“Desperate Measures: The Shocking Diary Revelation of a Polar Explorer’s Fight for Survival”
According to Ancient Origins, the curious material on the last page of that historic document has finally been identified — providing researchers with unprecedented insight into the explorer’s grim final hours. As published in the Archaeometry journal, the smudge was made of “burnt rubber, oils and feces.”
Only after extensive analysis of the century-old blemish did the University of Southern Denmark discover the truth: Brønlund had tried to light a petroleum burner with his own waste to stay alive — but died of exposure and exhaustion, nonetheless. According to LiveScience, he was buried at the site in 1908.
University of Southern Denmark/Kaare Lund RasmussenThe black smudge that had baffled researchers for 112 years.
Brønlund had made it farther than his friends before falling victim to the freezing temperatures. Led by Danish ethnologist Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, the Denmark Expedition to the Northeast Coast of Greenland began in 1906 — and saw the team leader and cartographer Peter Høeg-Hagen die on the ice.
“I reached this place under a waning moon, and cannot go on, because of my frozen feet and the darkness,” Brønlund’s final diary entry read. “The bodies of the others are in the middle of the fjord.”
The polar explorer had made it to a sheltering cave in November 1907, during a desperate dash back to base camp over inland ice. In a tragic twist, Brønlund wasn’t too far from his destination when he died. Another expedition the following March found his body.
While the man’s frozen corpse was respectfully buried at the same site, his diary was added to the collection at the Royal Library in Copenhagen. As the new study noted, the last page of that document contained “an adherent black spot” that mystified experts for more than a century. So curious were some, that they stole it.
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