Bratvaag Expedition
The name of the expedition was taken from its ship, M/S Bratvaag of Ålesund, in which captain Peder Eliassen had sailed the Arctic seas for more than twenty years.
Victoria Island was discovered on 20 July 1898 by two Norwegian sealing captains, Johannes Nilsen and Ludvig Bernard Sebulonsen.
White Island was typically inaccessible to sealers and whalers since it usually was surrounded by a wide belt of thick polar pack ice.
The fog was light that afternoon, so some of the men decided to approach White Island to hunt walrus and to do a little scientific exploring.
In the boat was a lot of equipment frozen in ice, including a boatswain's hook with the words "Andrée's Polar Expedition, 1896" engraved upon the visible portion.
The find lay on the north west side of a rocky hill and one of the first things found was the partial skeleton of a man, half buried in the snow and ice.
The group decided they must take as much of the find as possible aboard the Bratvaag to ensure proper burial of the bodies and to allow scientists to examine the artifacts and determine their authenticity.
At 04:30 a group of seven men went ashore: Horn and Eliassen, botanist Olaf Hanssen, zoologist Adolf Sørensen, Bjarne Ekornåsvåg, and the two trappers Lars Tusvik and Syver Alvestad.
On 30 August they were near enough to civilization that they were able to hear on their wireless radio that the world was anxiously waiting for them to come home and that many vessels containing members of the press were vying to be the first to board the boat.
They were later brought to their homeland Sweden, where the return of the bodies was grandly celebrated including a speech by the king Gustaf V, and they were buried with great honors.
The recovered artifacts provided vital information about the fate of the Andrée expedition that for 33 years had remained one of the unsolved riddles of the Arctic.
The chance discovery in 1930 of the expedition's last camp created a media sensation in Sweden, where the dead men were mourned and idolized.
