Heroic Stories Or Indigenous Perspectives? Polar Expedition Photographs in Norwegian Museum Exhibitions

Chapter 9 m o .c te a Heroic Stories or Indigenous Perspectives?g h s .a Polar Expedition Photographs in w w w

m Norwegian Museum Exhibitionso .c te a g Lena Aarekol h s .a w w w

m o .c te a The contribution of polar explorers to a broad visualg culture was greatly h accelerated by the development of photography. Converselys photography afforded .a w polar exploration a new visibility. The camera becamew an important tool for w documentation of the actual journeys and bestowing both authenticity and authority m of the locations visited, the objectives achieved,o and the methods and tools. .c te However, the climatic conditions in polar regionsa made photography difficult and g it was not unusual for many of the expeditionh photographs to be taken in advance s .a or as a reconstruction afterwards. Upon returningw home the photographs took on w an important role as visual evidence of whatw had been experienced and achieved.

In this way they contributed to strengtheningm the stories about the expeditions in o various publications, and were from the.c end of the nineteenth century and into the te a beginning of the twentieth century gused both as the basis for graphic illustrations, h s reproduced as xylographs (wood.a block prints), and printed photographs (Larsen w 2011: 12–13). Photographs werew also an essential part of the lecture tours following w the expeditions, where they were used both to inform and obtain funds to pay off m o existing debts or to finance .cnew expeditions. Thus the varied afterlife and receptions te of photographs are valuablea for the understanding of Norwegian polar history. In g h this chapter I consider thes afterlife of specific images as they are used in museum .a spaces. w w A large numberw of more or less spectacular photographs from different

m expeditions are nowo to be found in archives and private collections in Norway. .c Significantly ttoo,e these photographs have played an important part inthe a g production of museumh exhibitions on polar themes. According to Susan A. Crane, s photographs .ain museum displays, ‘both illustrate the past they represent, like any w other artefact,w and, working in the background, offer a highly flexible platform w from which to launch interpretations’(Crane 2013: 123). An investigation into m o the history.c of the expedition photographs, their cultural contexts, and their use in te exhibitions,a can provide an understanding of how these images are contributing g h to creatings the collective memory of Norwegian polar history. In this chapter .a photographs,w as integral to this narrative serve as an entry to a discussion of how w polarw history is presented in Norwegian museums. My starting point will be three © Copyrighted Material

The Hooded Portrait m o .c te a In 1920 Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) was photographed in Lomeng Brothers’ h s studio in Nome, Alaska. .a w At this point Amundsen had spent nearly two years on anw expedition with the w ship Maud. He planned to sail through the Northeast Passage and then let the ship m o freeze into the ice and drift over the North Pole. However,.c the expedition was te delayed owing to difficult ice conditions and to the criticala state of Amundsen’s g h and the expedition’s finances. Nine years had passeds since the expedition with .a Fram and the conquering of the South Pole, andw Amundsen’s popularity had w diminished (Bohmann-Larsen 2003). Even thoughw the scientific results of the

m expedition later were considered as extremelyo important, the whole adventure .c was regarded as more or less a failure at this point,te mainly because of the delays a g in realizing those scientific objectives. h s It was during this period that Amundsen.a allowed himself be photographed w in what became a polar iconographic style,w with his parka hood on. Lomen w Brothers studio in Nome probably had long experience in photographing people m o with hoods, usually Inuit people. The.c term ‘hooded portrait’ was first used in the te recently published, Norske polarheltbildera [Norwegian polar hero portraits] with g h the following explanation: ‘A polars hero is known by his hood. The hood protects .a against howling wind, the fur againstw the biting cold. A hood forms the link between w w the person and the polar, between the hero and Northerner’s land’ (Lund and Berg m 2011: 22). Amundsen is thus,o in this context, portrayed as the polar hero who makes .c the native clothing his own.t eHe is the masterful Western man, who like the indigenous a g inhabitants, lived in and masteredh the polar environment (Lund and Berg 2011: 22). s At the Polar Museum.a – Tromsø University Museum – two copies of the hooded w portrait are displayed.w These are two of many other photographs of Amundsen in w the permanent exhibitions,m where his polar life and work are presented. A framed o version of the hooded.c portrait is placed in a display case together with other objects: te a a lighter, a knifeg with engraved walrus tusk, and a Japanese box. These artefacts, h and the portrait,s previously belonged to dispensing chemist Fritz Zapffe, who was .a a good friendw of Amundsen in Tromsø and considered a central character in local w w connections to polar history. For instance, it was Zapffe who helped Amundsen m to recruito a crew from the local community for a number of his expeditions. The .c text inte the display case explains that Zapffe had his own ‘Amundsen exhibition’ a g at homeh in his living room consisting of these artefacts that originally belonged to s .a Amundsen.w The explanatory text to the photograph underlines this significance: w ‘Framedw portrait of Roald Amundsen, with his signature’, as if the two traces of © Copyrighted Material

