"The Adventurous Voyage"

First, Larsen’s official report provides a succinct overview of the routes taken by the ship as well as valuable descriptions of the experiences of the crews, their activities while over-wintering in the Arctic, and relationships with Inuit.4 Geographer J. Lewis Robinson of the Bureau of Northwest Territories and Yukon Affairs, the author of the second document, focuses more on situating the ship’ [...] Apart from short-lived Norse settlements around the turn of the first millennium CE, the earliest European interest in the region fixated on trying to find a route through the region to reach the riches of Asia. [...] Consequently, the British government introduced an order-in-council on 31 July 1880 declaring that “all British territories and possessions in North America, and the islands adjacent to such territories and possessions which are not already included in the Dominion of Canada, should (with the exception of the Colony of Newfoundland and its dependencies) be annexed to and form part of the said Domi [...] In light of the increasing German U-boat activity in the North Atlantic, defence of the large ice-covered island was considered a matter of high priority, partially because of its location on the periphery of North America and its excellent harbours for submarine bases, but also because of the cryolite mine situated on the shores of an isolated 12-mile fiord at Ivigtut in southwest Greenland. [...] Although a synthetic substitute had recently come on the market, the Greenland mine was the only known source of the raw mineral, with the only refineries being in Denmark, the Penn-Salt Company in the United States, and the Aluminum Company of Canada (ALCAN) located at Arvida, Quebec.