3-052-456 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

A funeral in the Arctic regions during the night of winter, 1880. 'The Engraving which represents this strange and solemn scene is one of those we have been permitted to borrow from an interesting volume...entitled "The Arctic Voyages of Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, 1858 to 1879."...The "Funeral in 80 deg. North Latitude," which we have copied on an enlarged scale, took place in one of Nordenskiöld's earlier voyages, that of the little squadron of vessels, the two steamers Polhem and Onkel Adam and the brig Gladan, which went out in 1872, with sledges and Lapland reindeer to draw the sledges, for the purpose of exploring the coasts of north-eastern Spitsbergen, and travelling over the ice beyond as far as they could towards the Pole...On Dec. 20, one of the boatmen of the brig died of pleurisy, which was ascribed to a complication of pneumonia with scurvy, and he was buried on shore, with due solemnity, on the 22nd. The funeral procession from the vessel, going across the ice to land, and conveying the poor fellow's body in a sledge drawn by his comrades, is the subject of this Illustration...The Polar night lasted four months and a half at Mussel Bay, so far as concerns the absence of the sun, but there was sometimes a glorious moonlight'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.