Norwegian Polar voyager celebrated
The man who participated in most of Norway’s Polar expeditions to be remembered in Hammerfest
Photo: Narve Skarpmoen / Nasjonalbiblioteket / Wikimedia Commons
Lindstrøm (probably in his 20s) stands in the galley and cooks. The picture is probably taken aboard the D / S Hålogaland.
Michael Sandelson & Lyndsey Smith
The Foreigner
Adolf Henrik Lindstrøm from Northern Norway’s Finnmark County was a prominent member of many teams. The voyager (b. May 17, 1866, d. September 21, 1939, in Oslo) never reached the South Pole, unfortunately. He is to a large degree unknown.
Lindstrøm was just 15 years old when he went on his first journey to the Arctic Ocean, working as a galley boy.
He also worked as a chef on the vessel Fram on her homeward voyage from Tromsø to Oslo. This followed Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen’s first expedition (1893-96) on the ship, which left Northern Norway’s Vardø on June 24 bound for the New Siberian Islands. Lindstrøm also participated in the ship’s second expedition (1898-1902), this time to northwestern Greenland.
Moreover, Lindstrøm was part of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen’s expedition with the Gjøa, the first ship to navigate the Northwest Passage north of the Canadian mainland in one expedition and with one ship.
Having served in the U.S. Navy for six months after this, Lindstrøm then participated in Amundsen’s expedition to the South Pole, Antarctica, between 1910 and 1912.
Hammerfest-born Adolf Henrik Lindstrøm also took part in many other Norwegian expeditions. He was made Knight of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav.
As part of commemorating and spreading knowledge about the man and his achievements, company Hammerfest Turist and Norwegian cruise line Hurtigruten are now offering mini-expeditions from Jan. 8. These will use authentic costumes from the early 1900s, reports NRK.
Hammerfest Turist’s Knut Arne Iversen tells the broadcaster that, “amongst other things, we want to get and place a statue of him in the center of Hammerfest.”
“We’ve now got a pin made with his picture on it which we’ll be selling to part-finance the statue,” he says.
Additional sources: The Fram Museum, Norsk polarhistorie
This article was originally published on The Foreigner. To subscribe to The Foreigner, visit theforeigner.no.
It also appeared in the Jan. 16, 2015, issue of the Norwegian American Weekly. To subscribe, visit SUBSCRIBE or call us at (206) 784-4617.
