When Discovery Falls to Earth
At first, the public received communications from Andrée directly, delivered by carrier pigeon. Then there were rumors of possible sightings that thinned as time passed, then silence. And then, in 1930, the accidental discovery of the expedition’s wreckage: clothing, diaries, undeveloped photographs and the scattered remains of the explorers themselves.
Those artifacts, geographer Derek McCormack writes, found their way to cemeteries and museums in Sweden and beyond, rematerializing Andrée and his crew as “ghostly figures through which dreams of late nineteenth-century Swedish national aspiration” could be rehearsed all over again.
The Library’s Manuscript Division holds unusual artifacts from Andrée’s voyage, orphaned from a more hopeful moment: fabric samples from the construction of his balloon. Set aside by aviator Gaston Tissandier while consulting for the project, they’re now filed alongside schematics and other paperwork that document Andrée’s aspirations in minute detail, long before his fate was known.
Somehow the fabric still looks pristine. Woven of Chinese silk, the pieces are dull and grayish and stiff, carefully layered and laminated to reduce the possibility of tears. Workers eventually stitched together more than 3,000 such pieces. Ultimately their seams leaked so much hydrogen that Andrée and his crew crashed to Earth after a flight of just a few days.
Like other polar explorers of his day, Andrée sold himself as more scientist than adventurer, sidestepping the questionable research value of a drifting flight over a nearly blank landscape. Yet it was the danger of such voyages, not the science, that elevated polar explorers of his day into national heroes.
Researchers, therefore, might ask: What was Andrée really hoping to discover? Was it the science of polar environments or his mettle as a man? Innovative ballooning technologies or the nature of the Swedish nation? Readers can explore these questions and more in the Manuscript Division’s Tissandier Papers.