A Reluctant Victim
The first few days of the new year, 1912, looked to be promising for the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition’s South Pole party, with beautiful weather, great skiing conditions, and visions of their old familiar mountains – as well as new mountains – taking shape nearby. The men and dogs had descended from the Polar plateau and now were racing toward the Great Ice Barrier hundreds of miles away. Thirteen sled dogs pulled 2 sledges over the icy mountain pass as the party quickly traveled downhill.
The 13 surviving dogs, as of January 1, 1912, were Mylius, Ring, Rap, Hai, Rotta (“The Rat”), Uroa (“Always Moving”), Frithjof, Fisken (“The Fish”), Nigger [sic], Kvæn (Kvajn), Obersten (“The Colonel”), Suggen, and Arne.
Their sledge teams most likely were configured as follows:
Mylius
Ring
Rap
Hai
Rotta
Uroa
Obersten (“The Colonel”)
Suggen
Arne
Nigger [sic]
Kvæn
Frithjof
Fisken
The overnight drive of December 31, 1911, to January 1, 1912, was a fast and relatively easy run. The men and dogs traveled at full speed, going downhill all the way. Roald Amundsen and his men anticipated reaching Devil’s Glacier next, where a food depot awaited them (Bjaaland 2011). They spotted Butcher’s Shop way ahead in the distance and headed toward it, covering their mandatory 15 nautical miles in 5 h (Amundsen Expedition Diary).
Though it was an ominous place of unfortunate events for the dogs, to the men, Butcher’s Shop was a place of familiarity and safety, as well as feasting. Here they had had their fair share of dog meat. Moreover, it contained one of their depots, which was crucially important for them and for the dogs. They navigated toward it with haste and anticipation.
Oscar Wisting, who still engaged a sail on his sledge in order to increase the speed of his vessel, reported in his diary that the sail was catching the wind admirably, allowing his team of sled dogs to trot on with reduced effort, especially as they were now traveling in a downhill direction (Wisting 2011).
The men and dogs were all speeding along relatively easily. Two souls, however, were not doing quite as well as the remainder of the party. Wisting was one of them – he was suffering from a toothache, from what must have been an infected root (Amundsen Expedition Diary; Bjaaland 2011). The other suffering soul was one of Wisting’s dogs, Nigger [sic], who was slowing down, probably from the accumulation of exhausting work and from the lack of nutrition and hydration.
Wisting, luckily, was tended to by the expedition commander himself, Roald Amundsen. His tooth would be pulled by the would-be doctor in the coming days. One may wonder if it was a canine tooth that ailed him. Nigger [sic], however, was not as lucky. He was dog number 13. Amundsen had planned that only 12 dogs would be allowed to survive the journey. Poor Nigger [sic] had drawn the unlucky number.
It was the tormented and dentally challenged Wisting who slaughtered the unlucky dog, writing in his diary that Nigger [sic] had become thin and weak and could no longer pull along with the rest of the team but that his body would make a nutritious meal for the surviving 12 dogs (Wisting 2011). It seems that Nigger [sic] had faltered, so he was the one selected to go – the last to be slaughtered; but Wisting looked on the bright side – the exhausted and emaciated dog would feed the other 12 hungry sled dogs. Although in severe pain from his tooth, Wisting still wrote about the welfare of the surviving dogs.
Originally Kristian Prestrud’s dog on the ship Fram and in the Antarctic, then Bjaaland’s dog on the trek to the South Pole, and now Wisting’s dog on the return from the Pole, Nigger [sic] – unlucky number 13 – was the last dog to be intentionally killed as part of Amundsen’s master plan for securing the South Pole.
The men arrived at their next camp at 86° 40′ on January 1, 1912 (Bjaaland 2011). In his diary, Sverre Hassel recorded the slaughtering of Nigger [sic] upon arrival at this camp, stating that the dog’s body would now be transported to the depot at Devil’s Glacier and then fed to the surviving dogs once there (Hassel 2011).
Nigger [sic] was not mentioned by Amundsen in his diary on the day of his killing and would not be mentioned by him for several more days to come.
Now there were 12 dogs left alive – the number Amundsen had decreed would be allowed to return to Framheim from the South Pole.
By shedding dogs on the return from the Pole, and eating up more of the food stores being carried on the sledges, Amundsen effectively lightened up the expedition’s loads so that he could travel home more quickly and announce his news to the world that much earlier. This had been his strategic plan, and it was unfolding nicely for him.
A Close Call
On the January 1–2 overnight drive, the South Pole party of 5 men and 12 dogs, along with the body of 1 slaughtered dog carried on 1 of the 2 sledges, reached the Devil’s Glacier and crossed it; only this time, they took the easier route – farther away from the mountains – and made the crossing in an easy 2-1/2 h. This was a far cry from the zig-zag approach through the rough terrain and up and down the mountain passes that they had taken on the way south, which had eaten up 3 whole days and an enormous amount of energy from the dogs (Amundsen Expedition Diary; Bjaaland 2011). Perhaps this time, they listened to the sled dogs, who most probably sensed the best and most direct route.
Given that this new route was unfamiliar to the men, however, they soon lost their bearing. They were not sure where their original track had been or where their food depot that they had laid here was located. Amundsen, according to his January 3 diary entry, believed that the party had strayed too far east and that their depot lay to the west, and Bjaaland, according to his January 2 diary entry, believed that they had strayed too far to the west and that the depot lay to the east (Amundsen Expedition Diary; Bjaaland 2011).
