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The Reindeer Botanist: Alf Erling Porsild, 1901–1977

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The Reindeer Botanist: Alf Erling Porsild, 1901–1977 University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository University of Calgary Press University of Calgary Press Open Access Books 2012 The Reindeer Botanist: Alf Erling Porsild, 1901–1977 Dathan, Wendy University of Calgary Press Dathan, Patricia Wendy. "The reindeer botanist: Alf Erling Porsild, 1901-1977". Series: Northern Lights Series; 14, University of Calgary Press, Calgary, Alberta, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/49303 book http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Unported Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca Part One REINDEER SURVEY / EXPLORATION, 1901–1928 ° 160° 140° 120° 100° 80° 60° 40° 0 R U S S I A Wrangel Island 8 d n I a H l C A R C T I C O C E A N s K I U H e B A r C E ° e 0 e S R E E N L A N D 7 r m G i s D E N M A R K n e l Kotzebue g l S Barrow E E A B E A U F O R T S E A D Little Diomede Nome A Island V I S Devon Island S Unalakleet T Disko Resolute R Island A I Egedesminde T Banks Island Tuktoyaktuk B a Holsteinsborg L A S K A Fairbanks A Aklavik f f U S A i n Victoria I s Island l a n Godthaab d (Nuuk) Seward Norman Iqaluit Wells (Frobisher Bay) Y U K O N ° T E R R I T O R Y 60 O R T H W E S T E R R I T O R I E S HUDSON N T STRAIT Southampton Island UNGAVA NUNAVUT BAY NORTHWEST (after 1999) TERRITORIES (after 1999) H U D S O N B A Y B R I T I S H Churchill C O L U M B I A Fort McMurray Q U É B E C A L B E R T A M A N I T O B A S A S K A T - C H E W A N J A M E S B A Y Jasper Edmonton National 0° Park N T A R I O 5 0 500 1000 O Km Banff National Park Northern North America and Greenland: A. E. Porsild’s Region of Botanical Investigations (Cartography: Ragnar Müller-Wille) /////////////////////////// CHAPTER ONE GREENLAND BEGINNINGS1 About two hundred miles above the Arctic Circle, twenty degrees south of the legendary North Pole, the line of seventy degrees north latitude travels all around the highest rim of the North American and Eurasian continents. Half- way between them, the line dissects the mini-continent of misnamed Green- land and cuts across the northeast corner of the island of Disko off Greenland’s western shore. Disko is a large island, a little larger than half the size of Prince Edward Is- land, and is separated from the mainland by a narrow strait on the east side. Its coastline is deeply indented with bays and fjords, while the interior is marked by table-topped basalt mountains intersected by long valleys that run from coast to coast in some sections. What makes the place especially remarkable is the variety of habitats that range from cold-swept Arctic glaciers to the warm thermal springs that create a mini-climate for southerly species of plants and insects. Historically, Disko was often the starting point for numerous Danish- approved scientific expeditions to the High Arctic during the summer months. The approval was not lightly granted, because Denmark’s policy towards her colonial people was fiercely protective and the whole of Greenland was cut off physically and politically for most of the year. No external trading or inter- ference was permitted in order to prevent the intrusion of any potentially de- structive elements from the outside world as the Danish administrators rigidly maintained a policy of “Greenland for the Greenlanders,” believing that the aboriginal people were innocent and childlike and in constant need of their fatherly protection. No outsider could enter Greenland unless he could con- vince the Danish Government of his important scientific or other purpose, 3 cover his return passage in a Danish bank, and pass a medical examination im- mediately prior to sailing in order to prevent the introduction of disease among the vulnerable northerners. Even fellow Danes were required to have special permission to visit the country. In 1898, a young Danish botanist, recently graduated from the Univer- sity of Copenhagen with a degree in natural history, passed the necessary re- quirements to enter Greenland as part of the Steenstrups expedition to Disko sponsored by the Committee of Geological and Geographical Investigations of Greenland. Morten Pedersen Porsild was immediately impressed by the wealth of unusual plants he found on the island. It was, after all, a time in Europe when the vegetation was too well known for many new discoveries, and here he found a virtual botanical heaven of new species to be added to the known plants