A beautiful Google photo got me interested in South Georgia. Did the photographer take that picture with a drone?
South Georgia is a snow capped mountainous, rocky island, very far south, en route to the South Pole. South Georgia island is long, thin and curved with lots of inlets. At one end is Bird Island. It sounds delightful.
More or less in the middle of the east side you find the harbour where whaling boats used to land and the main mini settlemenmt of Gryvitken.
The South Pole is snow covered much of the year and inhospitable. British Scott of the Antarctic tried to get to the South Pole. He did not succeed. I take this as an omen for myself. Not a place for the nervous. Not for me. I spend much of my time in tropical Singapore. That is why I am happy to read about these snowy places on the internet. My days of skiing in Aspan, the USA, Canada, and France and Italy are over. So how did the early explorers get on?
Norwegian Amundsen fared better. But after months of trouble. Unless you are on an organized expedition, well ...
It is a great place for penguins, and people who stay on boats nearby can photograph wildlife.
The Reindeer and rats also did well. At first, but so well that they got wiped out in the end by humans rotecting penguins and other birds.
Introduced Species
Reindeer were introduced to South Georgia by Norwegian whalers, and the animals established several herds throughout the island. As an introduced species they stressed the environment, browsing and trampling local vegetation and occasionally disrupting nesting birds, including penguins. Arguments were made that the reindeer should be eradicated to help restore the island to a more pristine condition, but opponents argued against a wholesale slaughter and pointed out that the species provided an interesting scientific test group since the animals had to invert their natural breeding cycle to accommodate the reversed seasons of the southern hemisphere. After many years of deliberation, the island's management plan was updated to include extermination of the reindeer in order to protect the native wildlife and vegetation, and more than 5,000 reindeer were killed between 2013 and 2014.
Similarly, rats arrived with the whalers and proceeded to decimate the island's nesting bird population. In 2015, a multiyear programme aimed at eradicating rats from the island completed. The effort is the largest rat eradication in history, covering an area seven times larger than the previous record holder, Campbell Island in New Zealand. Nesting South Georgia pipits have already been found in areas that were previously abandoned, South Georgia pintail numbers appear to be climbing, and the hope is that with the rats gone over one hundred million seabirds will reclaim their ancestral home.
Tripadvisor lists four sights.
You can see a 360 degree video of the outside of the museum and of the cemetery. The museum has records of various expeditions.
What to see in South Georgia
1 Grytviken Cemetery - grave of Shackleton (outside the museum)
2 South Georgia Museum
3 Norwegian Lutheran Church at Grytviken
4 Whaling Station
Statue of Shakleton in South Kensingon, London SW7, England, outside the Royal Geographical Society. The statue shows him wearing warm, practical clothes. His hood is an open face Balaclava. His fur-lined mittens hand around his neck reaching down almost to knee level. His boots are fur-lined. His top has wide sleeves and two large front pockets at chest level.
3
The church has been upkept and has records of ships in the library. This church is where the service was held for Shakleton before his body was buried. (Hie died before the age of fifty of heart failure, having ignored doctor's advice to slow down, and his body was on its way back to the UK via south American, when word came from his wife of four years that she thought he would have wanted to be buried in the area where he loved to explore.
Now you know, those pretty pictures are not of a place you are likely to visit if you are the average independent tourist. You need to join a cruise ship. In my opinion you are better off, post-Covid, in Atlanta, Georgia or the state of Georgia. Unless you make it your mission in life to visit all three Georgias.
What if you are interested in the lives of the famous explorers? One couple took the Antarctic Expeidtion cruise ship. visiting the Falklands and South Georgia island was their bucket list of things to do before you die.
Before, after, or instead, you might like to check out the memorials to earlier explorers in other parts of the world.
Scott Of the Antarctic
The film has a stupendous cast, John Mills, Kenneth More, and Chrispher Lee of Dracula fame. And more.
Cast (Those actors whose names I instantly recognize)
Amundsen's Birthplace Museum in Norway
Museum at his birthplace in Borge, Norway, with a memorial ouside. (No grave because he disappeared at sea on a rescue mission.)
Author of Photo of Mundsen birthplace museum in Norway is Kvikk. From Wikipedia.
The three famous explorers are easy to muddle up. My husband thought Amundsen was on Georgia. It was Shakleton. Fortunately, the names placed in alphetical order match the dates. First is Amundsen, first to the South Pole, then Scott, a month after. Finally, Shackleton.
Amundsen - the Norwegian - first to the South Pole
Amundsen reputedly said, Advanture is just bad planning.
Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen (UK: /ˈɑːmʊndsən/, US: /-məns-/] Norwegian: [ˈruːɑl ˈɑmʉnsən] (
listen);[tone?] 16 July 1872 – c. 18 June 1928) was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions and a key figure of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. He led the first expedition to traverse the Northwest Passage by sea, from 1903 to 1906, and the first expedition to the South Pole in 1911. He led the first expedition proven to have reached the North Pole in a dirigible in 1926. He disappeared while taking part in a rescue mission for the airship Italia in 1928.
Amundsen means son of Amund in the Norwegian language.
Scott Of the Antarctic (as the film says)
Amundsen had reached the south pole a month before Scott, and planted the Norwedgian flag. Scot and his companions died on the return journey. They were 'only' eleven miles from the outpost which would have saved them. But eleven miles is a long way in cold conditions.
Scott's remains remain in the tent where he died with two companions, with a cairn nearby. A cairn is a conical mound of rough stones left as a memorial, a bit like the stones left on graves by Jewish holocaust survivors on the grave of Schindler.
Shackleton
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton CVO OBE FRGS FRSGS (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
Useful Websites
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/South_Georgia_Island
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g1593028-d1598504-Reviews-South_Georgia_Museum-Grytviken.html
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g1593028-d7378569-Reviews-Norwegian_Lutheran_Church-Grytviken.html#REVIEWS
https://www.antarctic.eu/wp-content/panoramas/antarktis_2013/suedgeorgien/grytviken_en/Grytviken.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Amundsen
https://wikitravel.org/en/South_Georgia_and_the_South_Sandwich_Islands
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/2791/robert-falcon-scott
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8827537/US-plans-open-travel-corridor-NYC-London-time-holidays-report-says.html
About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.
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