Lukas

Lukas is the captain of the Kronos and an increasingly compromised authority figure. His encounters with Smilla reveal how little control he has over the ship’s justice and how closely his choices are entangled with Tørk’s plans; at Gela Alta, that compromised position ends in open violence against Verlaine and confrontation with Tørk.

Identity and Authority

Lukas sleeps with his cabin door unlocked, following the maritime principle that doors should be locked only when leaving a room, so that a rescue during a fire is easier. His conduct initially appears to place him within the ship’s ordinary order, but Smilla concludes that the courtesy and justice associated with the captain actually belong to Tørk. In her assessment, Lukas has been a tool rather than an independent authority.

That judgment is sharpened when Smilla, having temporarily left the infirmary, enters Lukas’s cabin while he is asleep. He wakes in shock, attempts to stop her, and then backs down when she shows him a revolver. Instead of treating her escape as a challenge to his authority, he tells her to return, arguing that being under arrest is her security. The exchange makes confinement sound protective, even as Smilla points to Maurice outside as a reason not to trust that assurance.

Smilla’s Disclosure and His Misgivings

When Lukas starts to walk away from Smilla, she calls after him with the claim that Verlaine killed Jakkelsen and Tørk sent the telegram. He returns and listens as she recounts what she knows from the beginning. The conversation stretches on while Lukas lights cigarette after cigarette; by its end, the wind has died down and the light has shifted. He does not interrupt her account, and his attention gives her the chance to present the case that the ship’s apparent order conceals another arrangement.

Lukas then says that he had urged the others to give Smilla a strong tranquillizer because he expected her to escape. Tørk opposed the suggestion. This disclosure shows that Lukas had recognized the danger of leaving her unrestrained, but it also draws a distinction between his own judgment and Tørk’s decision. He speculates that Tørk may have wanted Smilla to come ashore, pointing to the rubber raft left behind. His account reveals suspicion, not certainty: he can identify the possibility of a plan without claiming to know its purpose.

Violence at Gela Alta

At the final confrontation, Lukas enters the light carrying a compressed-air harpoon gun. Verlaine has just thrown himself against the wall; Lukas does not look at Smilla, but at Verlaine. He has struck him with a harpoon, leaving Verlaine suspended against the wall. Smilla steps out of the light and passes Lukas, placing his violence within the immediate scene without presenting it as a rescue or an explanation of his earlier choices.

The weapon marks a decisive change in Lukas’s role. The captain who had tried to contain Smilla and had admitted that Tørk overruled his warning now acts directly, using lethal force against one of the men involved in the ship’s concealed operations. The scene establishes what he does, but does not disclose whether his intervention follows a settled allegiance, an immediate judgment, or a separate purpose.

Confrontation with Tørk

Lukas later approaches Tørk across the ice. Smilla’s movement toward them echoes Isaiah’s earlier path, but Lukas’s arrival brings a new confrontation into that repeated landscape. He announces that Bernard is dead and says Tørk must be held responsible. His harpoon gun is loaded again; his trousers have frozen into a rigid layer after he fell on the way ashore.

The accusation connects Lukas’s private suspicions to an explicit demand for accountability. He has already told Smilla that Tørk opposed his proposal to sedate her and may have left the raft for a reason. Now he confronts Tørk directly over Bernard’s death. Yet the available account stops at the accusation: it establishes Lukas’s opposition and his armed presence, but does not resolve what he intends to do next or what becomes of him.