SKETCH OF BARON ADOLF ERIC NORDENSKIOLD. 533 



SKETCH OF BARON ADOLF ERIC NORDENSKIOLD. 



BARON NORDENSKIOLD has been styled by Germans the 

 Vasco de Gama of our century. His work is solid and original 

 enough to stand by itself, and need not be compared or contrasted 

 with that of any other. The careful, systematic pursuit of a well- 

 formed purpose, with the full benefit of the experience of past navi- 

 gators, with a well-defined idea of what was expected to be accom- 

 plished, and of how it was to be done, with scientific foresight 

 displayed at every step, can not with justice to either be weighed in 

 the same scale with the bold achievements of the hardy adventurers 

 of former centuries who, starting without the aid of any of the knowl- 

 edge which has now been accumulated, and without definite notions 

 of where they should go or what they would find, discovered what the 

 fortunes of the wind and the waves brought in their way. The char- 

 acter of Nordenskiold's work and the manner in which it was per- 

 formed mark, however, the difference in the methods of research 

 which were available in the past and those which we enjoy and 

 employ at present. In this sense only can a just comparison be made 

 between Nordenskiold and the explorers of other centuries. 



Baron Nordenskiold is not only a most successful Arctic explorer 

 and navigator, as he is best known : he has done excellent work in 

 other branches of science, and has contributed to knowledge from 

 many directions ; and the pages of his narratives of voyages bear evi- 

 dence to the fact of his versatility, that no event or thing that may 

 add to knowledge is unobserved or unemployed by him ; that he 

 knows how to lay all under contribution for the advancement of 

 knowledge. What is most attractive about him, says Dr. Karl Mtiller, 

 of Halle, " is not the splendid achievement of his polar journeys, but 

 the irrepressible perseverance with which he exerted himself through 

 years at a time to pass from small beginnings to ever bolder and more 

 practical problems. While the navigation of the northeast passage 

 may always be regarded as the brightest among his discoveries, Nor- 

 denskiold was, through all his previous history, a whole man." 



Baron Nordenskiold enjoyed the advantage of an ancestry distin- 

 guished through several generations for scientific attainments. "Nat- 

 ure " says, in its biography of the explorer : " The race from which 

 Nordenskiold sprang had been known for centuries for the posses- 

 sion of remarkable qualities, among which an ardent love of nature 

 and of scientific research was predominant. Its founder is said to 

 have been a Lieutenant Nordberg, who was settled in Upland about 

 the beginning of the seventeenth century. His son, Johan Eric, born 

 in 1660, changed the name to Nordenberg. He died in 1740, leaving 

 two sons, Anders Johan and Carl Frederik, both of whom, though the 



