees and latitude markings in his head – a mental graphic picture illustrating the route to take, the number of dogs necessary to pull the sledges, and the provisions to depot at each degree. He was constantly computing the number of dogs to keep and the number of dogs to kill.
Thus, the carnage did not end with Lucy that day. In the evening, at their new camp at 82° 20′, Else was shot dead, as she, too, had been in heat and unwittingly stirred things up among the male dogs. “‘[The female] is protected on land, must never come on board’, etc.,” quoted Amundsen in his diary the next day, referring again to his favorite heroic poem. “Our last lady had her life end, last night, before the revolver. She had also begun to be in heat. We now have, in total, 44 dogs. ‘Else’ was put in depot at 82° 20′ S.Lat.” 24 The shooter of Else was Hassel, on whose team Else worked. Hassel blamed Else for the severe injury of his other dog, Mikkel, who had become embroiled in a fight over her, as she was in heat (Hassel 2011). Bjaaland’s account of the event added an ironic statement about Else (whom he called Elisa), stating that her life was taken from her as a result of her flagrant sexuality (Bjaaland 2011). Wisting further reported that Else was laid in cairn number 25 (Wisting 2011). Of Else, Amundsen wrote a more gallant description in his book The South Pole: “She was Hassel’s pride and the ornament of his team; but there was no help for it. She was also placed at the top of a beacon” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 28).
Else had borne puppies both on the ship Fram and at the base camp Framheim. Her one surviving son, born on the ship during a November storm, was named Storm and had remained at Framheim with Johansen, Prestrud, and Stubberud. Storm would later travel east to King Edward VII Land, pulling Stubberud’s sledge. And much later, he would go on to make history with another expedition. Meanwhile, his mother had set out on this historic South Pole journey and had now met her premature demise.
And, so, came an abrupt end to the females helping Amundsen make the journey to the South Pole. Their nature had been their enemy, and their reproductive role in the species had betrayed them, in the eyes of the men who had used and then destroyed them.
The last two females killed – Lucy and Else – both left children (Lussi and Storm) who would survive beyond this expedition and who would make their own mark in history, saving many human lives, as will be seen later in this narrative.
Heavy Loads, Faithful Loyalty, Dogs and Ponies, and Lost Loves
The remaining 44 dogs on the trek still ran “like the wind” 25 and pulled the human explorers ever closer to the Pole. They crossed over the white expanse of snow without tiring. The men built cairns at every third nautical mile and positioned a depot at every degree, where they unloaded supplies and provisions to be used on their way back home. This enabled them to lighten the sledges even more on both the going and the return trips. On November 8, Amundsen reported being unable to detect any hint of effort, wear, or tear on the dogs after they had completed an entire day’s trek, in which they had traveled one nautical mile per 15 minutes. The dogs seemed dauntless in their great progress. And Amundsen appreciated their obliging him with this race across the flat white surface of the snowy fields of Antarctica. He was determined to carry only what the men absolutely needed so as to keep the sledges light and the dogs fast. But that meant not carrying a lot of food for the dogs, as well.
“With the greatest ease they [the dogs] covered the day’s march at a pace of seven and a half kilometres (four miles and two-thirds) an hour,” wrote Amundsen in his The South Pole book. “As for ourselves, we never had to move a foot; all we had to do was to let ourselves be towed” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 28–29).
If only Scott had used dogs to propel him forward. Having left from his base camp at McMurdo on November 1, 1911, for his own trek to the South Pole, he by this time was struggling with his ponies, while his dogs waited on the sidelines and then raced ahead. In his diary entries, Scott described some of the delights and frustrations of working the ponies to travel forward, as their performance was highly uneven (Scott [1911] 1968). He by now was seeing the difference between the ponies and the dogs. Much exertion would be spent moving the ponies, along, and coaxing them to make progress, and then, once the ponies and men were settled, the sled dogs would run ahead to catch up to the same point effortlessly. “The ponies which have been so comparatively comfortable in the earlier days were hit as usual when the snow began to fall…,” wrote Scott on November 7 at his camp number 4. “In the midst of the drift this forenoon the dogs party came up and camped about a quarter of a mile to leeward – [dog-driver Cecil Henry] Meares has played too much for safety in catching us so soon but it is satisfactory to find the dogs will pull the loads and can be driven to face such a wind as we have had. It shows that they might be able to help us a good deal.” 26 And yet Scott chose not to rely on his speedy dogs and put his faith in his struggling ponies instead, resulting in great effort expended in working with them and ultimately in his pulling his own load after their sad demise, which contributed to his own tragic end. In contrast, Amundsen and his men were hitching rides behind or on their dog-pulled sledges, supplied with great loads of all the food the men would need, and leaving all the work to the sled dogs.
And, so, the Norwegian men were being towed by the Arctic dogs across the Antarctic’s frozen plain and arrived at 82° 40′ at the end of the day on November 8. They looked out across the horizon and saw heavy cloud formations that normally indicate the presence of high altitude land. The vision teased Bjaaland, who asked, in his diary that night, if what they had spied were ice-clad mountain peaks or regular clouds (Bjaaland 2011). His question was answered the following morning.
