Preliminary Report on the Results of the Danish Bicentenary Expedition to North Greenland

Abstract

IN 1906-08 the Danmark Ekspedition under the leadership of the Iate L. Mylius Erichsen explored north-east Greenland, and the surveyor of the expedition, Col. J. P. Koch, of the Royal Danish Army, was able to fill in the blank spaces with his excellent maps covering the area from 770 N. lat. to Peary's cairn on Cape Bridgman in 830 30' N. lat. Thus the whole east coast of Greenland had been surveyed by Danish explorers. On the west coast the Danish surveys reached beyond the 74th parallel. The maps of the western part of north Greenland from Cape York to Humboldt Glacier were fairly good, thanks to the work of numerous British and American expeditions, but the mapping of the remaining portions of the north coast had not been extended far beyond the outer promontories. The second Thule Expedition, led by Mr. Knud Rasmussen, explored the ice-free areas as far as De Long Fiord in 830 N. lat., 400 W. long. Mr. Lauge Koch was a member of that expedition and carried out the geological and cartographical work. A preliminary report on the geological results, containing one map, was published in 1920 in Meddelelserfra Dansk geologisk Forening, vol. v, No. 17, under the title Stratigraphy of North-west Green? land ; his maps are now in the press ; these are : 1. Nord-Gronland fra 8i?-83? 25' Nordlig Bredde og 380 til 560 Vestlig Laengde, opmaalt 1917 paa II. Thule Ekspedition af Lauge Koch. 1 : 500,000. 2. Melville-Bugt fra Wilcox Head til Cape York, opmaalt 1916 paa II. ThuleEkspedition af Lauge Koch 1 : 500,000. In the following pages several new names and some additional data given in the first of these maps are quoted. Most of the information will, however, be found also in the geological map on I : 2,500,000 appended to the paper mentioned above. When Denmark in 1916 ceded the Virgin Islands to the United States, the government of the United States agreed not to object to the title of Denmark to the whole of Greenland. In 1921 Denmark celebrated the Bicentenary of her last colonization in Greenland, and in the same year supremacy in the whole of Greenland was conceded to Denmark by the other nations interested. Thus it seemed to have become a national duty to extend under the Danish flag the investigations and surveys to the last remaining portions of the coast, the section from De Long Fiord to Cape Bridgman, the most remote and inaccessible part of Peary Land. Mr. Lauge Koch planned an expedition with this aim (see Geogr. Journal, vol. 56, p. 323). A committee consisting of Messrs. C. F. Wandel, Rear-Admiral Royal Danish Navy (retired), E. Erlandsen, shipowner, J. Daugaard-Jensen, director of the administration of Greenland, V. Gliickstadt, Consul-General for Italy, and Eug. Warming, professor emeritus at the University of Copenhagen, procured the necessary funds, partly from the State, partly by private subscription, and in 1920 Mr. Koch left for Greenland and established his headquarters at Robertson Bay in Inglefield Gulf.