On the following overnight drive of January 2–3, Amundsen attempted to go further west in order to compensate for what he thought was a too easterly direction taken on the previous day. Unfortunately, this put the party even further away from their precious depot. To make matters worse, the weather had worsened, making it impossible to see where they were going, and the party was forced to make camp midway through their drive. When the weather cleared and the men and dogs resumed their drive, they were still traveling in the wrong direction, unbeknownst to Amundsen, and so were still unable to find their depot (Amundsen Expedition Diary).
For the first time ever, the meticulous and calculating Amundsen somehow had erred – he had completely lost his direction and had missed a depot. This wrong direction taken, and the bypassing of an all-important food depot, spelled impending disaster – especially for the dogs. For, with few provisions left, and another several days of travel still ahead before reaching the next depot at Butcher’ Shop, the events that would necessarily follow would not be pretty. These events would include the killing of some or possibly all of the dogs in order to use them as dog-meat as well as to eat their dog-pemmican, and the pulling of the sledges all the way home by the men themselves. These were not solutions Amundsen wanted to entertain, but he did.
Sverre Hassel reported that Amundsen made an emergency plan on the spot – a plan that would be difficult but would have to be accepted. The contingency plan centered on killing the dogs. Hassel wrote the plan into his diary, which stipulated that the men would slaughter 1 of the 2 dog teams, comprised of the 6 dogs they deemed to be the weakest of the 12 and that these 6 weaker dogs would be fed to the 6 stronger ones in order to maintain 1 working team, which would pull 1 sledge bearing most of the load, while 3 men pulled the other sledge bearing 100 kilograms of weight; furthermore, the dog-pemmican would be withheld from the 6 surviving dogs and would now be given only to the humans to eat (Hassel 2011). Only if they could find the depot, continued Hassel, could they avoid killing the dogs.
The contingency plan was clear. By killing six dogs, the men would have six remaining. Most likely, the dogs killed would be Wisting’s team, leaving Hanssen’s lead team – the best dogs, according to Amundsen – pulling the first sledge for the men, and the men themselves pulling the second, lighter-weight sledge.
The men understood the gravity of this emergency plan. Olav Bjaaland wrote in his diary that, whereas the humans had just enough food to last until the next depot, the sled dogs did not. It would have to be a case of dog-eat-dog, with the dogs surviving on each other, and the men ultimately hauling their own sledge loads (Bjaaland 2011).
The immediate action agreed upon was to continue on to Butcher’s Shop and then access the depot there – their “dog depot,” as Amundsen called it in his January 3 diary entry. 1 To that end, the party traveled north toward the Butcher’s spot (Amundsen Expedition Diary). Now, with the weather clearer, they were finally able to recognize their surroundings. They spotted a ridge at 86° 9′ that they had passed on November 28, 1911, during their trip southward. It now turned out that, in their return, they had been traveling too far to the west. Bjaaland had been correct – the Devil’s Glacier depot lay further to the east. Providence then smiled upon them. In adjusting their course eastward, the men reached and climbed the familiar ridge they had spotted and looked back southward over the Devil’s Glacier and found their missed depot. Amundsen estimated it was 8 nautical miles behind them.
The choice now was whether to keep going on to Butcher’s Shop or to backtrack to their depot at Devil’s Glacier. After some ponderous weighing of the two options, Amundsen first chose the former – to keep going on to Butcher’s Shop – and so the party continued on their tracks; approximately 9 nautical miles later, however, Amundsen second-guessed his decision and stopped to look back toward the glacier depot with his binoculars, lamenting his call to bypass it (Hassel 2011). It was clear he wished he would have selected the latter option of turning back toward the missed depot. It would not be right, he wrote in his diary, to forego the opportunity to at least attempt to locate the depot, and all his men, he claimed, were most willing and ready to backtrack and to make the climb again in order to search for the depot (Amundsen Expedition Diary).
Amundsen, however, was not so keen on going back there himself (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 148). And so the men froze in indecision.
It was Sverre Hassel who, at this point, contributed a suggestion that resolved the dilemma in which they all found themselves. According to Hassel’s diary entry of January 3, he recommended that Amundsen send back an unloaded sledge, pulled by all 12 dogs, and accompanied by 2 men, to search for the missed depot and, once the depot was found, to bring back all the provisions it held (Hassel 2011).
Amundsen accepted this plan and decided on sending two men, but he decided to send only six of the dogs rather than all of the dogs (Amundsen Expedition Diary) – perhaps he wanted to cover himself by keeping one dog team with him, in case the depot party became lost or never returned to the main party. “I chose HH [Helmer Hanssen] and Bj. [Bjaaland] for this job,” wrote Amundsen in his diary that day. “They turned around [and left] immediately– 5 am – with one dog team and an empty sledge, while we others set up camp.” 2 Hassel confirmed this plan in his diary, saying that it was Hanssen’s sledge, along with Hanssen’s six dogs, who left with Hanssen and Bjaaland at 5:00 that morning (Hassel 2011).
The six dogs who made up Hanssen’s sledge team, and who were sent on this urgent mission, most likely were Mylius, Ring, Rap, Hai, Rotta, and Uroa.