On November 9, the men awoke to the sight of land in the distance, first glimpsed through binoculars – the land formation was a group of mountain peaks located to the southwest. As the party moved closer toward the land, traveling 20 nautical miles that day, they made out that this was the mountain chain that ran southeast from the Beardmore Glacier and that was first sighted and mapped by Ernest Shackleton. While the going was still superb, the surface of the snow on which the dogs and skis were traveling had become ice-hard and glistening. Nonetheless, the dogs made great strides, and they propelled the men even closer to the land sighted, seemingly 100 nautical miles away. “The dogs have kept the same speed today as always – 4 miles – and seem not to be more exhausted now,” wrote Amundsen in his diary that day. 27 The dogs had in fact brought the men to 83° South. Amundsen thought them doing splendidly. But Wisting had observed something in them that he confided to his diary (Wisting 2011). It had to do with the amount of food they were being fed and the amount necessary to keep up this pace. The dogs were maintaining their fine shape and their performance, he observed, but they were beginning to require additional food to eat at the end of the day. Wisting also noticed the effect that the hard, crusty surface was having on the dogs and wished the conditions were not so, as they necessitated that the dogs break through the top layer of crusty ice before stepping onto the snow (Wisting 2011). Most likely, the effort and the hard ice were hurting the dogs’ paws, and the food was not sufficient. The sled dogs, it seems, were facing some challenges that Amundsen may not have been addressing – at least, they were not recorded in his diary or relayed in his book.
A storm brewed around their camp at 83° 1′ that night and then blew hard until the morning. That next day of November 10 was filled with sunshine. It was decided that both the men and the dogs would have a well-deserved rest. The party stayed at camp, and the men built a depot for the return journey, ensuring that they would have provisions at this very spot to pick up on the way home from the Pole. Amundsen stocked this depot with enough food for 5 men and 12 dogs for a period of 4 days (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 29). He reported in his diary that night that the depot held “provisions for 5 humans and 12 animals for 4 days – 24 kg. dog pemmican, 6 kg. human pemmican, 2 kg. chocolate, 4 milk sausages [i.e., pouches of powdered milk], 800 units biscuits and a box of matches.” 28
Thus, the dogs’ fate was sealed – of the 44 remaining dogs now on the trek to the South Pole, only 12 would return alive. This meant that 32 dogs would be killed.
The fatalistic act was recorded by the men in their diaries. Both Wisting (2011) and Bjaaland (2011), on that night, reported the building of the depot at 83° for 12 dogs on the return journey, with Bjaaland adding that the thinking was that only 12 sled dogs would survive the trip. He did not specify the reasoning for this calculation, but the truth was known.
The deed was done.
As if in criticism of the dogs’ predetermined fate that had been decreed by the men, a very strange and unprecedented occurrence took place that evening. Amundsen left camp to return to the previous cairn they had built, so as to survey its condition and critique its performance during the previous night’s storm. He took Wisting with him, and the two men proceeded on skis. As Amundsen and Wisting skied north toward the cairn’s location two nautical miles away, three dogs came rushing after them and then ran right past them, showing no signs of stopping. The dogs continued galloping in unison with unified resolve, aiming northward as if toward a mental target they knew they had to reach. These three dogs were Sauen, Karenius, and Schwartz, from Bjaaland’s team, and they had decided to abandon the men and the South Pole party and return to their beloved friend Lucy, whom they had gazed up at longingly and mournfully as she lay dead on the cairn at 82°. She awaited them a full degree behind the current location where the party had reached. Amundsen had previously described the three dogs as reluctantly but dutifully marching past Lucy’s dead body to continue their southward journey with the expedition, back on November 7. Now, evidently, they had decided to return for their friend: “3 of Bj’s [Bjaaland’s] best dogs came after us, passed by and continued Northward in the tracks – out of sight in a hurry,” wrote Amundsen in his diary that night. “They were Lussi’s lovers. I’m afraid that they have taken the way back to where we shot her.” 29
Wisting reported the incident in his diary that day (Wisting 2011), identifying the three dogs by name, although seemingly miswriting Schwartz’s name (as it appears in the published diary). Hassel, who witnessed the abandonment by the dogs, which was triggered by Amundsen’s and Wisting’s departure, wrote that the three dogs ran along with the two men and then went on ahead alone, not once looking back and never turning southward again (Hassel 2011). Bjaaland, the frustrated driver of these three runaway dogs who had previously worked on Stubberud’s team before going South with Bjaaland, now lamented their loss, writing of their disappearing over the horizon in their search for Lucy (and seemingly misspelling Schwartz’s name as well) (Bjaaland 2011).
Amundsen wrote most sympathetically about the loss of these three dogs in his book The South Pole, although in that account he described them as deserters, as though they were soldiers abandoning their posts and deserting the army with whom they served. “That evening a strange thing happened – three dogs deserted, going northward on our old tracks,” he wrote. “They were Lucy’s favourites, and had probably taken it into their heads that they ought to go back and look after their friend” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 29–30).
The sadness imagined here is poignant. The bonds of friendship among the dogs were strong and transcended even death.
