June 7th

The 7th June Expedition" (from Isflaket no. 3-2010)

Ludvig Holstad in conversation with Vebjørn Landmark (1879-1959)

One of the first days of June 1909, a small sailing ship set out from Ålesund with 6 men on board and headed out to sea. Her name was "7de Juni" and the skipper was Vebjørn Landmark from Brandal. They had both sails and an engine for propulsion. The destination was East Greenland. There they would hunt and trap, and spend the winter until next year.

This was the second wintering expedition from Brandal and Sunnmøre. The first expedition was the sailing ship "Floren", skipper Sevrin Liavåg, which had left the year before. But they had not returned yet, and no one had heard from them. Vebjørn Landmark was the eldest son of the sheriff of Ulstein, Bertel Landmark, and Mrs. Kristine Landmark, née Svendsen.

I sit one day at Easter in the old civil servant's house on Neset and learn a thing or two. -Mighty 70-year-old ash trees stand guard around an old family farm. I have an Arctic veteran introduce me. The day he sailed out the Moljegap, with East Greenland as his destination, he was 30 years old. -If you had heard anything about the "Floren" expedition in advance, would you have gone anyway? -I don't know, but I think so. We wanted to try the luck. We probably thought a little about the merits, but mostly it was the adventure that lured us.

And the ship was following? Yes, it was S.Th. Sverre in Oslo. He was on board, and he prepared for the trip. We had a good sailing and we looked for lost people and looked around for the best wintering place. And then we found the "Florenkars" and got advice and guidance from them. We left the ship in Germaniahamn and set off to build cabins in two places, a slightly larger one on Claveringsøya, and that's where we stayed most of the time, and a smaller one on Sabineøya. And then the hunting started. We had good scissors that we took the fox with, and we shot bear and musk ox. But the fox, which was supposed to be the most important game, turned out to be far too few. Most of the time we caught 2-3 a day, and often not even that. It was far between the hunting grounds, but most of the time we managed to get home every evening. -How was the weather, and what is the country and climate like over there?

-The country is extremely cold and snowy. In November we had terrible storms. Then he tore the ship loose, so she ran up into the fjord. The fjord froze over, and we had to cut her far out to ice-free sea. We got her out and moored her again. But by then the whole keel had been torn loose. Working with the ship was a tough job, because there were only three of us. The other three were on Claveringsøya, 8 kilometers further south. The distances were great. When we walked between these cabins, we spent the night in a cabin that Sevrin Liavåg had built the year before. She was lying in the middle of the middle.

 We had an incredibly stormy year. When it was at its worst, and it was even bad, we had to be firm and hold on when we went out, otherwise we were uprooted. Some Danes who wintered a short distance from us said that they could not go out in the terrain without following a line or a train, otherwise it was impossible to find our way back in the gutter.

-And the cold? - Yes, it was so that when winter came, our thermometer fell too short. The mercury went down into the sphere and stayed there until spring came. But the Danes had measured down to minus 40 degrees. A harsh country. Not a bush and see, with dwarf birch and dwarf willow fighting for their lives, and the buttercup in the summer was as big as in Brandal. And the heather too.

-And how did they celebrate Christmas? -Then we were aboard the ship that was in Germaniahamn, and we had a good time there, and we tried to do it as secretly as possible.

-Was it hard to get through the winter?

-Oh no, it went well. He was dark and tall. But we had kerosene lamps, and we had a few books with us. And then we had enough to do with preparing the catch and keeping all the equipment in good condition. We were all in good spirits.

-And your health was good?

-No, unfortunately, we were plagued with illness a lot. Two of the guys got scurvy. It was impossible to get hold of potatoes when we left home. We only had a few dried potatoes with us, and mostly no vegetables. And then came the scurvy. Even though we had never had so much meat from hare and muskrat and also the satisfaction of bread and canned food, we still lacked important vitamins. Many years later, there were some men looking after the weather forecasting station in Myggbukta. They were also visited by scurvy.

They telegraphed to Tromsø and were advised to pick heather, boil it and drink the loga (tea).

It helped, but we didn't know it at the time.

And then we lost a man. But not one of the ones who had scurvy. He had it in his stomach. Don't know what it was. We tried everything they could advise us to do, but it didn't help. He died away from us, and we buried him there a short distance from our cabin in Germaniahavn. A 20-year-old boy, Henning Ytrevik from Skodje. This was in April. There were three of us standing around the grave, the other two lying sick inside the cabin. A small wooden cross was nailed together and set down in the gravel pile.

Then summer finally came and the ice broke up. Then we pulled the ship up into the spring and turned her over in the stern. She was leaking a lot after the mishap in the autumn. It was hard work, because we were so helpless. Two men were sick and one man had to look after them. So there were only two of us working.

-Did they have a bear visitation?

-No, he stayed out on the ice, and that's where we shot him.

-What was the benefit of the whole trip?