The three men remaining at camp busied themselves and waited. Wisting wrote of his heartfelt wishes for the two men and six dogs who had departed on their special tour. In his diary, he expressed his fervent hope that these men and dogs would be fortunate enough to find the depot, in order to retrieve the plentiful food that was stocked there and in order to spare the lives of the sled dogs (Wisting (2011). As usual, the dogs were on Wisting’s mind.
A little after 8:00 a.m., Amundsen sat down with his diary, recording what had transpired over the past day. He wrote about the special team he had sent out a few hours prior, willing them to return successfully. The sun had shone since the team’s departure, he reasoned, and so they must have made it to the depot by now. And even though the weather had just recently turned a bit cloudy, it was still clear, he insisted. His strong desire and will for them to return was projected through his words. He expected them to be back by 1:00 p.m. (Amundsen Expedition Diary). It was hopeful thinking.
Bjaaland took note of Amundsen’s flip-flop decision-making regarding the depot, first wanting to continue on after having missed it and then wanting to double-back, making his final decision to send Bjaaland and Hanssen back to it. Once this final decision was made, wrote Bjaaland in his diary, he and Hanssen, along with Hanssen’s trusty Greenland dogs – with the dogs pulling an empty sledge and Bjaaland skiing as forerunner – headed in a north-northeast direction in haste (Bjaaland 2011). Whereas Amundsen had estimated the depot to be eight nautical miles away, Bjaaland reported that it was 13.6 nautical miles. The first 11 of those miles were traveled almost blind, in sometimes dense fog and snow drift and with no sightings of any depot. It was fortuitous that at that point the weather cleared and the two men spied the depot 2-1/2 miles in the distance, to their – and to the dogs’ – delight.
Hanssen, in his autobiographical book Voyages of a Modern Viking, shed light on his and Bjaaland’s activities once they had reached the long-lost depot, writing that the two men immediately gave the six dogs double rations of pemmican to eat and that they themselves delved into the food stock as well and consumed a packet of chocolate each (Hanssen 1936, 111).
The trip back with the six working dogs, and with the now fully loaded sledge bearing the full contents of the depot, was smooth, easy, and pleasurable, according to both Bjaaland (2011) and Hanssen (1936).
Two hours after their expected time of arrival, the special depot team returned to camp triumphant. They brought with them all the provisions from the depot at Devil’s Glacier – less what they and their dog team had eaten on site. There would now be food enough to sustain all the men and dogs until they reached Butcher’s Shop. Bjaaland and Hanssen, with Mylius, Ring, Rap, Hai, Uroa, and Rotta, had saved the expedition.
Bjaaland reported that, upon seeing the special team’s return after the 10-h round trip, Amundsen positively glowed in happiness (Bjaaland 2011). Bjaaland himself interpreted this as a correct reaction, given the fact that their success had prevented the fulfillment of the death sentence that had been issued to six dogs. The significant achievement here was that one entire sledge team would not have to be put to death.
Hanssen, in his book, gave further insight as to how pleased Amundsen was with the special team’s return and especially with the dogs. He reported that, upon first seeing the returning team in the near distance, Amundsen quickly awoke Hassel and Wisting from their slumber, telling them that it looked as though the special team had found the depot; once the special team reached the campsite, Amundsen immediately began taking care of the returning sled dogs, tending to their needs (Hanssen 1936, 111–112). For the dogs to receive Amundsen’s special attention was really saying something.
At 3 pm ‘the boys’ returned and, as I was sure [would happen], with the depot’s contents on the sledge. They had covered, in total, 26 nautical miles. In other words: HH’s [Helmer Hanssen’s] sledge team has today covered a distance of 42 nautical miles at an average speed of 3 nautical miles per hour! Come then and say, that dogs are not usable in this terrain. They had no difficulty in finding the depot. 3
Amundsen went on to state that the six dogs and two men had retraced the ascent to the Devil’s Glacier and had found their way to the depot from there. In returning, they took a course south by west, indicating that the party had veered away from their course by 1-1/2 points (Amundsen Expedition Diary).
Encountering weather challenges and rising ridges, not to mention enduring the hunger they were experiencing, the dogs had traveled back and forth across the Antarctic ice over 42 nautical miles that day, uninterrupted. They had done what they knew had to be done, for they, too, must have understood the gravity of the situation. They had saved the men, the expedition, and themselves.
The day began badly but ended well. Now we are only five days’ march from our depot at 85° 9′ S.lat and have enough food for ourselves and [our] dogs for 10 [days]. It looked truly bleak this morning: slaughtering of our dogs, hauling ourselves, etc., and now again on the right foot. It is not the first time that I have observed help at the right moment. 4
Amundsen may have believed that a higher entity had once again helped him. Certainly he had viewed this situation as posing an existential threat. Equally certain, however, was the fact that the dogs had provided Amundsen with the assistance he needed, at the time he needed it.
That was a notable feat, both for men and dogs. Hanssen, Bjaaland, and that team had covered about fifty miles that day, at an average rate of three to three and a half miles an hour. They had found the depot without much search. Their greatest difficulty had been in the undulating surface; for long stretches at a time they were in the hollows between the waves, which shut in their view entirely. Ridge succeeded ridge, endlessly. We had taken care that everything was ready for their return – above all great quantities of water.