The sting of this abandonment and its inherent criticism of the men remained sharp the next day when the three dogs did not reappear. Wisting, Hassel, and Amundsen all wrote of the unfortunate probability that Bjaaland had lost the dogs forever, as they had not returned to camp the following morning of November 11 (Wisting 2011; Hassel 2011; Amundsen Expedition Diary). Amundsen’s diary entry further reflects that Bjaaland received a dog from Helmer Hanssen as a replacement. Of Karenius, Sauen, and Schwartz, Amundsen wrote in his The South Pole book: “It was a great loss to us all, but especially to Bjaaland; they were all three first-rate animals, and among the best we had. He had to borrow a dog from Hanssen’s team, and if he did not go quite so smoothly as before, he was still able to keep up” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 30). Actually, Bjaaland received two dogs as replacements for the three he had lost, according to Hassel’s diary (Hassel 2011). These two were Ulrik from Hassel’s team and Uroa from Hanssen’s team. Both of these dogs were strong, but Bjaaland later in the day had to give back Ulrik to Hassel, as he was not able to convince the dog to pull on his sledge team. Indeed, Bjaaland felt the difference in his team that day, writing that, as his own three dogs had not returned, he had accepted Uroa and Ulrik from Hanssen and Hassel, respectively, but that he had returned Ulrik to Hassel (Bjaaland 2011).
By this time, accounting for the recent shedding of dogs, there would have been 41 dogs remaining. Amundsen, however, in his The South Pole book, wrote that there were now 42 dogs (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 35). Most likely, Rotta had returned to them along the way, and Amundsen was now taking him into account (although no one had mentioned it in their diaries). For this reason, the number of dogs was now 42.
Despite the loss of Lucy’s three friends from their teams, the men and dogs made substantial progress that day of November 11, leaving their camp at 83° that morning and arriving at 83° 20′ by the end of the day (Bjaaland 2011). The dogs were maintaining their fine form, according to Wisting (2011), and, according to Amundsen, they had definitely “galloped” 30 (Amundsen Expedition Diary). Amundsen reported wonderful travel over great surfaces and expanses of snow ice. He also reported the sighting of beautiful highland to the south, which he now estimated to be 150 nautical miles away – mountains that they would have to climb – “but we will hardly [climb] it before we have reached 86°,” he wrote in his diary, 31 alluding to the unspoken fact that he would want the dogs alive for that steep climb before killing most of them, which at this point he planned to do at 86°.
The unsuspecting dogs were now by his side, at their new camp, reveling in being alive and soaking up the sunshine after their day of hard work and tremendous effort helping the men travel to this distance. The sled dogs did not know what Amundsen had planned for them. They knew to pull, and to run, and to do what had been asked of them. “The dogs are all as one lying on their sides and enjoying themselves,” concluded Amundsen in his diary that day. 32
All that magnificent, faithful animal life surrounded him, on the bright, snowy landscape that now reflected the sun’s spectrum of colors, just as the dogs’ eyes reflected the blue sky above them. It was a pity so much strength, beauty, and loyalty would soon be no more.
The sled dogs with their heavy burdens, covered in snow. This photo probably was taken during their journey to the South Pole (Photographer: unidentified/Owner: National Library of Norway)
Lucy (also spelled Lussi), Karenius, and Sauen (“The Sheep”) on the Antarctic ice. Together with Schwartz, they formed a lasting friendship that, following Lucy’s execution, thwarted Roald Amundsen’s plans during the South Pole trek (Photographer: unidentified/Owner: National Library of Norway)
Notes on Original Material and Unpublished Sources
- 1.
F.H. Johansen Antarctic expedition diary, 21 October 1911, NB Ms.4° 2775:C:5
- 2.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 20 October 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 3.
F.H. Johansen Antarctic expedition diary, 21 October 1911, NB Ms.4° 2775:C:5
- 4.
F.H. Johansen Antarctic expedition diary, 21 October 1911, NB Ms.4° 2775:C:5
- 5.
Author’s viewing of original film footage taken of R. Amundsen and the South Pole party by K. Prestrud during the Antarctic expedition of 1910–1912, restored by the Norwegian Film Institute and released on DVD, 2010, as Roald Amundsen’s South Pole Expedition (1910–1912)
- 6.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 21 October 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 7.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 22 October 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 8.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 22 October 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 9.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 24 October 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 10.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 26 October 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 11.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 27 October 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 12.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 30 October 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 13.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 31 October 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 14.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 1 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 15.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 3 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 16.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 5 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 17.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 5 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 18.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 5 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 19.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 6 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 20.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 6 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 21.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 7 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 22.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 7 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 23.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 7 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 24.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 8 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 25.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 8 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 26.
R.F. Scott Antarctic expedition diary, 7 November 1911, BL MS Facsimile 777(1)–(6), Volume 6 – Sledging Diaries, November 1911–March 1912, BL MS Facs 777(6), Manuscripts Collection, British Library, London
- 27.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 9 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 28.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 10 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 29.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 10 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 30.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 11 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 31.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 11 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 32.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 11 November 1911, NB Ms.8° 1249