POPULAR
SCIENCE MONTHLY, Sumner N. Blossom, Editor, December, 1923
(Thanks go out to Jan Lamprecht for originally making
this article available to the hollow earth community)
Here
is one of the most outstanding stories of scientific possibility ever published.
Commander Green's exclusive article has all the pungency of romantic fiction; at
the same time it is founded on scientific observations of a veteran Arctic
explorer, and corroborated by fascinating legends of the Eskimos. Not since the
days of Columbus has any venture held such power of gripping the world's
imagination as the proposed voyage of the ZR-1.
In the issue of POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY for November, 1920, the prophesy was
made that a huge dirigible of the Zeppelin type will enable the explorer of the
future to study the geography of the poles in a really scientific way. Now this
promise is to be fulfilled in the projected transpolar flight of the new navy
dirigible next summer. What will be the outcome? Commander Green's entrancing
picture of a balmy polar paradise represents, he says, simply a tremendous
possibility of arctic aeronautic exploration. In this article he sets forth the
facts as he has gathered them. Whether you agree with this theory or not, you
will find it absorbingly fascinating.
By Lieutenant-Commander Fitzhugh Green, U.S.N.
In the proposed transpolar flight of the huge new navy dirigible, the ZR-1 ( the
Shenandoah ), next summer, lies the most thrilling possibility that ever faced a
single body of explorers; In the center of the unknown area of the Polar Sea may
be discovered a vast continent heated by subterranean fires, and inhabited by
the descendants of the last Norwegian colony of Greenland!
So wild is the idea as to tax the most gullible imagination. Yet it is vividly
encouraged and supported not only by history and tradition, but by the searching
test of scientific analysis. Witness the astounding facts:
Within boundaries of the Polar Sea spreads the greatest unexplored area on the
surface of the globe: 1,000,000 square miles on which no human eye has gazed!
Look at the map on page 31. Most of this enormous wilderness lies on the Alaskan
side of the Pole. On the European side lies Iceland at a point corresponding
roughly to the center of the unknown area opposite it across the top of the
world. This fact is significant.
Experts are in nearly unanimous agreement that a new arctic land will be found
by the ZR-1. Doctor Harris, the tidal expert in Washington, D. C., long ago
declared that the data he had worked out from polar ocean currents all convinced
him that the existence of a large land-mass near the North Pole is indisputable.
Add to this the array of evidence geologists adduce on the basis of terrific
volcanic activity along a well-defined line leading up the North Pacific,
through the Japanese archipelago, and the fiery Aleutians, and onward toward the
Pole. This seismic axis plotted on the globe nearly bisects the unknown area of
the Polar Ocean. Further, were this line swung through 180 degrees, it would
touch Iceland, one of the most fiercely volcanic spots on Earth.
Another
significant fact.
Still
more: Not many years ago, in a particular open season, the American whaler,
Captain Keenan, reported he saw a land northeast of Point Barrow. Peary, from
Cape Thomas Hubbard, sighted distant peaks northwest. Such evidence is
incontrovertible. The new continent seems already within our grasp!
So much for the land-mass. Now for its probable inhabitants.
Eric the Red discovered Greenland in 985 A.D. He brought back glowing tales of
grassy fiords, long sunlit days, game-infested hills, ice-pans groaning under
their burden of fat seals, bays teeming with fish.
Vikings Prosper
Colonization began at once. And so true did Erics bright tale prove that the
Vikings greatly prospered. In the archives at Bergen may be seen today the
receipts for their princely contributions in ivory and oil to the ill-fated
Crusades.
The last ship known to have returned to Norway from her arctic colonies arrived
in the year 1410. We read that it brought a rich cargo; that its report was of
happy, thriving Norsemen back north; of health and growing independence despite
their rigorous environment. Then, as in 1914, Europe became a shambles. Plague
and war swept civilization. Pestilential disease ran a ghastly race with a horde
of human murderers. Even the sea route north was forgotten.
Lost Colony a World Riddle
Dark ages passed, Nature bred again in men the will to search her world for
knowledge and for wealth. Greenland was rediscovered. Hans Egede established the
first modern settlement there in 1721. But the grim report he made was tragic
beyond belief:
The Norwegian colony, 10,000 people - perhaps 100,000 - had, to a man,
mysteriously disappeared! The greatest riddle in the history of the world, it
has been called - the
baffling mystery of the lost Norse colony. Where did they go?
Where didn't they go is a question more easily answered. Not to sea in ships,
for they had but one or two; and Greenland, lying above the tree-line, gave them
no timber for building more. Not slain by Eskimos, for Eskimos are the most
peace-loving people in the world, knowing nothing of
the art of war. Not, like Europe, swept by some dread germ of awful virulence,
for germs don’t thrive in polar regions. What then?
Examine the Eskimo tradition: It paints in vivid terms the White Men swarming
suddenly north to a wonderland the natives long had known. Because of evil
spirits, no Eskimo had ever dared this trail.
The land is warm; is clothed in summer verdure the year around; is populated by
fat caribou and musk-ox. It lies, they say, even to this day, in the direction
of the coastal trail-route north.
This route is that taken by our American expeditions. Peary, Kane, and Hayes all
used it. It always has been the easiest route as well as the most productive of
natural food in seal and walrus. For our explorers it has been a hard trail. But
for the Norwegian colonists whose forebears had
spent 10 generations north of the arctic circle it must have been less difficult
to travel than were the western plains for our American pioneers.