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a Figure 9.1 Roaldg Amundsen: the hooded portrait: Photograph: Lomen h sBros/© Nasjonalbiblioteket, bldsa_SURA0055 .a w w w

m o Amundsen.c are lending authority to one another. In this context the photograph is te characterizeda as an object through the location within the showcase. It seems as if g h the signatures is stressed to make the photograph more valuable, even though every .a copyw of this photograph has the same signature, because the original positive was w probablyw signed. © Copyrighted Material

© Lena Aarekol (2014) From Elizabeth Edwards and Sigrid Lien (eds), Uncertain Images: Museums and the Work of Photographs, published by Ashgate Publishing. See: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409464891 152 Uncertain Images: Museums and the Work of Photographs © Copyrighted Material In the same room, two metres away, the other copy of the hooded portrait is m mounted on photo-board and placed on a pedestal with a bust of Amundsen. Theo .c te accompanying text informs the visitor that this is: ‘Roald Amundsen. Bust amade g by sculptor Karl G. Nilsen, Tønsberg 1934’. There is also a painting on the hwall in s .a the background; a portrait of Amundsen signed ‘Sverre Groth, 1926’. Togetherw the w painting, bust and photograph form a memory installation of Amundsenw and mark the entrance to the rest of the exhibition on this polar hero. It may seemm unusual o that two versions of the same portrait appear, especially so close to .onec another in te a the exhibition. Perhaps this serves the emphasis Amundsen’s dominantg position in h s Norwegian national polar history, but the juxtaposition and different.a formats also w stress the reproducibility of the photograph as against the singularw object. w The Amundsen exhibition and this use of the photographs must, however, be m o viewed in relation to the Polar Museum’s history and general.c design. The museum te was established in 1978 and the current exhibition was constructeda after a reopening g h in 1986. In subsequent years there has been some updatings and new material added, .a but the fundamental form of the exhibition and its contentw has not been substantially w altered. The exhibition narrative is transmitted mainlyw through traditional means

m such as factually oriented texts, photographs, objecto and tableaux. .c While photographs in more recent exhibitionste often serve as pure design a g elements (Crane 2013: 137), they clearly doh not have this function at the Polar s Museum. The photographs are mounted individually,.a each with its own explanatory w text in an exhibition that has a hybrid characterw – part chamber of treasures and part w cabinet of curiosities. The absences of modern exhibition design further emphasize m o this impression. The building housing. cthe exhibition is a custom house wharf from te the 1840s with roughly hewn timbera walls, an uneven wooden floor, a low ceiling, g h and a complex room arrangement whichs bears traces from its original use, also play .a a part. The use of the building asw part of the ‘scenography’ of the display dispels w w any sense of the ‘neutrality’ of the exhibition space, it even smells of tar. While m Amundsen’s participation ino different expeditions has been a determining factor in .c the exhibition narrative, paradoxicallyte neither the objects nor the photographs are a g presented chronologicallyh or by the original order of the expeditions themselves. s This contributes to creating.a an impression of a timeless perspective, where the w authenticity of the objectsw (and framed photographs) is the main point; they w represent treasuresm safely secured behind glass (Aarekol 2012: 97–108) – direct o connections to the.c ‘hero’. te a The establishmentg of the Polar Museum is connected to Amundsen’s h disappearances on 18 June 1928. On that day he was seen for the last time as the .a aircraft Lathamw took off from Tromsø to fly across the Barents Sea, on a rescue w w mission for the Italian explorer Umberto Nobile. Both Amundsen, the crew and m the aircrafto disappeared without a trace. The Polar Museum was opened on the .c fiftiethte anniversary of the disappearance, while in 1994 – and on this occasion, a g whichh also coincided with the two hundredth anniversary of the town Tromsø, a s .a bustw of Amundsen was placed outside the Polar Museum. This was the fourth of w fivew versions of this bust, all made after the same original plaster version allegedly © Copyrighted Material

made by the artist Alonzo Victor Lewis in 1921, and later reproduced in bronzem o by the Norwegian Einar S. Pedersen (Stevens n.d.: 351–3). The way Amundsen.c te is represented through this bust – the pose, hood, gaze and whip around thea neck g h – has, however, a strong resemblance to the hooded photograph of Amundsen.s .a It seems likely therefore that the photograph was known to the artistw in 1921. w w Whether Amundsen posed for the bust is, however, difficult to ascertain, but there m are clear similarities which again suggest the persistence of the hoodedo figure of .c the polar hero. In iconographical interplay with the photographic tportraitse within a g the exhibition, the bust outside the Polar Museum serves to createh an element of s recognition and thus also to underline the significance of Amundsen.a as a heroic w w and important character in the polar history. w

