Two Against the Ice

From Booklist
This book can boast one advantage that other recently published titles on Arctic exploration cannot: it comes straight from the author's pen (or rather, the translator's), not from a researcher. Although the events described in the book took place over 90 years ago, this is the first time the account has been published in the U.S. Mikkelsen and Iver Iversen, a ship's mechanic, set off sledging across Greenland to retrieve the diaries of three other Danish explorers who perished during a previous expedition. Mikkelsen wrote that he was the type of person who had his mind on the end goal, and not so much on the immediate details-- not a good trait for an Arctic explorer when even the smallest oversight can be fatal. Amazingly, both he and Iversen survive the two-year jaunt despite frostbite, scurvy, and near-starvation. Readers will be amazed and amused by the way the two explorers keep their spirits about them and downplay the terrifying dangers as though it were all in good fun. Fascinating and fun reading. Gavin Quinn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Kirkus, December 1, 2002
"Mikkelsen is an artisan of cold places, and if his labors are mighty and consuming, they are also of love."


The Explorer's Club
One of the Hundred Best Books of Twentieth-Century Exploration


Book Description
When a team of Danish explorers sailed to northeast Greenland in 1906 to document the coastline, they met a tragic end. The out-of-work Ejnar Mikkelsen pounced on the opportunity to retrieve not only the explorers’ bodies but also their diaries. Two Against the Ice is the riveting story of the author’s attempt at a cleanup expedition — one that turns into a three-year ordeal. Photographs from this remarkable memoir are included.


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Danish


From the Inside Flap
TWO AGAINST THE ICE is a classic tale of survival by an unheralded but important figure in the history of Arctic exploration. First published in Danish in 1955, it has never before been published in North America.

Ejnar Mikkelsen was a man devoted to Arctic exploration. In 1910 he decided to search for the diaries of the ill-fated Mylius-Erichsen expedition, which had set out to prove that Robert Peary’s outline of the East Greenland coast was a myth, erroneous and presumably self-serving. Iver Iversen was a mechanic who joined Mikkelsen in Iceland when the expedition’s boat needed repair. Several months later, Mikkelsen and Iversen embarked on a journey during which they would suffer virtually every travail in the Arctic repertoire: implacable cold, scurvy, starvation, frostbite, snow blindness, plunges into icy seawater, Sisyphean sledging conditions, Vitamin A poisoning, debilitated dogs, apocalyptic storms, gaping crevasses, and assorted mortifications of the flesh. Mikkelsen’s diary was eaten by a bear. Three years of this, coupled with seemingly no hope of rescue, would drive most crazy, yet the two retained both their sanity and their humor. Indeed, what may have saved them was their refusal to become as desolate as their surroundings.

“A classic of Arctic survival and a remarkable account of companionship in the face of adversity. ” -- From The Foreword


About the Author
Born in 1880, EJNAR MIKKELSEN was a veteran of expeditions to Arctic Greenland, Siberia, and Alaska before directing the ill-fated Alabama expedition. Following that ordeal, Mikkelsen continued to visit a realm that, for him, was an earthly paradise. He returned to Greenland in 1925, and again in 1932 as leader of an expedition that explored the same stretch of inhospitable coast he’d seen twenty years earlier. In 1964 he made his last trip; by this time Greenlanders were addressing him affectionately as “Grandfather.” He died in 1971.


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When it came to Polar exploration, writes Lawrence Millman in an introduction, the Scandinavians "make their British and American counterparts seem like Boy Scouts." The kind of character Millman had in mind was Mikkelsen (1880￯﾿ﾽ1971), who chronicles here just one of his numerous exploits in the far, far north country. He￯﾿ﾽd gone to northeast Greenland in 1910 to recover the diary and any surviving papers that might document the 1908 Mylius-Erichsen Expedition￯﾿ﾽs attempts to refute Peary￯﾿ﾽs claim of having mapped the east Greenland coast. Mikkelsen￯﾿ﾽs account is a delight in misery, start to finish, though not of the heroic vein; it￯﾿ﾽs just that there￯﾿ﾽs little else to expect from such a land. The only thing eastern Greenland doesn￯﾿ﾽt have a dearth of is weather and wilds, both of which ring Mikkelsen and his companion Iver P. Iversen￯﾿ﾽ"A stout fellow, Iversen!"￯﾿ﾽas if they were gongs. Food is the greatest privation when there￯﾿ﾽs nothing to eat but ice and rocks, the cold wind meanwhile ever present, but the two soldier on, gobbling the dogs when necessary, sampling rotten caches￯﾿ﾽ"Isn￯﾿ﾽt mold a kind of vegetable?" Iversen asks￯﾿ﾽenduring scurvy and slush, and, without food or sleeping bags, "walking till we could no longer set one foot before another, then [sinking] down behind a stone until the cold woke us, and then [walking] on again." But it was worth it, for they found the diaries that disproved Peary￯﾿ﾽs work￯﾿ﾽand a gratifying poke in Peary￯﾿ﾽs eye that is for Mikkelsen. And at least Mikkelsen was where he wanted to be, a land always willing to drop "a little gall in our cup," yet also an elemental place of rare beauty that demands attentiveness and perhaps even becomes vitally sustaining as it triesto kill you. Mikkelsen is an artisan of cold places, and if his labors are mighty and consuming, they are also of love. (Photographs)


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