Want fewer ads?

Ejnar Mikkelsen (December 23, 1880 Vester-Brønderslev - May 1, 1971 Copenhagen), was a Danish polar explorer and author, born in Jutland. He served in the Amdrup expedition to Christian IX Land, East Greenland (1900), and in the Baldwin-Ziegler expedition to Franz Joseph Land (1900—02).

With Ernest de Koven Leffingwell he organized the Anglo-American polar expedition which wintered off Flaxman Island, Alaska, in 1906-07. They lost their ship, but in a sledge journey over the ice they located the continental shelf of the Arctic Ocean, 65 miles (105 km) offshore, where in 2 miles (3 km) the sea increased from 50 meters (164 ft) to more than 690 meters (2264 ft) in depth. Organizing an expedition to map out the northeast coast of Greenland, to recover the bodies of Mylius-Erichsen and Lieutenant Höeg-Hagen and their records, Mikkelsen wintered 1909-10 at Shannon Island, East Greenland. His wooden ship, the Alabama, was trapped in the ice of Shannon and, while he was exploring, the rest of the party returned home on a whaler. Remaining with his engineer, Iversen, Mikkelsen succeeded by a series of hazardous sledge journeys in recovering the lost records and in disproving the existence of Peary Channel, The two explorers returned to Shannon island to find the crew gone, but, they had salvaged timbers and planking and erected a small cottage. Mikkelsen and Iversen then spent two winters at the cottage before they were rescued, in the direst of extremities, by a Norwegian whaler in summer 1912.

He is most known for his expeditions to Greenland, some of these recounted in Lost in the Arctic (1913). In 1924 he led an expedition to settle what later came to be Scoresbysund.

The so-called Alabama cottage has survived, intact, and was photographed during a visit by Danish Navy inspection ship Ejnar Mikkelsen in September 2010.

In 2009 the Royal Danish Navy named the second Knud Rasmussen class patrol vessel the HDMS Ejnar Mikkelsen.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ejnar Mikkelsen", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0