It should be noted that the water was usually only for the men. The dogs, most likely, were left to get their water from the snow all around them. Hanssen, however, had indicated that Amundsen had immediately begun tending to the dogs upon the team’s return. Perhaps he gave them special allowances this time.
As the two returning men were being fed and watered, and the returning dogs were being fed, the other men – except Amundsen – unloaded the welcomed depot supplies and prepared the sledges. Feeling relieved as a result of the special team’s successful return, Hassel recorded in his diary that he proceeded to feed the sled dogs and to repack the sledge cases, with the help of Wisting (Hassel 2011). Wisting took great comfort in the special team’s return and credited both the men and the dogs for their amazing journey, writing that Bjaaland, Hanssen, and the six dogs indeed had an arduous day and covered a vast distance (Wisting 2011). He himself continued with his sledge preparations and cooking duties that evening. As for Bjaaland, he ended the day with great relief and with words of exuberance written into his diary, as he anticipated eating a delicious New Year’s porridge being prepared at that moment by Wisting (Bjaaland 2011).
All in all, the party now had full provisions for the men and enough pemmican for the dogs. The dog pemmican was crated and loaded as 43 rations on Wisting’s sledge and 72 rations on Hanssen’s sledge (Bjaaland Diary).
With the sledges now loaded down and heavy with provisions, the party left camp on the following morning of January 4 and traveled 20 nautical miles (25 miles) north, beginning the climb to Butcher’s Shop, which was located at an additional 2680 feet in altitude (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 149–151; Amundsen Expedition Diary). The men could see Mt. Don Pedro Christophersen in the distance – of course, not as yet named for the generous donor – as well as Mt. Fridtjof Nansen and continued to head toward Butcher’s, which Amundsen estimated to be 12 nautical miles away. “We will get up there tomorrow, as long as the weather holds, put a couple of dogs on the sledge and begin the descent,” wrote Amundsen of his plan to access the dog carcasses he had stockpiled at Butcher’s. He added at the end of his diary entry: “The dogs have been remarkably good today with the comparatively heavy loads and the climb.” 5
Yes, the dogs were indeed doing all that was asked of them, without any complaints. Moreover, according to Bjaaland, they had pulled for 7-1/2 h that day (Bjaaland 2011). This they accomplished even after the grueling round-trip depot tour they had made on the previous day. It seemed that Amundsen still, however, wanted them to do more, to keep on going even further that night. But enough was enough. The men interjected diplomatically. Hassel wrote in his diary that, when Amundsen proclaimed his desire to continue the march to Butcher’s that very night and inquired of Hanssen if his dog team would be able to handle this, luckily Hanssen replied that he believed the dogs would have a difficult time making the climb if requested to do so that very evening (Hassel 2011). Thankfully, Amundsen allowed the dogs to stop for the day at this point, hence his decision to reach Butcher’s Shop on the following day.
That night, they made camp at the same location where they had camped on November 26, 1911, during their march south, when they had been making their wild, fast descent from Butcher’s Shop in thick blinding fog (Amundsen Expedition Diary). Now, on their journey north, they had nice weather – the sunshine was hot and the sky clear. The next day’s climb would continue to be sharply uphill. The dogs, mercifully, were allowed to pause and rest here for the evening.
Their intense ascent began again the following morning of January 5 at 1:15 a.m. and then turned into another descent, bringing them to the Butcher’s Shop by 8:00 a.m. It was Amundsen’s intention to reach his “dog depot” here that contained the remaining 14 bodies from the 24 dogs he had killed at this location the previous November 21, 1911. “We followed our cairns all the way and found our slaughtered dogs,” wrote Amundsen in his diary that day, crediting Hanssen with spotting the stockpile of carcasses. “HH [Helmer Hanssen] it was, who with his sharp eyes discovered them. Had not that been the case, I really don’t know what would have happened.” 6
Even in their death, the dogs were still serving Amundsen. Their high stack of rigid bodies now acted as a beacon by which Hanssen and the party could find their way. For this place was now, according to Amundsen, “completely unrecognizable” territory due to the changing weather 7 (Amundsen Expedition Diary). And Amundsen felt grateful and lucky to have reached it. Bjaaland claimed that the location was so visually unfamiliar that at first the men were totally confused and were finally able to recognize the area only after spotting the depot (Bjaaland 2011).
The depot itself – that is, the bodies of the 14 dogs killed and stacked up here in a morbid stockpile – was nearly buried and camouflaged. The dead dogs themselves appeared as a snow pile. According to Hassel, the bodies of the dogs, as well as the sledge that had been left behind, were completely buried in the snow drift (Hassel 2011). This made finding the depot that much more remarkable.
After an approximate 7-h drive, the 12 hungry sled dogs were given 1 of the dead dogs from the stockpile to eat for their repast. “At the ‘Butcher’s Shop’ we carved up one of the dog carcasses and gave the dogs a little extra meal,” wrote Amundsen in his diary that day. “They threw themselves over it like ravening wolves.” The party stopped only long enough to feed the dogs. “Then we tossed a carcass onto each sledge and hurried away,” wrote Amundsen. 8
The amount of time spent at Butcher’s on this trip, in contrast to the 5-day stay-over the previous November, was a mere 1 h. Hassel detailed this visit, as it relates to the dogs, in his diary, specifying that each sled dog received one portion of dog meat and that they each attacked the meat with eager voracity (Hassel 2011). He also reported that 1-1/2 frozen dog carcasses were placed on each sledge before the party left at 9 a.m.
