ABSTRACT
After decades of little exploration, there was a revival in scientific research in Antarctica by the turn of the 20th century, inspired by new technology and new attempts to launch whaling in Antarctic waters. When raising funds for scientific expeditions to the not yet fully explored and frozen continent, the emphasis was primarily on geo-sciences, i.e. geography, geology and geophysics. This was also the case when the Swedish geologist Otto Nordenskjöld planned his expedition with the vessel Antarctic to the Antarctic Peninsula. However, botany has a long scientific tradition in Sweden ever since the days of Carl von Linné and reaching far beyond the boarders of Sweden. Two of Linné’s apprentices, Daniel Solander and Anders Sparrman, had participated in expeditions to the southern hemisphere led by the British explorer Captain James Cook, and visited some areas that were later visited by Nordenskjöld’s expedition in 1901-1903. During Cook’s expedition 1768-1770 with the Endeavour, Solander had the opportunity to explore the flora of Tierra del Fuego for a few days, in the company of the famous British naturalist Joseph Banks. This adventure almost got him killed in an unexpected blizzard in the Tierra del Fuego Mountains. Sparrman, on the other hand, visited South Georgia during James Cook’s second southern hemisphere expedition with the Resolution in 1772-1776. Otto Nordenskjöld was therefore true to Swedish academic traditions when he decided to include botany in the scientific program of his expedition. He engaged a young botanist, Carl Skottsberg, who was only 20 years old at the time of departure from Göteborg in 1901. In this paper I will give a brief overview of the botanical research carried out by Skottsberg during this historical expedition, but first a few words about the realities of Nature that met the young botanist in terms of the terrestrial flora and vegetation. This account is largely based on a recent paper by Jónsdóttir and Moen.1