The now rather dated display of the Polar Museumm exhibition can be o compared with more recent exhibition productions concerning.c similar themes. In te a 2011 Norway celebrated the Nansen–Amundsen anniversaryg year, a celebration h through which the government agendas aimed to ‘expands knowledge about and .a w engagement surrounding Nansen and Amundsen’sw lives and achievements’, w as well to illuminate ‘their role in nation building and as polar heroes and m 1 contributions in the scientific and literaryo areas’. The anniversary led to a .c te renewed focus on polar history, and a numbera of new exhibitions on this theme g were produced. But did the occasion leadh to new narratives, perspectives s .a or representations on this particular history?w And how was photography w incorporated in these exhibitionary narratives?w

m o .c te a The Inuit at Gjøahavn g h s .a w Amundsen’s expedition had beenw successful. Not only was he the first to sail w through the Northwest Passage, he had also succeeded in achieving his goal to m o carry out geomagnetic measurements.c to identify the magnetic North Pole. The te expedition, however, alsoa produced important documentation of the encounter g h between the expedition sparticipants and indigenous inhabitants on King William .a Island in Alaska. Whenw Amundsen overwintered with the Gjøa expedition, he and w his crew met the Inuitw people who lived in the area. According to Amundsen’s own

m account of the expeditiono Nordvestpassasjen. Beretningen om Gjøa-ekspedisjonen .c 1903–1907 [Thete north-west passage: Being the record of a voyage of exploration a g of the ship Gjöah 1903–1907] the expedition members were in close contact with s the local inhabitants.a (Amundsen 1907). During their stay they assumed the role of w ethnographers.w In addition to photographing the people they met, the expedition w members collected and purchased nearly 1000 objects from the area. These objects m o and photographs.c were later used to disseminate knowledge about the Inuit, both te in writtena expedition accounts and through oral presentations such as lectures. g h A youngs Inuit boy, Manni, had been invited to return with the expedition to .a w w w 1 See http://www.nansenamundsen.no/nansen-amundsenaret-2011. © Copyrighted Material

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w Figure 9.2 The Inuit and Gjøa photograph.w © Museum of Cultural

m History, University of Osloo .c te a g h Norway, but had drowned accidentlys while hunting from a kayak (Hanssen 1941: .a 65–6). Amundsen wrote the followingw concerning the episode: ‘It was a heavy w w blow for us all to lose Manni in this way. We had all become so close to him and m had a great interest in bringingo him with us back to civilization to see what he .c could have achieved’ (Amundsente 1907: 437). a g Of a crew of six, Firsth Lieutenant Godtfred Hansen was the expedition’s second s in command and served.a as ‘navigator, astronomer, geologist and photographer’ w (Amundsen 1907: 9).w In the book Amundsen writes little about the actual practices w of photographic documentationm apart from a couple of episodes. He describes the o lieutenant’s camera.c equipment that went ‘click-click’ when the first Inuit came te a on board Gjøa gand how Godtfred Hansen used the summer season with abundant h access to freshwaters to develop his photographic plates (Amundsen 1907: 86, .a 162). One ofw the photographs in the book also documents Inuit people on board the w w Gjøa. There were probably other crew members who also took photographs on the m expedition,o but it was only Hansen who had photography as an assigned task. It was .c in all likelihoodte Hansen who had organized the Inuit pose in front of the ship with a g theirh sleds, hides, children and dogs. In the book about the expedition this image s .a is wreproduced as a half-page photograph with the following caption: ‘Netchjilli w eskimosw come to visit. Anana, Onaller, Kabloka, Umiktuallu’ (Amundsen 1907: © Copyrighted Material