Wisting, too, recorded in his diary that the men retrieved three dog carcasses from the depot at Butcher’s Shop before resuming their descent from the plateau (Wisting 2011). It seems, then, that the visit’s sole purpose was to access a load of dog meat for the surviving dogs. In his diary, Bjaaland captured the speed of the visit to Butcher’s and the haste in which the party left the site, stating that the men quickly fed some dog meat to the 12 sled dogs, slipped 2 to 3 dog carcasses onto the sledges, and then took off in a mad dash down the icy decline from Butcher’s Shop (Bjaaland 2011).
With the 1 dog carcass eaten and 2 dog carcasses loaded onto the sledges at Butcher’s, Amundsen’s party consumed – or prepared to consume – only 3 of the 14 slaughtered dogs that had been kept here on ice. This means that the remaining 11 dogs killed here for food, as Amundsen had maintained, were actually now abandoned, left behind here at Butcher’s Shop, not used as sustenance, and so, ultimately, had been killed unnecessarily.
It is interesting that, in his diary, Amundsen did not identify the dog that the men fed to the living dogs here at the return to Butcher’s nor did he identify the two dogs the men threw onto the sledges to be used as food later. These three dogs were once the men’s comrades – living, breathing beings who had helped them, had pulled them to the Polar plateau, and had laid down their lives for them. Now they were merely gutted, frozen carcasses to be consumed. Was his resistance to see them as the individual dogs they had once been a protective, self-defensive mechanism? Or was it simply a case of short-term memory?
Similarly, Amundsen described his hungry dog team, eating the dog meat set before them, as ravening wolves (“glubsk ulve” – glubsk meaning “ravening” or “ferocious”). Again, these were the dogs who had brought Amundsen to this advanced southern point safely, who had helped him find the way to and from the Pole, who had pulled the heavy loads brilliantly, and who had even gone back to the depot he had missed. They were now starving. Were his words, then, affectionate irony or an effort to distance himself? Perhaps by portraying the dogs as simply wild and predatory eating machines, he was attempting to convince himself that there was no need to feel remorse or regret for destroying their brethren or for potentially destroying them.
And yet, destroy the dogs, he had done. One of the bodies of the dead dogs killed here at Butcher’s Shop not 2 months prior was now being fed to the 12 surviving dogs, who watched the men load another 2 bodies onto the sledges to be served as food during the next portion of the trek – which they undertook immediately.
January 4 [International Date Line corrected from January 5 as had been recorded in Amundsen’s expedition diary] was one of the days to which we looked forward with anxiety, as we were then due at our depot at the Butcher’s, and had to find it. This depot, which consisted of the finest, fresh dogs’ flesh, was of immense importance to us. Not only had our animals got into the way of preferring this food to pemmican, but, what was of still greater importance, it had an extremely good effect on the dogs’ state of health. No doubt our pemmican was good enough – indeed, it could not have been better – but a variation of diet is a great consideration, and seems, according to my experience, to mean even more to the dogs than to the men on a long journey like this. On former occasions I have seen dogs refuse pemmican, presumably because they were tired of it, having no variety; the result was that the dogs grew thin and weak, although we had food enough. The pemmican I am referring to on that occasion was made for human use, so that their distaste cannot have been due to the quality.
Was this an oversell? Or was it a genuinely held notion pertaining to the health and welfare of his dogs? The fact is that Amundsen felt an urgency to reach this dog depot at Butcher’s Shop, but he utilized only 3 – or, at the most, 4 – of the 14 dog bodies that awaited him there. Furthermore, the men themselves this time did not partake of the gourmet delicacy that was dog meat. The long passage about dog flesh, then, is quite interesting and perhaps illuminating regarding Amundsen’s own philosophy about consuming the strengths of another.
The first thing we did on reaching the depot was to take out the dogs’ carcasses that lay there and cut them into big lumps, that were divided among the dogs. They looked rather surprised; they had not been accustomed to such rations. We threw three carcasses on to the sledges, so as to have a little extra food for them on the way down.
In his book, Amundsen stressed his point about the importance of accessing the dog carcasses left at Butcher’s in order to feed them to the living dogs and seemed to imply that all of the stockpiled dog meat was put to use once they had returned to that spot. And yet, shortly after proclaiming the importance of Butcher’s Shop for feeding the dogs, he made this contradictory statement: “It was not so much for the sake of the food it contained that we considered it so necessary to find this spot, as for discovering the way down to the Barrier again” (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 154).
And find their way they did. After their brief stop at the Butcher’s Shop, once the dogs had been fed and the sledges organized, the party descended from that spot very quickly, with the dogs managing to go at a breakneck velocity. Amundsen recorded in his diary that the party traveled downward at a great speed, necessitating the use of ropes around the runners of the sledges so as to serve as a braking mechanism, as the decline was extremely sharp and steep (Amundsen Expedition Diary).
As we rounded it [Mount Ole Engelstad] we came on to the severe, steep slope, where, on the way south, I had so much admired the work done by my companions and the dogs that day. But now I had an even better opportunity of seeing how steep this ascent really had been. Many were the brakes we had to put on before we could reduce the speed to a moderate pace, but even so we came down rapidly, and soon the first part of the descent lay behind us.
