the Baron

The Baron is a wealthy, enigmatic figure whose carefully concealed routine links an apparently private life to the failed Greenland expeditions. A model ship in his room and regular hospital visits become clues that help Smilla piece together the expedition’s history and its human cost.

Identity and Introduction

The Baron enters the evidence through the model ship displayed in his room. Smilla’s companion recalls that it looked expensive and explains how he found a printed brochure: it had been hidden in the box that originally held the ship, a box the Baron had repurposed as a cave. The small domestic detail makes the room’s decoration part of the investigation; the ship is not merely an ornament, and the box conceals information.

The evidence does not establish the Baron’s full identity, occupation, or the nature of his connection to the ship. It does, however, place him within a private world that others can enter and search, and his belongings yield material relevant to the larger mystery.

The Expedition and Its Stakes

As Smilla reconstructs the conspiracy, she describes two men meeting—possibly in Berlin: Loyen, who knows of something worth finding in Greenland, and Ving, whose position as director and real leader of the Cryolite Corporation can provide cover. Andreas Licht is associated with Greenlandic conditions. In this account, the corporation organizes an expedition in 1966; something goes wrong, possibly an explosives accident, and the expedition fails.

After twenty-five years, the effort resumes under changed circumstances. Outside money pays for transportation, suggesting new assistance and an alliance. The second attempt also ends disastrously: four men die, including Isaiah’s father. The Baron’s place in this account is not specified, but Smilla’s discovery in his room and the other evidence surrounding him connect his household to the investigation of these expeditions.

Hospital Visits and Juliane

A later disclosure supplies a more intimate, recurring detail. Juliane tells the mechanic that the Baron was examined at the hospital every month. She received fifteen hundred kroner each time, on the first Tuesday of the month. Someone picked the Baron up, while Juliane never accompanied him; he never explained the visits to her.

The regularity of the arrangement contrasts with its secrecy. The payments and the unexplained monthly trips reveal a practical connection between Juliane and the Baron, but the evidence does not establish what the examinations were for or why he kept them private. For Smilla and the mechanic, the disclosure adds another concealed pattern to a case already shaped by hidden records and concealed affiliations.

Narrative Significance

The Baron is characterized indirectly, through what is kept around him and what is withheld from those close to him. The model ship’s expensive appearance, its repurposed storage box, and the scheduled hospital visits make private objects and routines carry investigative weight. Rather than resolving the Baron’s role, these clues sharpen the boundary between what the characters can document and what remains unexplained.

His story also sits alongside Smilla’s account of Greenland’s unequal social conditions: in Nuuk, housing can require an eleven-year wait, and access to lucrative positions is tied to mastery of Danish. The novel thus places the mystery of individual wealth and secrecy against a broader setting of material inequality, without making the available evidence enough to define the Baron’s motives or status within that order.