175). The book is richly illustrated with 138 printed photographs and drawings,m o obviously based on original photographs (probably because the photograph quality.c te was too poor for reproduction) spread over a total of 541 pages. The meetinga with g h the Inuit is amply documented through text and photographs, with a majoritys of .a individuals identified by name. This closeness to indigenous people,w conveyed w w through photographs and texts, contributed to them being brought to life for the m European public in both lecture and exhibition contexts. o .c The polar explorer’s photographs of meetings with Inuit in tethe north have a g much in common with pictures of indigenous peoples by missionariesh and s colonialists more generally with a broadly ethnographic focus.a on clothing, tools w w and material culture The selection and subsequent distributionw of photographs played a major role in the way in which, for example, Africanm or Inuit people o were imagined (Gullestad: 2007: 22–3). The photographs.c brought back by te a the polar expeditions, and the way they were used gin the polar heroes’ own h publications, have likewise contributed to shaping ands delineating the view of .a w indigenous people in polar areas. w w This iconography was reinforced by the way in which it was embedded in text, m both in Amundsen’s words, and as we shall see, oin the museum. The combination .c te of photographs and text as ‘an area of tension,a a contradiction, a supplement g or reinforcement’ (Gullestad 2007: 22). Amundsen’sh message is ambiguous, s .a multifaceted and partially contradictory, wwhen he describes the Inuit as ugly, w beautiful, kind, bad, skilful, stupid and bothw with and without a sense of humour.

The encounter with the Inuit people seems,m however, to have had a strong impact o on him and the other members of the.c expedition. For example, he writes the te a following about the meeting with theg Inuit in the Gjøa photograph: h s .a w Kabloka was too Mongolian wto be beautiful, but impressed with a childlike and w innocent disposition. Uglen’s mother was the previously mentioned Anana, who m lived with him. While Umiktuallu,o his older brother, controlled the entire family; .c te this was a frightening aand unpleasant looking fellow, but a skilful seal hunter. g h His wife Onaller wass pretty, but a frightful scold. (Amundsen 1907: 143) .a w w However, while thew text projects a condescending attitude towards the Inuit,

m the photographs contributeo to a different understanding, assuming an ‘honorific .c quality’ (Sekula 1989:te 345) as proud hunters, beautiful women, and happy children. a g This tensionh follows the photographs into the museum space and becomes a s key site of negotiation.a and concerns about representation. The photographs taken w of the Inuitw during the Gjøa expedition are an interesting example because they w have been used in three different exhibitions that were opened in connection with m o the Nansen–Amundsen.c Year in 2011: Snowhow: What the polar heroes learned te from thea Inuit, the Sami and the Arctic seafarers at the Tromsø University Museum, g h Arctics Experts: The seal people’s meeting with Roald Amundsen at the Museum of .a Culturalw History in Oslo, and Fram Museum’s new permanent exhibition in Oslo. w Thew Gjøa photograph has been used in each of these exhibitions. Consequently © Copyrighted Material

© Lena Aarekol (2014) From Elizabeth Edwards and Sigrid Lien (eds), Uncertain Images: Museums and the Work of Photographs, published by Ashgate Publishing. See: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409464891 156 Uncertain Images: Museums and the Work of Photographs © Copyrighted Material I will now look more closely at the exhibitions and the placement and captions m which frames the photograph. o .c te The exhibition Snowhow opened on 23 January 2011 and was a part aof the g launch ceremony for the Nansen–Amundsen Year in Tromsø. The intentionh of s .a the exhibition was to convey knowledge, centred on five concrete wthemes that the different expeditions particularly learned from people living in wthe north: w 2 food, the sledge, ice, Annoraaq [anorak] and Qayaq [kayak]. Furthermorem the o exhibition was intended to present something other than a traditional. cchronological te a presentation of expeditions or polar hero biographies. Key activitiesg emphasized h s were the knowledge of nutrition, dressing, dog sledding, paddling.a a kayak and w navigating on and in the ice – skills that the polar heroes hadw learned from the w Inuit, Sami and Arctic peoples. By focusing on knowledge instead of chronological m o presentation of expeditions, Snowhow tried to move away.c from the usual demand te for ‘authenticity’, which is often dominant in polara historical presentations g h (Aarekol 2012: 103). s .a The exhibition design featured large fabric bannerw posters on the walls, w where photographs form part of a visual totality. Thew polar heroes’ view of Inuit