The party ended up at a location that was 5000 feet lower in altitude and 10 degrees higher in temperature. By 11:30 a.m., 2-1/2 h after they had set out from Butcher’s, the 12 dogs and 5 men settled down in a sun-drenched oasis at a spot well below the plateau (Amundsen Expedition Diary). Here, sheltered and warm, in −13 °C, and breathing a bit more easily in the lower altitude, Amundsen felt generous. He allowed the dogs to eat another one of the two dead dogs they had brought with them, from Butcher’s, on the sledges. Hassel recorded the feeding in his diary, reporting that the sled dogs each ate one portion of pemmican and that the two teams shared one dog carcass, each team eating one-half of a dead dog (Hassel 2011).
Amundsen was, for the moment, happy. “The dogs rest, satisfied, in the sunshine, after having put away a large portion of dog meat along with pemmican,” he wrote in his diary that evening. “We are, indeed, now also on the safe side and can allow ourselves a little extra.” 9
The extra meal, courtesy of their dead brethren, must have helped the 12 sled dogs during the following day’s arduous trek. They began the drive at 1:00 a.m., after viewing their breathtaking surroundings – shadows and sunlight, colors, and clouds playing on the mountains Fridtjof Nansen, Don Pedro Christophersen, and Ole Engelstad. They were met with avalanches of snow pummeling down around them. “Don Pedro was getting rid of his winter coat,” wrote Amundsen poetically in his book The South Pole book (Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 157).
While easy for the skiers, the loose snow encountered on that day of January 6 caused the dogs to sink deep into the surface more often than to cross over it. Meanwhile, as the dogs struggled, Amundsen and Bjaaland raced each other over the snow, making a game of it and having a fun time. Still, despite their difficulties, the dogs were able to make headway. And, as a reward, they received another portion of dead dog meat.
“It has been a good day for us skiers,” wrote Amundsen in his diary that day, describing the brilliant snow conditions that had allowed smooth skiing and had enabled him to indulge in some enjoyable “sport” along the way. “But, for the dogs, it was worse,” he continued. “These [the dogs] sank terribly into it, but still progressed forward. Our day’s march is 11.4 nautical miles.” 10
Bjaaland concurred, writing in his diary, that evening that he had had a thoroughly enjoyable day skiing over the amenable snow, and racing with the Captain, but that it had been a gruesome day for the dogs, who every minute were sinking into the loose snow up to their knee joints (Bjaaland 2011). Wisting also commiserated with the dogs, writing in his January 6 diary entry that the dogs were actually sinking down all the way to their stomachs in the loose, soft snow and that this deep surface slowed down their movements quite a bit (Wisting 2011).
As a bonus payment for their efforts that day, the sled dogs were given a piece of dog meat that evening, in addition to their regular meal of half a kilogram of pemmican (Amundsen Expedition Diary).
An Act of Mercy
The South Pole party was now at the same place it had been on November 19, 1911 – on a small glacier leading to the Axel Heiberg Glacier that lay lower than the Polar plateau and lay among the newly discovered mountains. The party’s current altitude was 3100 feet. The Axel Heiberg Glacier would take the party right to the Great Ice Barrier, where it joined up with the ice the men called home. This time, they planned to take the easier – though longer – route along the glacier itself, through the bay, or valley, which they had first spied on the journey southward, rather than over the exhausting mountain passes as previously traveled. They longed to reach their main depot at 85° 9′, where they would feel closer to home and be fully provisioned with food (Amundsen Expedition Diary; Amundsen 1912, vol. 2: 157).
Their hopes came to fruition on the following day of January 7, at 11:00 p.m., when the Norwegian-Greenlander party arrived at their main depot, which was sighted from a distance first by forerunner Bjaaland (Amundsen Expedition Diary; Bjaaland 2011). This had been the depot laid at 85° 9′ South on November 17 of the previous year. From here they had begun the climb southward on November 18 – almost 2 months ago. They were now back on the Great Ice Barrier – the backyard of their Framheim home.
The reaching of the depot was done in two stages, according to Amundsen’s detailed diary entry (Amundsen Expedition Diary). First, the party undertook an overnight drive from the evening of the 6th to the morning of the 7th, arriving at the final edge of the Axel Heiberg Glacier at 7:00 a.m., during which time 15.5 nautical miles had been covered. For the second stage, the party made an evening drive on the 7th, leaving at 6:00 p.m. and arriving at the depot at 11:00 p.m. after a 5-h drive, during which 11.4 nautical miles had been covered. All of this was accomplished in −9 °C to −12 °C temperature and over a loose snow surface that again accommodated the skiers but was adversarial to the dogs.
The snow was a bit too wet for the dogs, reported Bjaaland in his diary that day (Bjaaland 2011), and the sled dogs struggled to gain footing and hold their ground, wrote Wisting in his diary entry (Wisting 2011). The sledges and skis, however, were able to slide effortlessly across the slippery surface.
But, according to Hassel, the dogs were determined not to be left behind (Hassel 2011). In his diary entry that day, Hassel reported that the skiers – Amundsen, Bjaaland, and Hassel – had an easy time of maintaining the lead over the dogs as they crossed over this slick stretch of glacier snow; the dogs, however, would not be denied their lead and took whatever opportunities presented themselves to beat the men in their own race. Whenever Hanssen’s team fell behind, and after receiving a dose of whipping from Hanssen, the dogs surged ahead, gained distance, and left first Amundsen and then Hassel behind in the snow. It seems, from Hassel’s diary entry, that the dogs did have the heart to maintain the lead but that they were also whipped to maintain it and responded with a burst of speed that kept the caravan moving ahead.
