Dr. Lagermann

Dr. Lagermann is a forensic specialist whose careful reading of medical evidence unsettles official accounts of death. In the novel’s central investigation, he examines old X-rays with Moritz Jaspersen and identifies long, unexplained channels through the organs of two expedition victims, evidence that suggests they were already dead before an explosion. His work makes the archive speak where missing reports and inconclusive outward signs have left the official record silent.

Identity and Professional Role

Dr. Lagermann works in forensic medicine and is willing to examine material that has been removed from the Institute of Forensic Medicine’s archives, even though doing so violates legal procedures. He joins Moritz in Moritz’s consultation room, where the two study the X-rays with Smilla present and Benja nearby. The setting is a private medical office rather than an official inquiry room: Lagermann’s technical expertise is brought to bear outside the sanctioned chain of custody, as Moritz helps Smilla despite disapproving of illegal acts.

His knowledge is specific and procedural. Lagermann explains that Greenland’s cold, dry conditions make food poisoning uncommon, with botulism a notable exception. When five healthy young people died on the same day in 1991, investigators found botulinum toxin in blood samples sent from Godthåb to Copenhagen. The local laboratory could not trace uncommon toxins, so testing required the samples to be sent away. The case illustrates the limits of what could be established from visible signs alone: botulism leaves no distinctive external indication and is suspected by excluding other causes before testing confirms it.

Reading the 1966 X-Rays

The principal forensic inquiry concerns Marius Høeg and other men who died on the Barren Glacier at Gela Alta in July 1966. The expedition report is missing, and Lagermann notes that it appears to have been removed. The surviving X-rays had been made because the men were so severely injured in an explosion that identification was uncertain; the negatives were then reportedly circulated to doctors across Greenland alongside dental images.

Comparing the films, Lagermann points out that the bodies’ positions appear inconsistent with a professionally placed explosive charge. The men seem to have been close to the charge itself, rather than at a distance from an explosive placed in a drilled channel or shaped to concentrate its force. He presents this as a tentative inference from limited evidence, not as a settled reconstruction. The X-rays also preserve a more decisive anomaly: in two men, something had bored a channel about sixteen inches long and at least two millimeters wide through the diaphragm and soft organs. One track reaches the heart and the other the liver. Lagermann concludes that the men died from whatever entered those organs before the explosion, so the blast did not cause their deaths.

The finding depends on close comparison rather than a conventional autopsy report. Lagermann uses enlarged negatives to direct attention to the remains of the liver, lower esophagus, stomach, ribs, and heart, while Moritz studies the images through glasses he rarely wears. The films do not identify the organism, and Lagermann carefully leaves open whether it was a worm or something else. Their evidentiary force lies in the channels themselves and in the apparent sequence they establish: the fatal process preceded the explosion.

Limits, Records, and Unanswered Questions

The images give the investigation a physical clue, but they cannot by themselves supply a diagnosis. Lagermann notes that an article in Nature by Johannes Loyen concerns diagnosing this kind of parasite with X-rays. Such diagnosis is difficult when the organism has not calcified in tissue; after death, the heart no longer pumps contrast fluid through the body, making the relevant structures harder to distinguish. The connection between the X-ray evidence and Loyen’s specialty makes him a plausible person to interpret it, but not a trustworthy source by default.

Moritz names Loyen as the person best placed to solve the problem. Lagermann agrees that hearing Loyen’s explanation would be interesting, while observing that confidence in an honest answer would require extraordinary measures. His remark captures the investigation’s predicament: expertise points toward someone implicated by knowledge, while the missing report and irregularly accessed films leave the investigators without the secure procedural footing that might compel a reliable account.

Lagermann’s work is therefore both diagnostic and destabilizing. The 1991 botulism deaths demonstrate how a cause can remain invisible without specialized testing; the 1966 X-rays reveal a different kind of hidden evidence, one that survives in an archive even after the expedition report disappears. In each case, he distinguishes what the evidence establishes from what remains conjecture. The deaths in 1966 were not simply the result of the explosion, but the films do not name the cause or its source. By making that distinction legible, Lagermann helps turn a closed accident narrative into an unresolved forensic question.