I've been invited to the family home of Astrid Mikkelsen, the great granddaughter of Enjar Mikkelsen, the man who led the Alabama expedition. We visited her and her family home in a suburb of Copenhagen. The home is full of objects that tell her family's involvement in Greenland. Paintings of the island line the walls. Ivory carvings by Greenland's native people the Inuit, are displayed on shelves. The Home Library is chock full of books about the Arctic. A narwhal tusk hangs next to the dining table.
“How do you clean polar bear blanket?” asked Astrid metaphorically. “You don't really you don't put it in the dishwasher or the washing machine. You don't put it in the dryer. You don't vacuum it.”
And then there's the polar bear skin rug in the living room.
“Little so you take the polar bear out in the garden, where you have a thick layer of snow, usually it's in the middle of the night, and then you put it down with the fur towards the snow, and then you roll around on it to like bump out the dust and the dirt,” she said.
All of the memorabilia and the bare skin rug aren't just a passing fancy for Astrid. It's family history.
“We have this strong family identity,” she said. “And I feel very much at home in the Arctic. And obviously it's not just tales. I mean, my mom and my grandfather has always taken me skiing and snow storms, and I've been sleeping in snow caves since I was little.”
Born in northern Denmark in 1880 Enjar led an exciting life that extended well beyond the Alabama expedition.
“One of his first travels was with a trading ship, a Danish trading ship, and he went to India,” Astrid recalled. “And he was at this fortune teller in Calcutta. And the story goes that this fortune teller looked, I don't know, in their bottle, or in his hands or whatever. And this person said, I can see something white. I don't know what it is, but you will go somewhere that is white.”
Enjar led the “Alabama expedition” when he was only 29 to recap from last time Alabama was the name of Enjar's ship. Enjar's expedition was intended to recover the bodies of men who had died on a previous voyage, the Denmark expedition, and to discover if Greenland was actually two islands, one of which the US wanted to take for itself. It turned out that Greenland was only one land mass, and the US couldn't claim any part of it afterwards. Enjar lived a long life in Denmark and wrote many best selling books about his adventures. He died in 1971 at age 90. It's likely that Enjar's Good fortune came from the fact that he didn't change his ship's name from Alabama to something else.
“The Alabama was purchased from Norway, Northern Norway, I think it was where it's been used for hunting in the polar sea,” said Astrid. “My granddad, he chose to honor sailor traditions and not giving it a new name. The Denmark expedition had, in fact, done that. So the ship Denmark, which was this grand, beautiful sail ship. I don't remember what it was called originally, but basically they had re baptized it, if you believe in like, bad superstition. I mean, this expedition obviously went wrong and people died.”
Today, Astrid and her family continue Enjar's legacy by remaining involved in the small community that Enjar founded, called Ittoqqortoormiit to meet in the native Greenlandic language. It's one of the most remote villages in the world.
“My mom was instrumental in like changing or like expanding the work of the Foundation to also be with kids and young people and supporting them, especially regarding education, we've been trying to help that. And we have this little diploma we give out every year in June when the elementary school finishes in Idomet,” she said.
Ultimately, Astrid hopes the Greenlandic people can have a seat at the political table and that their island doesn't play second fiddle to the whims of big countries.
“They might not have the military as the United States have. They might not be in the number of inhabitants as many as the United States or Denmark, but this country is theirs, and they should be sitting at the table,” Astrid contends.
Despite the political tension between the United States, Denmark and Greenland Astrid says she'll continue doing what she can to make sure the legacy of Enjar Mikkelsen and the Alabama expedition remains alive and well.