Lured Northward
Picture the terrible situation in which the deserted Norsemen in Greenland found
themselves: No outlet for their trade. No source of supply for the little but
indispensable luxuries of life. No access to friends and families back home.
A generation - two, perhaps - of heartbreak and of longing; unhappiness goading
the younger men to travel northward. Perhaps a route to southern lands lay that
way.
Suddenly like a bombshell breaks upon the weary colony the wonderful news:
We’ve
found a polar paradise! Sunshine! Game! Grass! One moon’s easy journey north!
A short lap on the sea ice! Come! What had they to wait for? A Century had
passed since the last ship sailed. The last man who had seen a real Norwegian
had died. The homeland was but a myth. So they packed and, singing songs,
departed, the native legend puts it, suddenly to the northward. They never
returned. The fact is not at all surprising if what we think is true - that they
found a land of milk and honey in the very center of the polar pack. And it is
perfectly logical to suppose that their descendants will be found up there next
summer by the dirigible ZR-1, in dramatic isolation.
See
our " Greeenland Vikings " page in this regard- click above.
Go
back to the scientific data on which we base this amazing assumption. Iceland’s
collection of volcanoes is unsurpassed. She has 107 major craters within her
tiny limits, and thousands of minor ones. Iceland’s climate is temperate
despite its arctic situation. The peace, and health, and the
prosperity of Icelands inhabitants were sustained by its natural warmth during
the 200 years of isolation from Europe that it suffered at the same time and for
the same reasons that the Greenlandic Norsemen were deserted. Moreover, Iceland’s
lava flows are by no means always from conventional craters. The greatest of
them have come quietly from fissures in the level land. We may deduce that
subterranean fires smolder near the surface. It is not uncommon for the
inhabitants to be forewarned of eruption by sudden melting of the snow and ice.
Hot springs and boiling mud are found in every part of Iceland. There has been
projected an engineering scheme for heating the whole island by harnessing its
steaming geysers.
In this connection it is interesting to compare the mean annual temperature of
Iceland 34 F - with that of Greenland at the same latitude - minus 15 F. During
the summer Icelanders enjoy a period quite comparable to that of our own New
England states. Averages run up to 60 F.
It is no idle dream to claim that Iceland has a mate across the way.
Geographical twins are common on our globe; Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope;
the Mediterranean and the Caribbean; islands off Alaska and Japan; and so on.
Is There a Polar Paradise?
It is no speculation of wild improbability to picture a polar paradise, like
some titan emerald in its alabaster setting. At Disco, Greenland, orchids warmed
by natural hot springs blossom out of doors through the bitter sunless winter
months!
Weighing carefully all the facts available, we may set the area of the new land
at about 50,000 square miles, or roughly the size of the state of Pennsylvania.
Its perimeter is bulwarked by a quake-distorted range of mountains buried in
eternal ice and snow, and rearing 10,000 feet into the
sky. Twisting fiords penetrate the ragged ice-gnarled coast. Just inside the
mountains hangs a veil of fog, the vapor of contrasting temperatures. For here
we may imagine the aspect changes sharply. Heat from a nether world defines the
cold. White of snow and ice shades swiftly
to the green of verdant pastures, and gold of wooded uplands. We come upon a
level clearing on which are spread symmetrically half a hundred human
habitations. Tall men magnificently built and clad in short and bright hued
loosely fitting blouses are moving leisurely about. Mingling with them are
comely, fair-haired women in dainty smock. Laughing children dash here and there
among the shrubbery. No savages are these descendants of the vanished colony.
Indeed, we shall
be mistaken if they are not far in advance of our own smug selves in culture,
learning, deportment, and social refinement. They have harnessed natural energy
to an amazing degree. They know the truths of other worlds. They have mastered
the secrets of health.
May Revolutionize Commerce
Yet we need not be swept away by too sanguine a view of what the ZR-1 may find.
There are others features savoring more of cold, hard facts than of romance.
For instance, a polar air route cuts the distance to European and Asiatic
capitals from 11,000 to 5,000 miles. A vast volume of commerce and traffic will
be deflected from America toward the Pole.
No matter what the land may be which lies close to the Pole, it will control the
Polar Ocean strategically. Appreciation of this fact is evidenced by
Amundsen’s announcement that his next great effort to be first across will
include three planes. And there are whispers that two other powers are grooming
entries for the race.
Alaska then must come into her own. She will gather population and stand as an
arctic service station to passing planes.
The ZR-1 may get away by early June. The weather then is calm; the daily
temperature just above the freezing point. After her 6,000-mile flight from
Lakehurst to Point Barrow, from which she will eventually take off, there must
be a period of final grooming; possibly a trial or two out over the
icefields. And by the Fourth of July, 1924, we should know the answer to this
most thrilling of all man’s geographical conundrums.
Does a polar paradise exist? And, if so, are the vanished Norsemen there?
Pages
of Interest:
Polar Warming Curvature Anomalies Ring Around the Opening
Circular, Compacted as if Linear Location of Polar Orifice
Mammoth Chapter Four from Gardner
Radarsat Antarctic Ozone Image Frobisher Map
Icebergs from the Inner Earth Antartic Ozone
Aurora Australis Marks The Spot
