VI.] 



TOBIESENS WINTERING ON NOVAYA ZEMLYA. 



2:5 1 



tate, and because it shows us various new, hitherto untouched 

 sides of winter hfe in the High North. 



Si VERT ToBiESEN was one of the oldest and boldest of the 

 Norwegian walrus-hunting skippers ; he had with life and soul 

 devoted himself to his calling, and in it was exposed to many 

 dangers and difficulties, which he knew how to escape through 

 courage and skill. In 1864 he had sailed round the north- 

 eastern i3art of North-east Land, and had been very successful 

 in hunting ; but as he was about to return home, his vessel was 

 beset by ice near the southern entrance to Hinloopen Strait, 

 where the same fate also overtook two other hunting sloops, one 



•--■■% err- 



SIVERT KRISTIAN TOBIESEN. 



Born at Tromsoe in 1S21, died on Novaya Zemlya ia 1873. 



of them commanded by the old hunting skipper Mattilas, who 

 in the winter of 1872-73 died in a tent at Grey Hook, the 

 other by the skipper J. Istrom. They were compelled to save 

 themselves in boats, in which they rowed through Hinloopen 

 Strait to the mouth of Ice Fjord, where the shipwrecked crews 

 were met and saved by the Swedish expedition of 1864. He 

 passed the winter of 1865-66 happily, in a house built for the 

 purpose on Bear Island, and communicated to the Swedish 

 Academy of Sciences a series of valuable meteorological observa- 

 tions, made during the wintering. ^ After 1868 he had made 



^ Kungl. Svensku Vetenskaps-alademuns hamUinoar, 1869. 