m knowledge is communicated through quotes, sucho as Amundsen’s formulation .c about Netsilik Inuit equipment: ‘The apparentlyte primitive objects proved to be so a g well adapted to the existing needs and conditionsh that only centuries of experience s and trial could have produced them’ (Amundsen.a 1907: 14). The Gjøa photograph is w placed amongst 11 photographs on a bannerw within the theme ‘the sledge’ with the w caption ‘Roald Amundsen’s Gjøa expedition 1903–1906’. Despite the exhibition’s m o emphasis on the flow of knowledge between.c Inuit people and the expedition, there te is no additional information the peoplea in the picture who are seen as anonymous, g h even though Amundsen himself mentionss them by names in his book. Instead the .a visitor’s attention is focused on wthe sledge. w w The exhibition Arctic Experts , in contrast to Snowhow, addressed only one m expedition – Amundsen’s Gjøao expedition. The starting point for this exhibition .c was the museum’s collectionte of more than 900 ethnographic objects that Amundsen a g purchased or obtained byh trade from the Netsilik Inuit whilst overwintering with s the Gjøa. The quantity.a of artefacts in museum’s collection made it possible to w exhibit multiple examplesw of each artefact type, displaying variation, diversity w and aesthetics. Them majority were utilitarian objects identified in the Netsilik Inuit o language, Inuktitut,.c where functionality was main objective in the majority of te a captions, such gas: ‘Man’s anorak of reindeer hides for winter use. Double layer h reindeer hide,s the inner with the hairs facing inward and the outer with the hairs .a w w w

m o 2 The.c author was the project leader for the exhibition and therefore is well acquainted te with thea background and production of the exhibition. The project group included g h photographs archivist Ann-Kristin Balto and historian Harald Dag Jølle. The five themes are .a allw titles in the exhibition. Annoraaq and Qayaq are used in Inuit as a title because these are w loanwordsw we use from Inuit. © Copyrighted Material

3 out, is the warmest one can wear.’ In this exhibition the majority of photographsm o have named individuals in the captions. The caption to the Gjøa photograph. cis a te rewriting of the photograph’s caption in Amundsen’s book: ‘Netsiliks visita Gjøa g h in Gjøahavn. From the left: Anana, Onaller, Kabloka and Umiktuallu’. Withs this .a caption the persons in the photograph also appear as individuals, as the peoplew that w w Amundsen and his crew met during the overwintering, and as sources of objects m and knowledge, and not merely as examples of the indigenous inhabitants.o With .c such a strong focus on the presentation of artefacts and their function,te Netsilik a g Inuit knowledge about life in the Arctic is emphasized in the exhibitionh narrative, s while Amundsen is given a secondary role as the one who provided.a the artefacts w w that are found in the museum collections. Furthermore, byw stressing the point about the ways in which Inuit knowledge became importantm to the Norwegian o polar expedition, the exhibition presented the Inuit as the real.c Arctic expert and not te a merely as the suppliers of ethnographic objects. g h Finally, in this survey, is the new permanent exhibitions opened on the 150th .a w anniversary of Fridtjof Nansen’s birth in 2011, atw the Fram Museum in Oslo w (Kløver 2011–12: 42). In addition to the polar vessel Fram which still is centrally m positioned in the museum, the visitors can now experienceo a spectacular northern .c te lights (Aurora Borealis) show on the ceiling,a watch a polar ice simulator in a g refrigerated room, listen to growling polar hbear, and study an ice mummy. The s .a other parts of the exhibition are placed onw balconies in three storeys around the w boat and have a more traditional narrativew style with wall charts, photographs, texts, films and tableaux. This is a highlym ambitious and comprehensive exhibition o with an almost encyclopaedic presentation.c of Norwegian polar history associated te a with the ship Fram, Fridtjof Nanseng and Roald Amundsen. In addition to the main h s text in English, with Norwegian.a subtitles, the exhibition is translated into eight w languages on digital screens. Thew presentation of information is especially tailored w to the many foreign tourists who visit the Fram Museum. As such it constitutes the m o largest exhibition window .forc information on Norwegian polar history aimed at te tourists in the Norwegiana capital. The exhibition is too extensive to be discussed g h here, instead in line withs the discussion above; I will again consider the use of .a photography in relationw to the presentation of indigenous people. w In the exhibitionw Amundsen’s encounter with the Inuit is accounted for as

m follows: ‘In additiono they established good contact with the nomadic Inuit, .c particularly the teNetsilik people, and Amundsen learned from them about how a g to survive andh travel in Polar Regions.’ The text continues: ‘Here he learned s about dog sledging,.a building igloos, about food and clothing and other survival w strategies. Allw of this knowledge contributed to the success of his South Pole w expedition in 1910–1912.’ This is almost all that is said in the exhibition about the m o polar hero’s.c contact with the people who lived in the Arctic, as this is the history of te the expeditiona – and not the population in the Artic areas. In addition, the current g h s .a w 3 The caption from the exhibit Arctic Experts is transcribed by the author. The w exhibitionw was dismantled by the end of 2011. © Copyrighted Material

