Peter Tessem and Paul Knutsen

Peter Tessem and Paul Knutsen were two young men from Norway who went with fellow Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen on his 1918 Arctic expedition aboard ship Maud.

The men were instructed to wait for the freeze-up of the Kara Sea and then sledge southwestwards along the western coast of the Taymyr Peninsula towards Dikson, carrying the mail and the valuable scientific data accumulated by the expedition.

The Norwegians' journey was identical in its last 600 kilometres (370 mi) to the sledge trip undertaken a few years earlier at the orders of Baron Eduard Toll by Zarya Captain Nikolai Kolomeitsev and Cossack Stepan Rastorguyev.

In 1901, Kolomeitsev and Rastorguev had covered the distance from Bukhta Kolin Archera, SW of Taymyr Island, to Dikson in one month, so Tessem and Knutsen's trip should not have taken much longer.

[1] The alarm was raised in March 1920 by Leon Amundsen when he got a telegram from his brother Roald, who was then wintering near Ayon Island, in the East Siberian Sea, inquiring whether his men had reached home safely.

[1] Veteran Arctic explorer Otto Sverdrup, acting on behalf of the Royal Norwegian Department for Churches and Education, tried to conduct a search by sending schooner Heimen to the Kara Sea on 23 August 1920.

On August 16, 1919, Begichev found a fireplace with smoked men's bones near Cape Primetny, including a skull, empty cartridges, and a broken knife, suggesting a physical struggle.

Finally, in July 1922, 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) from Dikson, Begichev found a skeleton of a man wearing a golden watch engraved with Peter Tessem's name.

In 1958, the remains were moved to the top of the cape where there is now a granite monument with a plaque inscribed in Russian, and in the Roman alphabet, to honor the memory of the dead Norwegian.