Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
]]Baron Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld (November 18, 1832 - August 12, 1901) was a geologist, mineralogist and arctic explorer of Finland-Swedish extraction, born in Finland he later chose to settle in Sweden. He most known for the Vega expedition along the northern coast of Europe and Asia. He was also the uncle of Finnish soldier and statesman Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim.
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2 Settling in Stockholm 3 Expeditions 4 External link |
Education
He was born at Helsinki (Helsingfors) in the Grand Duchy of Finland, but his ancestors came originally from Sweden, but for some generations had been settled in Finland. His father, Nils Gustav Nordenskiöld, was both a mineralogist and a 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 and on his return he received minor appointments both at the university and the mining office.
Having studied for Runeberg he was belonged to in 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 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 masters and doctor's degree in 1857 as a scholar of chemistry and geology, specialized 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. Speaking Swedish as mother tongue he settled in Stockholm.
Settling in Stockholm
He soon received an offer from Otto Torch, 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 National 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 Bering Strait, completed the voyage successfully in the following summer. He edited a monumental record of the expedition in five octavo 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.
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