© Lena Aarekol (2014) From Elizabeth Edwards and Sigrid Lien (eds), Uncertain Images: Museums and the Work of Photographs, published by Ashgate Publishing. See: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409464891 158 Uncertain Images: Museums and the Work of Photographs © Copyrighted Material situation of indigenous peoples in the Arctic is given little attention. Under the m heading Exploration of the North is the following text: ‘For thousands of years,o the .c te High Arctic inhabitants were only small, nomadic Inuit groups. The ice blockeda g explorers from travelling by ship from further south’. One possible implicationh s .a of this statement is that it was only when explorers managed to conquerw the ice w that the area was first truly inhabited. This perspective is reinforcedw again by the lack of Inuit names and identities in the photograph, but presentedm as in the o caption to the Gjøa photograph: ‘A group of Inuit visit Gjøa to exchange.c goods’. te a This marginalization of indigenous people in the construct of nationalg heroics, h s represented through the ship itself, sets the tone for the whole exhibition..a w Only one of these three exhibitions, Snowhow, was reviewedw in the journal for w Norwegian museum professionals, Museumsnytt. Here Swedish historian Anders m o Houltz reviewed the exhibition favourably, but he also .craised some interesting te objections questioning the ways in which voices werea being heard through this g h exhibition project: was it those of the ‘heroes’, or thats of the indigenous peoples’ .a voices or both (Houltz 2011: 14)? In his view thew voice of the polar explorers w dominated the exhibition. Nansen and Amundsenw are presented as the active

m collectors of knowledge, while the indigenous peopleo are given the role of passive .c recipients. The use of photographs is essentialte to this reading. With photographs’ a g captions where indigenous people are not h named, but only refer to the polar s explorers that have taken the photographs .aor the expedition they originate from, w this perspective is further emphasized. Conversely,w one could argue, that the very w large number of photographs of indigenous people in the exhibition nevertheless m o provides a sense of a saturating presence.c of the people who lived their lives well te adapted to the climate and environmenta in the areas they inhabited. In this sense it g h is the photographs that complicates the reading of the exhibition. .a The way the photographs workedw in these three different contexts exemplifies w w this reading. Consequently one could argue that if the exhibitions Snowhow and m Arctic Experts were to be showno side by side, they might complement one another .c well. As Snowhow and thete Fram Museum primarily present a perspective from a g the history of polar heroes,h Arctic Experts seeks to present a perspective as seen s from an indigenous viewpoint..a This exhibition foregrounds the objects and people, w while placing the expeditionsw in the background. w

m o .c te a The Icon fromg the South Pole h s .a I want to turnw now to two final tropes of the polar hero – the tent and the flag. w w As with the hooded parka, the tent and flag have been important recognizable m symbolso in polar iconography. When unknown places and the poles in particular .c were photographed,te it was important that these tropes were included. In polar a g historyh there are many examples of the placing of these defining objects (Lund and s .a Bergw 2011: 266–9). These tropes mark the most heavily symbolic and decidedly w mostw widely disseminated photograph in Norwegian polar history, and they © Copyrighted Material

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o Figure 9.3 Tent and flag:The South Pole. .Photographer:c Olav Bjaaland. te a © National Library of Australia,g an23814300 h s .a w w w were also utilized heavily in the anniversarym year of Amundsen’s famous polar o expedition, 2011. This photograph was.c taken at the South Pole on 14 December, in te a 1911 by Olav Bjaaland, the day thatg Amundsen and his men reached the Pole. The h s photographic scene gives an impression.a of being carefully arranged: the four men w with their bare heads facing thew tent and the Norwegian flag, as if the moment was w a performance of a formal contemplation. The iconic position of this photograph m o is probably also due to this .csimplicity: the men, the tent and the conquering of the te unknown space. a g h The expedition’s firsts contact with civilization was Tasmania, where the .a news was telegraphedw to the world and Bjaaland’s photograph developed by w photographer John Wattw Beattie in 1912. The original negative no longer survives,

m but the image has obeen copied and distributed extensively since 1912. In a photo .c album from Beattie’ste studio there is, however, a print that stands out from all of a g the reproductionsh that otherwise has been used in Norway. In this particular print s of the subject.a there are many footprints in the snow, the stomach in Amundsen’s w anorak is slackerw than usual and there is less wind in the flag (Lund and Berg 2011: w 270). After this print became known, it has also been given a dominant role in m o the narrative.c about Norwegian polar history. Today this print is referred to as the te originala version of the photograph. g h Thes photograph was used in the exhibition Snowhow under the heading .a Annoraaqw . It is presented in the centre of a large (c. 6m × 3m) banner that covers w thew wall and accompanied by the caption: ‘On December 14, 1911 Amundsen © Copyrighted Material

