D THE 20TH CENTURY, university-sponsored expeditions to remote places gradually replaced war and colonization as a young person’s chance to demonstrate enterprise, courage, endurance, and organizational ability. Such adventures often set participants on unanticipated career paths and formed lifelong, highly productive friendships. These days, institutions have formal structures for the organization and conduct of expeditions, but there were no such guidelines in the early 1920s, when three groups set out from Oxford to explore the area now known as Svalbard. One such young adventurer was Charles S. Elton, who a decade later established and directed the Bureau of Animal Population in Oxford and became founding editor of the Journal of Animal Ecology. Over the following 35 years, his students and collaborators, who included North Americans Tom Park, Richard Miller, Robert MacArthur, Eugene Odum, Monte Lloyd, William Murdoch, and Dennis Chitty, developed field ecology and population dynamics. Elton participated as a naturalist on all three expeditions, but published only the scientific findings from them. I have recently digitized his unpublished accounts of his personal experiences, which are now freely available as downloadable, searchable files (Elton, 2014a, b, c). The first expedition (Fig. 1) in June – August 1921 was initiated by Julian Huxley (grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley and brother of Aldous), recently returned from active service in World War I, Demonstrator in Zoology and Fellow of New College, Oxford. His main interest was bird behaviour and reproduction, so the 18 expedition members included five ornithologists and others with assorted expertise, including a taxidermist! Much of their equipment was war surplus, including items Charles Elton had acquired from his brother, Leonard, who served with the Army Cyclists Corp. Traveling in a former sealing ship, the Terningen, they camped on Bjornoya (Bear Island), because it had an “enormous population of sea-birds, especially Guillemots,” on 13 – 23 June 1921; on Prins Karls Forland, off the west coast of Spitsbergen north of Isfjord, on 30 June – 10 July; and near the great Nordenskjold Glacier at the head of Klaas-Billen Bay on 19 July – 16 August. The second expedition to Svalbard, the Merton College Expedition (Fig. 2), also planned in Oxford, took 13 Britons to the Arctic for a month, from 23 July to 23 August 1923. As in 1921, the group set out from Tromso on the Terningen, this time staffed by nine Norwegians led by Captain Isak Isaksen. They explored Nordaustlandet, the second largest and most northerly island of the archipelago, and Hinlopen Strait between it and northeastern Spitsbergen. Being farther from the warmer seas to the southwest, these areas consist of tundra and permanent ice cap and are still almost uninhabited. The third expedition (Fig. 3), from 7 July to 5 September 1924, concentrated on northwestern Spitsbergen, especially the Woodfjorden and Liefdefjorden areas around 79 40ʹ N. With 20 participants, it was the largest and best-equipped expedition, with two ships (Polar bjorn and Oiland), a seaplane, and three sledging parties, and had the most diverse scientific objectives. The Norwegian support team included Captain Helmer J. Hanssen (1870 – 1956), ice-pilot, expert dog-handler, and explorer, who accompanied Amundsen on several Arctic and Antarctic expeditions and was among the group to reach the South Pole on 14 December 1911. Spitsbergen, Bjornoya, and Nordaustlandet were far more challenging to visit then than they are now. Interested parties, including the United States, Britain, Netherlands (whose explorers, especially Willem Barentsz, first mapped the area in the 16th century), Sweden, France, and FIG. 1. The 1921 expedition on board the Terningen; left to right:
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