Greenland’s Biggest Mysteries: 5 Secrets Hidden Under the Arctic Ice

There is a black smudge on the last page of a dead man’s diary. No larger than a grain of rice, the stain lay beneath his trembling signature... cryptic, yet seemingly harmless and forgotten. For nearly a century, no one knew what it meant. And yet, in that tiny blot lay the final secret of an Arctic tragedy that claimed three explorers, nearly upended an international border dispute, and left one man alone in a cave with frozen feet, a dying stove, and the last traces of heat he could find: fish oil, rubber, and his own waste. The man was Jørgen Brønlund, a Greenland-born Inuit and the last surviving member of Sledge Team 1 of the 1906–08 Denmark Expedition. Their mission was both scientific and geopolitical... determine if Peary Land, a vast tract in northeast Greenland, was an island or part of the mainland. If an island, it might fall to the United States; if a peninsula, Denmark could claim it. The future of Arctic sovereignty, as it turned out, rested on the endurance of three men and a map...