the expedition in the thirties

The expedition in the thirties was a German exploratory venture to Gela Alta, where Johannes Loyen began the search that led him to a meteorite. Recalled later as part of the history of successive expeditions to the site, it stands at the intersection of European scientific ambition and Inuit knowledge: the search succeeded, in part, because Loyen listened to Inuit accounts rather than dismissing them.

Purpose and Setting

Loyen came to Gela Alta with a German expedition in the thirties. The group’s immediate purpose was preliminary construction for an airport on a narrow strip of flat coastland on the north side of the island. Thule Inuit accompanied the expedition; according to the later account, West Greenlanders would not join because the island had a bad reputation.

Inuit Knowledge and the Meteorite

The expedition’s history was not only one of construction. Loyen began searching for the meteorite by taking Inuit stories seriously, in a manner compared with Knud Rasmussen’s approach to finding meteorites. He found it. The account therefore presents the discovery not as a result of European science alone, but as a moment in which scientific inquiry was informed by local knowledge and testimony.

Place in the Expedition History

The later recollection places the expedition in a longer sequence of attempts to reach and work at the site. Loyen returned in 1966 with David Ving and Andreas Fine Licht, but that team lacked the technical knowledge needed to solve its problems; it built a permanent passageway to the stone before the expedition was cut short. The 1991 expedition, which included Smilla, was likewise forced to return home. Against those later setbacks, the earlier expedition marks the beginning of Loyen’s connection to Gela Alta and the discovery that kept the site central to subsequent investigations.

Narrative Significance

The expedition is recalled during a tense conversation in which Loyen recounts the history of the searches while withholding, in Smilla’s view, the full truth. Its brief appearance thus carries two kinds of uncertainty: the incomplete history of what happened at Gela Alta and the question of why Loyen is choosing to tell it. The contrast between the expedition’s practical airport preparations and its reliance on Inuit stories also complicates any simple account of exploration as knowledge flowing in only one direction.