But, in the midst of all this progress, the unexpected happened.
On the night of the 7th, after arriving on the Great Ice Barrier and reaching their depot, the men were forced to euthanize one of the 12 surviving dogs. This, unhappily, was done to Frithjof, and it is not clear how he was killed – whether he was shot point blank or given an axe blow to the head. The black-spotted, finely built dog had always been light on his feet and agile, as described by his original companion Bjaaland over a year prior, during the voyage on the ship Fram. Having begun the South Pole trek on Bjaaland’s team, and then been given to Hanssen at the start of the return trek, Frithjof was now pulling on Wisting’s team along with his friends Fisken and most likely Kvæn. But he had become sick, and, without the necessities of veterinary services and medicinal supplies on the snow journey, he was condemned to die.
“‘Frithjof’ – one of Bj.’s [Bjaaland’s] dogs – was slaughtered tonight,” wrote Amundsen in his diary that night. “It was ill. It appeared that it suffered some kind of lung sickness. The meat was distributed between his companions. They prefer now dog meat to pemmican, although they very much like the latter dish, also.” 11 To Amundsen, the mercy killing was translated into another dog meat feeding for the surviving dogs. He did not, however, seem to be concerned about losing 1 of his 12 remaining dogs.
Wisting did not record Frithjof’s death, but it was he who did the mercy killing. He did, however, write of feeding the dogs that day with dog meat, stating that, for the third time, the sled dogs had been given an extra meal of meat in addition to their regular pemmican and that, as a result, they were all now gaining weight – in fact, they were fat (Wisting 2011). The dog meat to which Wisting was referring most likely was Frithjof’s body – there is a slim chance that it could have been a third carcass brought from the Butcher’s Shop, but, with Frithjof’s killing, it was most likely Frithjof that Wisting described as a third meat meal.
Hassel recorded Frithjof’s death and the consumption of his body, in his diary entry on the following day, January 8, noting that this now left Wisting with only five sled dogs rather than a team of six (Hassel 2011). He also wrote that, although Frithjof was very sick, his body was nonetheless given to the other sled dogs to eat. There seems to be implied in Hassel’s words a reluctance or questioning of the wisdom of feeding an ill dog to the surviving dogs. Perhaps he and Amundsen had words about this.
Bjaaland, whose dog Frithjof had been, did not mention him at all on the day of his death, in his diary. Instead, he wrote of him on the following day of January 8 (seemingly spelling his name Fridtjov), referring to him as the best-performing dog on his team and noting that he died young while working on Wisting’s team (Bjaaland 2011). Frithjof, said Bjaaland, had sacrificed his life, and his insides were not a pretty sight, implying how hard the dog had worked.
Frithjof was the last of Amundsen’s sled dogs killed on the South Pole trek. It is a peculiar twist of fate that this dog shared the same name with the great Norwegian Polar explorer and Amundsen’s mentor, Fridtjof Nansen.
And just as the reaching of the South Pole had been marked by Helge’s death, so too the return to the Great Ice Barrier was marked by Frithjof’s death.
The killing of dogs had bookended the journey – with many more dogs killed in between the beginning and ending events.
The mercy killing of Frithjof derailed Amundsen’s intended plan to return from the South Pole to Framheim with 12 sled dogs. Now the party contained only 11 dogs.
As an afterthought, on this day of Frithjof’s killing, Amundsen recalled that Nigger [sic], too, had been killed a week prior – on New Year’s Day – and that the ensuing dog dinners that these two dead dogs provided were improving the health of the surviving sled dogs. “‘Nigger’ [sic] – one of Pr.’s [Prestrud’s] dogs – was slaughtered when we came over the snowdrift district up on the plateau,” wrote Amundsen in his diary that day of January 7, after announcing the death of Frithjof. “It has turned out that this feeding with dog meat has had a remarkably good effect on the dogs. They, at the same time, receive their pemmican ration. They now seem to look just as well as when we left Framheim.” 12
We had to kill Frithjof, one of Bjaaland’s dogs, at this camp. He had latterly been showing marked signs of shortness of breath, and finally this became so painful to the animal that we decided to put an end to him. Thus brave Frithjof ended his career. On cutting him open it appeared that his lungs were quite shriveled up; nevertheless, the remains disappeared pretty quickly into his companions’ stomachs. What they had lost in quantity did not apparently affect their quality. Nigger [sic], one of Hassel’s dogs, had been destroyed on the way down from the plateau. We thus reached this point again with twelve dogs, as we had reckoned on doing, and left it with eleven. I see in my diary the following remark: “The dogs look just as good as when we left Framheim.”
As this statement shows, Amundsen felt compelled to reiterate in his book that his plan had worked and that indeed they had ended up with 12 dogs at the end of the return from the Pole. Even though 1 of the dogs had to be killed out of necessity, for he was gravely ill and suffering, things in general had still gone according to plan – the men had returned with 12 dogs and were now moving forward with 11. Furthermore, these 11 survivors, after Frithjof’s euthanasia, were all doing quite well, thank you, he seemed to be saying.
