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Uqsuqtuuq

Uqsuqtuuq

Or: Gjoa Haven

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Neil Shea
May 10, 2022
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Part 2 in a postcard series from the Arctic. For paying subscribers.

On May 7, 1905 Roald Amundsen hiked to a hilltop outside the harbor he named Gjoa Haven and he laid down on the bare earth for a nap. The Norwegian explorer had brought a little dog named Akchja with him, and Akchja laid down, too. 

“He is round as a ball & lazy as a pig,” Amundsen wrote in his journal. “So the situation this afternoon suited him very well.”

Calm day, welcome sunshine: both fell soon asleep. Amundsen was not yet famous and his ship was still trapped in sea ice, so there was nowhere else in the world for him to be. He awoke later to the call of a snowy owl passing overhead.

The Amundsen monument overlooking Uqsuqtuuq, or Gjoa Haven.

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