© Lena Aarekol (2014) From Elizabeth Edwards and Sigrid Lien (eds), Uncertain Images: Museums and the Work of Photographs, published by Ashgate Publishing. See: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409464891 160 Uncertain Images: Museums and the Work of Photographs © Copyrighted Material and his men reached the South Pole, as the first in the world, after an intense race m against the British. Everyone is wearing anoraks.’ The rest of the banner coveringo .c te the wall comprises photographs from a number of expeditions showing botha Inuit g using their traditional clothing and polar heroes wearing this type of clothingh on s .a polar expeditions. The captions and photographs otherwise tell us that the wuse of the w anorak is functional and originates from a traditional Inuit item of clothing.w None of the persons in the photographs are named, only the names of the expeditionsm on o which the photographs were taken. The triumphant South Pole photograph.c in the te a middle implies that the polar heroes had learned something fromg the indigenous h s people, but still by not giving the native a more prominent position.a or personal w voice in the exhibition contributes to reducing this group to wan understanding of w their role as merely passive in this part of the history. m o The Fram Museum has also used this photograph. With.c the title The race to te the South Pole, the South Pole photograph of Amundsena and his men is greatly g h enlarged to bigger than life size and given the form sof a diorama. The men are .a cut out from the scene and from a hand coloured slidew version of the photograph. w These photographic details have been printed on waluminium plates which gives

m stability and clarity, and placed in front of a copyo of the tent that was left at the .c South Pole and the Norwegian flag. The dioramate is arranged as a mirror image of a g the photograph, but also as an identical copyh of the men, tent, flag and the white s landscape. The only thing missing is the photographer,.a Olav Bjaaland, who is also, w of course, absent in the original photograph.w w But the photographic installation in the gallery is also used to present a patriotic m o claim to exploration dominance. On.c the opposite side of this diorama, which te can be characterized as a representationa of a complete triumph of Norwegian g h exploration, the Fram Museum hass placed a diorama showing a scene from the .a British polar explorer Robert F.w Scott’s parallel expedition in the race to be first w w to reach the South Pole. Here Scott’s ship Terra Nova is still at the edge of the ice m and the crew of the expeditiono are working hard with the motorized sledges and .c dogs across the ice. The imageste of the men are about 10 cm in size and the diorama a g is placed so that the publich look down on the scene from a bird’s eye perspective. s The triumphant diorama.a from the South Pole thus stands in stark contrast, and in w opposition to the representationw of the British expedition who are still working w and struggling besidem the ship with their equipment – literally and metaphorically o diminished. The .textc also reiterates this reading noting how the Englishmen lost te a the race to the Southg Pole. h The photograph,s however, went through yet another iteration in a major piece .a of patriotic art.w Following a competition, a new national monument was unveiled w w on 14 December 2011 outside the Fram Museum at Bygdøynes (Orheim 2012: m 54–8). Theo winner of the competition was the artist Håkon Anton Fagerås. The .c jury madete the following statement on their decision: a g h s .a The artist has taken his starting point from the famous authentic photograph w w w which marked the achievement of the goal. Not only with the original five © Copyrighted Material

Copyright material: You are not permitted to transmit this file in any format or media; it may not be resold or reused without prior agreement with Ashgate Publishing and may not be placed on any publicly accessible or commercial servers. Heroic Stories or Indigenous Perspectives? 161 © Copyrighted Material persons in the photograph minus the photographer, but with all those who m o reached the South Pole. The five participants are presented equally, but .with c te Amundsen in the centre. (Orheim 2012: 57) a g h s .a The photograph from the South Pole was thus used as a the foundationw for the w w monument of Amundsen and the five men with their hood off who stand next to m one another facing south, but without the tent and flag. The committeeo perceived .c this as an authentic photograph of the historical moment, a key markerte that serves a g as a foundation for a new national monument for Amundsen, hwhere the men’s s placement emphasizes the camaraderie between them. In this .away, the Bjaaland w w photograph still makes its mark. Reproduced three-dimensionallyw in both diorama and monument form, it is used as a platform for understandingm the history of the o Norwegian nation and its relation to polar explorations. .c te a g h s .a w The Museum’s Polar Conservatism w w

