Ejnar Mikkelsen

Ejnar Mikkelsen (December 23 1880 Vester-Brønderslev - May 1, 1971 Copenhagen), was a Danish polar explorer and author, born in Jutland. He served in the Amdrup expedition to Christian IX Land, East Greenland (1900), and in the Baldwin-Ziegler expedition to Franz Joseph Land (1900-02.

With Leffingwell he organized the Anglo-American polar expedition which wintered off Flaxman Island, Alaska, in 1906-07. They lost their ship, but in a sledge journey over the ice they located the continental shelf of the Arctic Ocean, 65 miles (105 km) offshore, where in 2 miles (3 km) the sea increased from 50 meters (164 ft) to more than 690 meters (2264 ft) in depth. Organizing an expedition to map out the northeast coast of Greenland, to recover the bodies of Mylius-Erichsen and Lieutenant Höeg-Hagen and their records, Mikkelsen wintered 1909-10 at Shannon Island, East Greenland. His ship sank, and the rest of the party returned home on a whaler. Remaining with his engineer, Iversen, Mikkelsen succeeded by a series of hazardous sledge journeys in recovering the lost records and in disproving the existence of Peary Channel, The two explorers, who later wintered at Shannon island, were rescued when in the direst of extremities, by a Norwegian whaler (1912). He is most known for his expeditions to Greenland, some of these recounted in "Lost in the Arctic (1913)". In 1924 he led an expedition to settle what later came to be Scoresbysund.

Works

* "Conquering the Arctic Ice" (1909)
* "Tre Aar par Grönlands Ostkyst" (1914)
* "Norden For Lov og Ret", a story (1920)
* translated as "Frozen Justice" (1922)
* "John Dale", a novel (1921)
* "Two Against the Ice", with a foreword by Lawrence Millman (Steerforth Press, 2003)

Literature

* "Meddelelser om Grønland" (50 volumes, Copenhagen, 1876-1912)