of the world. Many years later, Evelyn Stefansson, wife of explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, described the flora’s fascination for visiting botanists: “White, star-like little mountain avens, belonging to the rose family, often color a whole mountain side with their abundant blossoms,” she said. The landscape was also graced by the bright yellow flowers of Arnica alpina, looking like miniature Kansas sunflowers, as well as tiny bell-shaped cranberries, white heather, rhododendron, chickweed, and six or more varieties of saxifrage, of which the purple saxifrage with its gorgeous blooms was first in spring and could sometimes be seen bordering the snowdrifts. Plumy cottongrass grew along the riversides and ponds, and rare mosses and ferns grew profusely in the earth between the stones in rock ledges. Miniature willows produced their soft fuzzy catkins. The most conspicuous herb was Archangelica, sought for food. “Last but far from least, five species of the orchid family reproduce themselves and flower perfectly. One explorer tells that two varieties grow in such profu- sion along the narrow flats of the Disko shore that in walking them one crushed so many blossoms that the air was made sweet with their perfume.”2 Four years after his first experience with the Disko flora, Morten Pedersen Porsild was delighted to be given another chance to explore the lesser-known north side that had not been covered by the earlier expedition. By 1905, he was deeply engrossed in plans for the creation of a Danish Arctic Station at God- havn, the Danish government settlement on the southwest side of Disko with an excellent inner harbour well protected from storms and drifting icebergs along the open coast, and in 1906, he was duly appointed Director of the first permanent research station to operate above the Arctic Circle. 4 THE REINDEER BOTANIST – Wendy Dathan It was here that be brought his Danish wife and two small sons, Robert Thorbjørn, aged eight, and Alf Erling, aged five. The new life in Greenland would be a wonderful and exciting change for the boys but not the best of moves for his young wife. Like her husband, Johanne Kristine Porsild (nee Nielsen) had come from farming stock in southern Jutland near the Danish-German border, and she was none too happy about leaving her homeland to come to this place on the top of the world that was so far from everyone and everything she knew. It is as well that she did not have a crystal ball to read into the future at that time for, except for brief and infrequent visits back to Denmark to visit her family and deliver a younger son Sten and daughter Tulle, she was to have to endure the isolated life of the station for the rest of her life. Yet it was a unique environment in which they found themselves. T. J. Wood wrote lyrically of the setting: “Those with a knowledge of Greenland can appreciate the influence of its rugged beauty on the development of the young Porsild children; the great fjords, the swirling arctic mists; huge floating ice- bergs, the high mountains piercing the clouds; the great island mass itself slow- ly emerging from the clasp of the last great ice age.” Explorer Peter Freuchen, who together with Knud Rasmussen became heroes to the two older Porsild boys, made his first trip to Greenland in 1906 as a stoker aboard theHans Egede and said that he could think of no place more beautiful than a Greenland fjord in summer.3 Erling Porsild’s adult memories of the social and political scene prior to 1918 suggest a naively happy childhood in a privileged situation, producing an idealistic role model that he continued to extol throughout his lifetime. “Up to the first world war, which did not touch Greenland at all,” he wrote in “Green- land at the Crossroads” in 1948, … the island’s economy has been largely based on primitive Eskimo sealing and hunting.… Time did not matter very much in Greenland where no one ever did things in a hurry, and where the Greenland- ers lived a sheltered but happy and contented life. No one ever went hungry for long, nor did any one ever become very prosperous, for all trading and trafficking, all industry, as well as the price of labour and native produce, were controlled by the State. In this completely nation- alized economy prices never changed. Completely sealed off from the outside world, the economy, so to speak, operated in a total vacuum. Visitors to Greenland found life in the island idyllic and carefree, a 1: Greenland Beginnings 5 solace from the hectic, striving competition and foolish rush of other lands.
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