m As I have argued, the photographs from the expeditionso have an important role .c te in the presentation and understanding of polara history. The photographs create g a context and convenient frames of reference,h and key tropes for the collective s .a memory that is embodied within them andw their institutional use museums. The w hooded portrait represents the cultivationw of the hero that appears in the museum exhibitions, where Amundsen meets them gaze of the visitors in a factually oriented o narrative that emphasizes authenticity.c and historical truth. The photograph of the te a Inuit at Gjøahavn represents both theg polar heroes’ relationship to the indigenous h s inhabitants and the exhibition’s .apresentation of this relationship. With the new w exhibitions opened in the anniversaryw year 2011, there was more of an attempt w to widen rather than challenge the prevailing understanding of this theme. That m o Amundsen and Nansen were.c actually willing to learn from the indigenous people te contributed to strengtheninga their hero status rather than opening up for alternative g h stories that included an sindigenous perspective. The discussion of the South Pole .a photograph illustrates whow an iconographic photograph within the expedition genre w continues to be bothw an important element in the narrative of a successful polar

m history and a sourceo of new developments within the Norwegian national narrative. .c Unsurprisingly, thete museological narratives about the polar heroes emphasize the a g many successfulh expeditions and conquests. Factually based accounts with a focus s on authenticity.a have largely dominated the exhibition stories, while narratives w about the indigenousw people in the Arctic often continue to be absent from in the w museums’ representations of the past. Photographs and the way they are used play m o an important.c part in this misrepresentation or disavowal of history. te Thea polar photographs are used as if they were neutral, unmediated and g h truthfuls photographic evidence of expedition life. Thus they illustrate how the .a productionw of exhibitions has not necessarily developed in line with recent w academicw scholarship. While such scholarship has adopted new perspectives of © Copyrighted Material

m o References .c te a g h Aarekol, Lena, 2012. ‘Roald Amundsen – fortellingers om en polarhelt’, in .a Narrating the High North, Nordlit. Tromsø: Universitetetw i Tromsø, 97–108. w Amundsen, Roald, 1907. Nordvestpassasjen. Beretningenw om Gjøa-ekspedisjonen

m 1903–1907. Kristiania: Aschehoug. o .c Bohmann-Larsen, Tor, 2003. Roald Amundsen.te En biografi. Oslo: Cappelens a g forlag. h s Crane, Susan A., 2013. ‘The pictures in the.a background: History, memory and w photography in the museum’, in Joanw Tumblety (ed.), Memory and History: w Understanding Memory as Source and Subject. London and New York: m o Routledge, 123–39. .c te Gullestad, Marianne, 2007. Misjonsbilder.a Bidrag til norsk selvforståelse. Oslo: g h Universitetsforlaget. s .a Hanssen, Helmer, 1941. Gjennemw isbaksen. Atten år med Roald Amundsens. Oslo: w w Aschehoug. m Houltz, Anders, 2011. ‘Undero ytan’, Museumsnytt nr 2. Oslo: ABM-media AS. .c Kløver, Geir O. 2012. ‘Frammuseette under Nansen-Amundsen året’, in Polarboken a g 2011–2012, utgitt av hnorsk polarklubb. Oslo: Balto Print, 25–33. s Larsen, Peter, 2011. ‘Polfarernes.a vei inn i den visuelle kulturen’ in Harald Østgaard w Lund and Siv Frøydisw Berg (eds), Norske Polarheltebilder 1888–1928. Oslo: w

Forlaget Press, m 12–17. o Lund, Harald Østgaard.c and Siv Frøydis Berg (eds), 2011. Norske Polarheltebilder te a 1888–1928.g Oslo: Forlaget Press. h Orheim, Olav,s 2012. Det nye nasjonalmonumentet over Roald Amundsen på .a Bygdøynes,w in Polarboken (2011–2012), utgitt av norsk polarklubb. Oslo: w w Balto Print, 54–8. m Sekula, Allan,o 1989. ‘The Body and the Archive’, in R. Bolton (ed.), The Contest .c of tMeaninge . Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. a g Stevens,h Robert W. (n.d.). ‘The incredible Journey of the Norge’. Manuscript. s .a w Polar Museum Archive, UIT The Arctic University of Norway, 351–53. w w © Copyrighted Material