Nils Strindberg was a Swedish photographer

Photography

Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

 who was one of the three members of S. A. Andrée

Salomon August Andrée

Salomon August Andrée , during his lifetime most often known as S. A. Andrée, was a Swedish engineer, physicist, aeronaut and polar explorer who died while leading an attempt to reach the Geographic North Pole by hydrogen balloon...

's ill-fated Arctic balloon expedition of 1897

S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897

S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 was an ill-fated effort to reach the North Pole in which all three expedition members perished. S. A. Andrée , the first Swedish balloonist, proposed a voyage by hydrogen balloon from Svalbard to either Russia or Canada, which was to pass,...

. Before perishing on Kvitøya

Kvitøya

Kvitøya is an island in the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, with an area of . It is located at , making it the easternmost part of the Kingdom of Norway...

 with Andrée and Knut Frænkel

Knut Frænkel

Knut Hjalmar Ferdinand Frænkel was a Swedish engineer and arctic explorer who perished in the Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 of S. A...

, Strindberg recorded on film their long doomed struggle on foot to reach populated areas. When the remains of the expedition were discovered by the Bratvaag Expedition

Bratvaag Expedition

The Bratvaag Expedition was a Norwegian expedition in 1930 led by Dr. Gunnar Horn, whose official tasks were hunting seals and to study glaciers and seas in the Svalbard Arctic region. The name of the expedition was taken from its ship, M/S Bratvaag of Ålesund, in which captain Peder Eliassen had...

 in 1930, five exposed rolls of film were found, one of them still in the camera. Docent

Docent

Docent is a title at some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks below professor . Docent is also used at some universities generically for a person who has the right to teach...

 John Hertzberg of the Royal Institute of Technology

Royal Institute of Technology

The Royal Institute of Technology is a university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH was founded in 1827 as Sweden's first polytechnic and is one of Scandinavia's largest institutions of higher education in technology. KTH accounts for one-third of Sweden’s technical research and engineering education...

 in Stockholm managed to save 93 of the theoretically 240 frames. A selection of these photos were published along with the diaries of the expedition as Med Örnen mot Polen (British edition The Andrée diaries, 1931; American edition Andrée's Story, 1932), a book which credits the three explorers as its posthumous authors. In an article from 2004, Tyrone Martinsson has published some digitally enhanced versions of Strindberg's photos of the expedition, while lamenting the lack of care with which the original negatives were stored from 1944.

Strindberg's so-called "shorthand" diary from the expedition has the form of messages to his fiancee, Anna Charlier

Anna Charlier

Anna Albertina Constantia Charlier was a Swedish woman, today most commonly remembered as the fiancé of Nils Strindberg, participant in the Northpole-expedition of S. A. Andrée in 1897....

, and provides a more personal window on events than Andrée's own diaries.

Strindberg's body and those of the other two explorers were brought back to Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 for a funeral

Funeral

A funeral is a ceremony for celebrating, sanctifying, or remembering the life of a person who has died. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from interment itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor...

 with great honors. After cremation

Cremation

Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....

, their ashes were interred together at the cemetery Norra begravningsplatsen

Norra begravningsplatsen

Norra begravningsplatsen, literally "The Northern Cemetery" in Swedish, is a major cemetery of Metropolitan Stockholm. The cemetery is located in the municipality of Solna.Inaugurated on June 9, 1827, it is the burial site for a number of Swedish notables....

 in Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

. His father was a cousin of August Strindberg

August Strindberg

Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...

.

External links

• A 360° polar panorama designed by Nils Strindberg. This panorama was not discovered until the separate frames that compose it were studied by Tyrone Martinsson, who created this web version. Accessed on March 5, 2006.