Andrée Balloon Crash: A Photographic Journey through the Most Surreal Arctic Disaster

by Allison Meier January 31, 2014

article-image The Andreée expedition balloon crash (via Tekniska museet)

Few images are more strange and haunting than those discovered on some frozen film in 1930. They reveal the mysterious fate of the S. A. Andrée Arctic Balloon Expedition of 1897, where a hot air balloon meant to sail over the North Pole instead crashed into the ice.

Swedish balloonist S. A. Andrée had set out with team members Nils Strindberg and Knut Fraenkel to make history, but planning and the harsh conditions of the Arctic cut their journey incredibly short. The balloon launched from Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean in July of 1897. However, inadequate testing of the balloon, Andrée’s insistence on using a “drag-rope” method of steering that trailed ropes on the ice, and just the quixotic nature of the expedition resulted in death for all three expedition members.

After just two days of flight, the balloon lost hydrogen and plummeted to the ice. The men were completely unprepared for a land expedition, and set up camp on the uninhabited White Island in the Svalbard archipelago. There, the Arctic winter eventually consumed them and they perished in the unforgiving environment of ice and howling winds.

It wasn’t until the remains of their camp were discovered in 1930 that anyone knew what exactly happened to the Andrée crew. Since then, Roald Amundsen had accomplished the feat of sailing over the North Pole in his much sturdier Norge airship in 1926. Remarkably, the remains of not just the three expedition members — their bodies gnawed by scavenging polar bears — were found, but diaries, cameras, and film as well. Even more incredibly, 93 photographs were able to be saved. Below are some of the eerie photographs of the unfortunate journey of the Andrée balloon expedition from that discovered film and other sources.

A found expedition camera (via Tekniska museet)