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Education Nordenskiöld's father, Nils Gustav Nordenskiöld, was a mineralogist and traveller. Nordenskiöld entered the Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki in 1849 where he applied himself specially to chemistry and mineralogy. In 1853 he accompanied his father to the Ural Mountains and studied the iron and copper mines at Tagilsk; on his return he received minor appointments both at the university and the mining office. Having studied for Runeberg he belonged to Liberal, anti-tsarist circles that agitated for Finland's liberation from Russia by the Swedes during the Crimean War; and an unguarded speech at a convivial entertainment in 1855 drew the attention of the Imperial Russian authorities to his political views, and led to a dismissal from the university. He then visited Berlin, continuing his mineralogical studies, and in 1856 obtained a travelling stipend from the university in Helsinki and planned to expend it in geological research in Siberia and Kamchatka. Upon returning he took his master's and doctor's degree in 1857 as a scholar of chemistry and geology, specializing in iron and copper-mining. He then aroused the suspicion of the authorities again, so that he was forced to leave Finland, practically as a political refugee, and was deprived of the right of ever holding office in the university of Finland. Settling in Stockholm As Nordenskiöld spoke Swedish as his mother tongue, a natural place for him to settle was nearby Stockholm. He soon received an offer from Otto Torell, the geologist, to accompany him on an expedition to Spitsbergen. To the observations of Torell on glacial phenomena Nordenskiöld added the discovery at Bell Sound of remains of Tertiary plants, and on the return of the expedition he received the appointment of professor and curator of the mineralogical department of the Swedish Museum of Natural History (Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet). Nordenskiöld's participation in three geological expeditions to Spitsbergen, followed by longer Arctic explorations in 1867, 1870, 1872 and 1875, led him to attempt the discovery of the long-sought Northeast Passage. This he accomplished in the voyage of the Vega, navigating for the first time the northern coasts of Europe and Asia. Starting from Karlskrona on June 22, 1878, the Vega doubled Cape Chelyuskin in the following August, and after being frozen in at the end of September near the Bering Strait, completed the voyage successfully in the following summer. He edited a monumental record of the expedition in five volumes, and himself wrote a more popular summary in two volumes. On his return to Sweden he received an enthusiastic welcome, and in April 1880 was made a baron and a commander of the Order of the North Star. In 1883, he visited the east coast of Greenland for the second time, and succeeded in taking his ship through the great ice barrier, a feat attempted in vain during more than three centuries. In 1893, Baron Nordenskiöld was elected to the 12th chair of the Swedish Academy. The Nordenskiöld crater on Mars was named in his honor. Adolf Erik was the father of Gustaf Nordenskiöld. Expeditions | ||||||||||
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