As for the condition of the men, they were now awash in food. According to Amundsen’s diary entry of the 7th, the party had enough food on their sledges to last them for 35 days and also had provisions stored in the depots that awaited them along the way north, situated at each degree traveled. “We are thus living amidst the fleshpots of Egypt,” wrote Amundsen gleefully in his diary that day. 13 The trick, he added, was to eat as much of the food as quickly as possible in order to lighten the weight of the sledges (Amundsen Expedition Diary). This again calls into question the decision to leave so much of the food in depot and deprive the dogs of it on their way southward.
And so, of the 12 dogs slated for survival by the end of the South Pole trek, one had succumbed to illness and was destroyed in an act of mercy. Thus, 11 survivors would return from the South Pole toward their home Framheim.
An Accounting of the Killings
Of the 52 dogs taken on the South Pole trek, 24 (24 per Amundsen, 23 per Hassel and Wisting) dogs had been slaughtered at Butcher’s Shop alone, not counting the 10 dogs destroyed along the way at the depots – 5 on the way to and 5 on the way back from the South Pole – as well as the 1 (Helge) sacrificed at the Pole. That makes a total of 35 dogs killed. This does not include the six who escaped or could not keep up along the way – although one of those, Peary, was later found by the Eastern Expedition party.
Was the killing of the dogs necessary for the completion of the trek? Were the killings committed for survival or merely to win the race? In other words, could Amundsen eventually have reached the South Pole if he had carried increased loads of food and traveled at a reduced rate of speed, keeping all of the dogs alive, and only killing those who were sick or suffering?
It is difficult to say if the journey would have been successful had Amundsen trekked at a slower pace with his full contingent of dogs and had he not left so much food at the depots along the way. It seems possible that the answer could be yes; he could have still succeeded. He may not have won the race in this way – it may have taken him a few more weeks to reach the Pole, but he had everything so well organized and planned that he could have accomplished this discovery methodically, with all the depots, and all the cairns, and all his knowledge and skill of driving dogs at his fingertips. The only remaining question would then be, would he have reached the Pole by that same day of December 15 (14), 1911, or would he have arrived a little later? Even if it were later, he still may have arrived before January 17, 1912, before Robert Falcon Scott had reached the Pole, and so he may have still won the race to the goal.
Certainly, it was high summer in the Antarctic, and the necessity for completing this trip during the summer months is obvious. But what of the necessity to arrive on that particular day? That deadline seems to have been self-imposed. And with this date looming before him, Amundsen adopted a throw-caution-to-the-wind approach where the dogs’ lives were concerned. The true goal, it seems, was to win the race – to reach the South Pole ahead of anyone else – not just to reach the Pole. But the truly sad irony here is that, in most likelihood, Scott would not have made it to the Pole first anyway. He was a good 4 weeks behind Amundsen on the trek. And he did not have sled dogs for the final portion of his march south – and certainly he did not rely on them as Amundsen did.
The sacrifice for Amundsen, then, was his sled dogs. It was their lives that were the dispensable element for him – once they had fulfilled his mission. They were to be used and killed as was fitting to his plan and as was convenient to him. It was they who paid the price for his victory.
Dog Chart: The Dogs Who Made the Return Journey from the South Pole to the Great Ice Barrier
Thirteen sled dogs continued the return journey home from the South Pole, pulling Roald Amundsen and the accompanying 4 men of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition and reaching the Great Ice Barrier on January 7, 1912.
The 13 dogs who pulled the 5 men from the South Pole to the Great Ice Barrier
Mylius
Ring
Hai (also Haika)
Rap
Rotta (“The Rat”)
Uroa (“Always Moving”)
Obersten (“The Colonel”)
Suggen
Arne
Nigger [sic] (also Niger)
Kvæn (also Kvajn and Kven)
Frithjof (also Fridtjof)
Fisken (“The Fish”)
Two South Pole dogs were destroyed along the way.
The slaughtering of two dogs during the final portion of the return journey from the South Pole
Nigger [sic] – From Wisting’s team – was slaughtered at 86° 40′ S on New Year’s Day, January 1, 1912. He was the 13th dog and thus was destroyed so as to leave 12.
Frithjof – From Wisting’s team – was slaughtered at 85° 9′ S on January 7, 1912. He became painfully ill, and found it difficult to breathe, and was thus euthanized as the only mercy killing.
Following the killing of these 2 dogs, 11 sled dogs remained to pull Roald Amundsen and the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition home to their base camp Framheim, as of January 8, 1912 (International Date Line corrected to January 7, 1912).
The sled dogs who made up Helmer Hanssen’s sledge team. Hanssen’s team of dogs made the urgent round trip back to the Devil’s Glacier, in order to find and retrieve the depot that the men had missed on the return journey. Once again, the dogs saved the expedition. (Photographer: unidentified/Owner: National Library of Norway)
Notes on Original Material and Unpublished Sources
- 1.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 3 January 1912, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 2.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 3 January 1912, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 3.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 3 January 1912, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 4.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 3 January 1912, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 5.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 4 January 1912, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 6.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 5 January 1912, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 7.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 5 January 1912, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 8.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 5 January 1912, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 9.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 5 January 1912, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 10.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 6 January 1912, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 11.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 7 January 1912, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 12.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 7 January 1912, NB Ms.8° 1249
- 13.
R. Amundsen Antarctic expedition diary, 7 January 1912, NB Ms.8° 1249