Louise A. Boyd
“Nearly everywhere the glaciers showed signs of having receded” (1935)
In the 1930s Louise Arner Boyd funded and led 5 scientific expeditions
to East Greenland and took teams of geologists, botanists, surveyors, and physiographers.
This map focuses on their 1931 expedition to extremities of the Franz Josef Fjord.
Louise conceived of this journey as a “photographic reconnaissance” in order to prepare
herself and this team for their more comprehensive survey of the region to come later in 1933.
This journey was conducted in cooperation with the American Geographical Society of New York.
The American Geographical Society Library (AGSL) now holds nearly 3,000 images taken by Boyd primarily covering
her expeditions to Greenland (over 1,000 photos) and her photo survey of Poland (nearly 1,800 images).
Extensive coverage of Boyd's expeditions are available in her two books, “The Fiord Region of East Greenland”
(1935) and “The Coast of Northeast Greenland,” (1948). Both publications are available in the AGS Library
holdings.
In these texts, Boyd tells of her earlier journeys to the polar sea, when she visited Franz Josef Land in 1924,
and aided in the search for famed lost explorer Amundsen in 1928. These trips, she explains,
acquainted her with the polar environment, marine ice, and the hazardous conditions she would later
encounter in the trips of 1931 and 1933.
“The reward of crossing,” these hazardous conditions, she writes, “is access to a land of extraordinary
grandeur and beauty.”
Her photographs taken during the 1931 and 1933 expeditions depict “topographic forms, glaciers, sea ice,
fine scenery, animal life, and flora.”
Boyd describes “a large fan-shaped and partly submerged delta on the west side at the bend of the fjord
extends so far out that they had to steer to the far east side of Kjerulfs Fjord to “avoid grounding.”
She speculates that all of the icebergs in Kjerulfs fjord almost certainly drifted in from Franz Josefs Fjord,
because no glacier terminates in Kjerulfs.
The group saw various animals during these trips, including muskox, Greenland hare, one walrus
(in Franz Josefs Fjord), narwals (“plentiful” at the outer end of Kjerulfs Fjord), and birds like raven,
wild geese, and eider duck.
There were no permanent human settlements, but the group did find wooden huts where Danish and Norwegian
hunters camped.
Use this map to see which vantage point Louise took photographs from during her 1931 expedition
to extremities of the Franz Josef Fjord.
Toggle on the manuscript map Boyd drew, and see how the data points correspond to her photo notations
indicating where each image was taken from (her annotations are noted on the reverse side of the photos).