Two Against the Ice

TWO AGAINST THE ICE is a classic tale of survival by an unheralded but important figure in the history of Arctic exploration. First published in Danish in 1955, it has never before been published in North America.

Ejnar Mikkelsen was a man devoted to Arctic exploration. In 1910 he decided to search for the diaries of the ill-fated Mylius-Erichsen expedition, which had set out to prove that Robert Peary’s outline of the East Greenland coast was a myth, erroneous and presumably self-serving. Iver Iversen was a mechanic who joined Mikkelsen in Iceland when the expedition’s boat needed repair. Several months later, Mikkelsen and Iversen embarked on a journey during which they would suffer virtually every travail in the Arctic repertoire: implacable cold, scurvy, starvation, frostbite, snow blindness, plunges into icy seawater, Sisyphean sledging conditions, Vitamin A poisoning, debilitated dogs, apocalyptic storms, gaping crevasses, and assorted mortifications of the flesh. Mikkelsen’s diary was eaten by a bear. Three years of this, coupled with seemingly no hope of rescue, would drive most crazy, yet the two retained both their sanity and their humor. Indeed, what may have saved them was their refusal to become as desolate as their surroundings.

“A classic of Arctic survival and a remarkable account of companionship in the face of adversity. ” -- From The Foreword