Jakkelsen

Jakkelsen is a crew member aboard the Kronos whose murder and disappearance expose the violence beneath the expedition’s carefully managed appearances. Though he is absent from the later scenes, the objects left behind and the account of his death give Smilla a crucial link between Verlaine, Tørk, and the ship’s concealed history.

Identity and Evidence of His Disappearance

Jakkelsen is identified through the key that Smilla finds inside the cushion she is using as a pillow. Near it are a blue plastic container and a piece of metal wrapped in cloth. She had expected the mechanic to notice that the objects were missing immediately, but he has not returned. The key’s concealed position makes the cushion a temporary hiding place, while the container and wrapped object connect the discovery to the dangers aboard the ship.

The metal proves to be a Ballester Molina Inunangitsoq revolver, manufactured in Nuuk under an Argentine license. Smilla reflects on the disparity between the weapon’s purpose and its design, and contrasts it with rifles that can be justified for hunting or self-defense. In certain snow conditions, she reasons, a hunter might need a long-barreled, large-caliber revolver if a musk ox or polar bear attacks from behind too quickly for a rifle to be turned around. This practical explanation places the weapon in a Greenlandic context without resolving how Jakkelsen came to possess it or why it was hidden.

Murder and the Search for an Explanation

Jakkelsen’s death is disclosed through Smilla’s later confrontation with Lukas. As the captain starts to leave, she calls after him and states that Verlaine killed Jakkelsen and that Tørk sent the telegram. The statement is an accusation and a compressed account of responsibility: Verlaine is named as the killer, while the telegram implicates Tørk in the sequence surrounding Jakkelsen’s disappearance.

Smilla then tells Lukas everything from the beginning. He stands beside her, looking out across the island, and listens without changing expression as the light shifts and the wind dies down. His repeated cigarettes mark the duration and gravity of the account, but the scene does not show him answering or confirming her explanation. Jakkelsen’s murder is thus presented not as a witnessed event but as a fact Smilla assembles and reports, changing the captain’s understanding of what has happened aboard the Kronos.

The Expedition’s Concealed History

The explanation of the earlier 1966 expedition provides a larger context for the shipboard crimes. Loyen, Ving, and Licht had located the stone, built an entryway and rooms, and prepared to remove a piece of it. Photographs documented their saws, which used a hardened steel band running over rollers; Loyen had opposed cutting the stone with blowtorches. Then, as the Inuits were positioning the saw, the three men died almost simultaneously, within an hour of one another and forty-eight hours after their first dive.

Their deaths turned a planned recovery into a failed project with time running out. The account says that Loyen improvised an accident rather than destroy the bodies, because he already suspected something was wrong; after reaching Nuuk, he performed an autopsy. This buried history establishes the pattern of concealment surrounding the expedition. Jakkelsen’s murder belongs to a present in which people and explanations can be made to disappear, while the older deaths show that the practice of managing evidence began long before Smilla reached the island.

Disappearance as a Planned Outcome

Near the end of the confrontation, Smilla recognizes Tørk’s strategy: killing her aboard the Kronos would be difficult to conceal, since the ship would still have to enter a port. On the island, by contrast, her death could be treated as another desertion or disappearance, like Jakkelsen’s. The parallel gives Jakkelsen’s fate a further significance: his absence is not only a result of murder but also a precedent that makes a second disappearance appear plausible.

Smilla also reasons that the mechanic will be killed because he could connect her to Tørk. Tørk may let him dive before arranging an apparent accident, perhaps blaming an oxygen gauge. These are Smilla’s deductions about the intended plan, not an account of Jakkelsen’s own final moments. Still, they clarify the logic that makes Jakkelsen’s disappearance useful to the expedition: an unexplained absence can mask deliberate violence and protect those who control the story.

Narrative Role

Jakkelsen remains largely an offstage character in this evidence, but his murder organizes the clues around him. His hidden key and the associated objects give Smilla material evidence; her direct accusation names Verlaine and Tørk; and the remembered deaths of the 1966 expedition reveal a longer history of falsified appearances. These details place Jakkelsen’s death within a chain of secrets rather than treating it as an isolated crime.

The resemblance between his disappearance and the one Tørk plans for Smilla also turns the missing man into a warning. His absence demonstrates how the expedition can recast a killing as a vanishing, while Smilla’s account to Lukas attempts to break that pattern by making the hidden connection speakable. The novel does not, in these passages, supply a separate biography or an independent account of Jakkelsen’s motives; his significance lies in the evidence left behind and in the way his fate exposes the expedition’s method of concealment.