-There were about 100 foxes in total, 60 white and 40 blue, 5 bears and 2 walruses. We also shot some musk oxen, the underbalance was large.

And then it was time to break up and return home. There were some Danes on Shannon Island, they had lost their ship and asked us for help. We had a lot of trouble reaching them, and broke the rudder stock on that trip, but we got them on board in the end. 5 men. On the way out to sea we bent the propeller shaft, so there was only the sail and little left at home. There was a good wind, and one of the first days in August 1910 our ship crossed the Breidsundet.

-We saw her from Brandal, the wife interjected into the conversation. They came barreling towards the town. -Here comes "June 7th", the kids shouted. Cheers in the hometown!

The ship had to let go. Then it appeared that they had sailed home without a keel. The two who were in the bunks were taken to hospital. The journey was over. But up in Germaniahamn there was a single cross on a burial mound. A mark of Sunnmørsk pioneering spirit and scrutinizing spirit.

-What did they get for rescuing the Danes?

It resembles a small smile on his face.

-Oh, they were so small. The shipping company tried to get some compensation, but the Danes insisted that it was they who had helped us. Two of us each got 100 kroner and I got a medal.

Vebjørn Landmark has operated the Arctic Ocean for 25 years.

In 1921 he had to take over the post office after his mother. The post office has belonged to the Landmark family for a long time. But since he stopped seal hunting, he has been on 2 expeditions to Greenland. Scientists on research, equipped for the Norwegian Polar Institute. Vebjørn is well advanced in years now, he will soon be in his 80s. He has followed the development in hunting and fishing from seals to engines and steam, and now back to engines again.

He sailed abroad for 3 years, but then he persuaded "Hau-Peter" to come aboard with him, and so he remained there, a man of ice.

The "7th of June" expedition 1909-10

The "7th of June" expedition was the second expedition to try its hand at wintering in Northwestern Greenland. The first was the "Floren" expedition the year before. However, as early as 1905, an attempt was made to carry out such an expedition with the icebreaker "Idræt", but it sank in the ice on its way to Greenland.

Northeast Greenland was not much different from Svalbard, where Norwegian trappers had wintered since 1893. In this sense, the people aboard the "Floren" and "7th June" were not doing anything decisively new. They were simply expanding their field of work.

When the people on board the "7th June" set sail from Ålesund on July 20, 1909 to sail 900 nautical miles to North-East Greenland, no one in Sunnmøre yet knew of the sad fate of skipper Severin Liavaag and youngest man Johannes A. Hareide on the "Floren". But local people once again shook their heads and predicted death and misfortune for this madman's work. Once again the pessimists were right.

"7th June" was about 58 feet long and 39 gross tons, with an auxiliary engine of 12 hp, of unknown make.

make. The owner of the boat was A/S Elf, by Severin Th. Sverre, in Kristiania. Skipper and expedition leader was Vebjørn Landmark (b. 1879) from Brandal. There were six men on board. Expedition participants besides skipper Landmark were: Fisherman Johannes H. Brandal, born 1890, Brandal Fisherman Henning Indrevik, born 1877, Skodje Fisherman Gustav Abrahamsen, born 1869, Ålesund Fisherman Hjalmar Høvik, born 1899, Ålesund Stuert Martin Bjørlo, born 1889 Ålesund.

On its way towards the coast of North-East Greenland in 1909, the "7th June" met the "Floren" at the edge of the ice. The "Floren" was then on its way out of the ice to go home.

On 30 July 1909 the expedition arrived at Shannon, and at the beginning of August they built a winter house, the Cape Mary house at Claveringsøya. They were looking for a safe harbor for "June 7". They chose Germaniahavn on Sabine Island. On land, they built an earthen hut which they called Germaniahamn.

Early in the fall, half of the men stayed at the Kap Mary house, but in late November they all gathered in Germaniahamn. They wanted to live on the ice during the dark hours. They thought it was safest.

A strong storm came over the area early in the new year. On all sides of Sabine Island the sea ice broke up. There was open water only 40 paces behind "7th June". It was a critical situation. And some of the men moved into the earthen hut. In January and February, three of the men got scurvy. One man suffered serious frostbite. Only Vebjørn Landmark was left to catch arctic foxes and other animals, since one man was allowed to act as a sick-carer.

On May 14, Henning Indrevik died of scurvy and was buried in Germaniahavn.

On their way out of the ice, they rescued five Danes from the Alabama expedition. Skipper Vebjørn Landmark was later awarded the Danish King's most distinguished medal and diploma for the rescue.

On August 19, "7th June" returned to Ålesund with the five surviving men.

These first two expeditions, "Floren" and "7de Juni" were the pioneers. They charted a new course and showed that it was possible to live in these inhospitable polar regions throughout the winter. But it would still be a few years before these expeditions became annual, especially from the Ålesund area and Brandal – until 1959.

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