A RUNIC MEMORIAL 



This helplessness, when strength leaves one, is hideous. I am 

 only a skeleton now and shiver with eold. 5.80 i>.ni. we make 

 clear to continue westward. Everything is left behind. I have 

 only my reindeer-skin coat and a pair of extra kaniiks. Plants 

 and films and notebooks remain by the edge of the inland-ice, 

 under a stone above the terrace where we slept the last two 

 days. We do not even carry tent or Primus, merely guns, as 

 we are dead-tired. This will be a march towards death if a 

 miracle docs not happen. Gun and cartridges are brought. 



" Harrigan shot a small hare 7 cm. long. Lesquerella, 

 Hesperis, Cerast. alp., Kobresia, C. nard., Erioph. polyst. 



" Poa cenisia. Trisetum, Hierochloa, Luzula nivalis, Sax. 

 opposit. Floicer. Alsinc verna, Silene acaulis. 



" Knud went 25/8 in the evening, can surely reach Etah in 

 6 or 7 days, and then the relief sledges could reach us by the 

 edge of the inland-ice about the 4th of Sept. and we be in Etah 

 7/8 Sept., saved from this struggle with death of starvation 

 which has lasted since the middle of May. Hideous memories 

 which for ever put a gloomy colour on life. When deadly 

 indifference to life appears and weakness gets the upper hand 

 even food phantasies disappear, and the thoughts occupy them- 

 selves with those at home and with the strange sum total of life. 



" Rather good sleep in spite of boil. Start noon. Grey 

 cold fog. Along the edge of the inland-ice. Got before 

 3 p.m. 3 hares, cooked. Continue towards west 7 p.m. Block- 

 terrain, sluggardly landscape. Think mostly of a visit to some 

 health resort for my poor worn-out gaunt body and suffer- 

 ing soul. 



" Drag along for 2 hours in eold fog, heavy, stony, cliff- 

 terrain until 9 p.m. Got in the evening another grey-headed 

 young hare. Minus 1'4°. Camp for the night on the moss 

 between stone-blacks near a small border-lake by the inland- 

 ice which we follow. Were I only at a Sanatorium. This is 

 worse than death. 



" Day's march approx. 6 km., to-day 5 km. 



" August 27th. — As we brought nothing but 2 guns, 3 rugs, 



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