A riddle (how did they die?), "a really nice love story" (the young Nils Strindberg and his fiancée) and the Arctic on top of that. Bea Uusma talks about Andrée's polar expedition as "the entire food chain", in her eyes a world of its own.
If you're going to be a little flaky and poetic - is it the Andrée expedition's riddle that I'm trying to solve, or is it something else? Maybe it's just a big art project with a scientific cover, this is how I want to live my life, I think.
Existentialism is spelled Arctic and the brutality of nature.
Humans have such big plans, but when you're in the Arctic, you're put in your place, it's not you who decides, you can bring as much port wine as you want, but it doesn't matter, you'll still end up falling into the water, says Bea Uusma.
In death
The Andrée expedition dragged the port wine from Oscar II all the way to death. Bea Uusma trained to be a doctor to find out what happened when the trio - after three months of walking on ice - managed to get ashore on Vitön. After the previous book, "Expeditionen: Min kärlekshistoria", she has done all the scientific analyzes she could and managed to decipher a soaked diary - until the very end, Andrée's nationalist perspective seems intact.
They have gone ashore on a crappy island that no one cares about. He trudges around in a snowstorm and writes that "we are the first countrymen to walk here".
Finally, Bea Uusma got both permission and funding - she sold her apartment - for her own expedition to Vitön, among other things to excavate skeletal parts after the three men.
But when the boat arrived last summer, a large whale carcass had drifted ashore and the only way to Andrée's campsite was blocked by six polar bears. During sleepless nights, Uusma fantasized jokingly about putting the Norwegian scientists to sleep to then chase away the now protected animals with prohibited scare shots.
In 1930, you shot bears left and right just to be able to get to the campsite.
DNA analysis
You live too late?
I live in all ages at the same time, I am in 1897 but also completely right - now I can do a DNA analysis of the reddish-brown stains I have found in Fraenkel's jacket to prove that it is blood.
Impressed police sometimes ask Bea Uusma to devote herself to crime investigations instead.
The nice thing about life is where it can take you if you just go where it's fun to be.
Erika Josefsson/TT
Fact: Bea Uusma
TT
Born: 1966.
Occupation: Doctor, author. Is affiliated with the History of Medicine and Cultural Heritage at Karolinska Institutet. Has financed a large part of her investigations and analyzes with the help of scholarships. Works full-time with her investigations into how the members of the Andrée expedition died.
Background: Is educated at both Konstfack and at art school in New York. Received the August Prize for her first book about Andrée's failed air journey: "Expeditionen: Min kärlekshistoria". Has declined all proposals to film it.
July 11, 1897, the hydrogen balloon "Örnen" took off from Danskön in Svalbard with three explorers from Sweden who wanted to be the first to reach the North Pole: Salomon August Andrée, Nils Strindberg and Knut Fraenkel.
In 1930, their remains were found on Vitön by hunters on a whaling ship that had gone ashore to fetch fresh water. Here were also unexposed film rolls, a well-wrapped logbook and letters to relatives.
Author Per Olof Sundman received the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 1968 for his novel "Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd", later filmed by Jan Troell.
