Obituaries


69

Obituaries
Colin Bertram, British polar explorer, biologist, and
former director of the Scott Polar Research Institute, died
at his home in Graffham, Sussex, on 11 January 2001, aged
89.

Born on 27 April 1911, George Colin Lawder Bertram
showed early interest in natural history. In 1932, while
reading zoology at St John's College, Cambridge, he and
fellow undergraduate David Lack organised the Cam-
bridge expedition to Bj0rn0ya, undertaking ornithological
studies and collections. The next year, as a member of the
three-man Cambridge expedition to Scoresby Sound, he
was transported to East Greenland by the celebrated French
explorer J.-B. Charcot, in his equally celebrated expedi-
tion ship Pourquoi-Pas?, a remarkable experience for an
aspiring polar biologist.

After a brief spell studying coral reefs in the Red Sea,
in 1934 Bertram joined the British Graham Land Expedi-
tion, initially as a marine biologist with the ship's party,
later replacing Brian Roberts in the shore party. One of a
series of non-governmental, low-budget, but strikingly
efficient expeditions that characterised post-'Heroic Age'
British polar exploration, the BGLE gave Bertram many
opportunities to learn polar craft, including sailing, dog-
sledging, and surveying, from friendly experts only a little
older than himself. There were also opportunities for a
young biologist to make his mark. The 16 men and 80-100
sledge dogs relied heavily on seals for food: Bertram
studied the seals as they were killed, writing his conclu-
sions in a scientific report and a thesis that earned him a
Cambridge PhD. He was awarded also the Polar Medal
and the Bruce Memorial Medal of the Royal Scottish
Geographical Society. Bertram later told his experiences
in 'Antarctica sixty years ago: a re-appraisal of the British
Graham Land Expedition 1934—1937,' which was pub-
lished as a complete edition of Polar Record (32 (181): 9 8 -
183 (April 1996)).

In 1939 Bertram married Kate Ricardo, a fellow gradu-
ate in zoology. In the same year he wrote Arctic &
Antarctic: the technique of polar travel. During the early
months of World War II, he was involved in War Office
research on Arctic clothing, which included designing and
testing early versions of the string vest. From 1940 he
joined the Colonial Office, becoming chief fisheries ad-
viser in Palestine, later fisheries adviser to the Middle East
Supply Centre in Cairo.

After the war Bertram returned to Cambridge, taking
up a fellowship and tutorship at St John's and immersing
himself in college administration and raising four sons.
From 1949 he held the part-time appointment of director of
the Scott Polar Research Institute, a prestigious but chroni-
cally under-funded institution that made little use of his
polar knowledge and skills. Before retiring on 31 Decem-
ber 1956, he was instrumental in ensuring that his succes-

Fig. 1. Colin Bertram when he was director of the Scott
Polar Research Institute.

sor would hold a full-time directorship.
In the following year Bertram was awarded the

Murchison Grant of the Royal Geographical Society and
held a visiting professorship at the University of Otago,
New Zealand. In 1965 he became senior tutor atStJohn's,
an appointment he held until 1972. College life, research
on a diversity of practical ecological issues from tropical
fisheries and manatee conservation to fur seals of the
Pribilof Islands, coupled with long-term involvement in
the affairs of the Royal Geographical Society and the
Eugenics Society, kept his life busy well beyond formal
retirement.

Apart from research papers, Bertram wrote Adam's
brood: hopes and fears of a biologist (1959), In search of
mermaids: the manatees of Guyana (1963), Antarctica,
Cambridge, conservation and population: a biologist's
story (1987), and Memories and musings of an octogenar-
ian biologist (1992). Kate Bertram, who from 1970 to
1979 was president of Lucy Cavendish College, Cam-
bridge, died in 1999.
Bernard Stonehouse



70 OBITUARIES

Helge Ingstad, Norwegian scholar, sailor, adventurer,
and writer, died at his home in Oslo on 29 March 2001,
aged 101, ending a life spanning three centuries. He
discovered the only authenticated Norse ruins in North
America. His study of the Icelandic sagas and of other
medieval documents, and his knowledge of weather, sea-
ice conditions, and early navigation techniques had guided
him in his long quest in the wake of Eric the Red and the
Norse explorers of a thousand years ago.

In 1953 Ingstad and his wife Anne-Stine (Moe), an
archaeologist, had examined ruins of Norse settlements in
West Greenland. As a result, they recognized the need to
search for further Norse remains along the Labrador and
Newfoundland coasts. In the summer of 1960, after sailing
from Norway in his own ship Halten with a crew of six,
Ingstad made a preliminary survey of these coasts from
ship and light aircraft. In the following spring, sailing out
of Montreal and accompanied by his wife, he followed the
north shore of the St Lawrence River, and then the coast-
line northeastwards, examining likely locations for Norse
settlements. Finally, near the northern tip of Newfound-
land and on its eastern side at L'Anse aux Meadows, his
attention was drawn by a local man, George Decker, to
some grassy mounds that Ingstad recognized as possible
remnants of Scandinavian sod houses. His hunch was
proved correct from excavations directed by his wife in the
1961 summer and in seven subsequent summers. Her
archaeological finds included the foundations of eight
buildings, including a large house almost identical to Leif
Ericsson's 'great hall' in Greenland; an area used for
smelting bog iron; and artifacts such as a soapstone spin-
dle-whorl and a bronze tunic pin of Norse design. The
radiocarbon method gave the date of the site as about 1000
AD, according with that indicated in the sagas for the main
winterings in Vinland. The Ingstads thought it more than
probable that L'Anse aux Meadows was the place referred
to in the sagas as 'Leifsbudir.'

After 1968 the Ingstads left further excavations to
Parks Canada, but kept a close eye on L' Anse aux Meadows,
which, in 1980 to their delight, was named by UNESCO as
an official World Heritage Site. Historical tourism at the
site has helped to offset the severe damage to the economy
of the region caused by the ban on cod-fishing in
Newfoundland's coastal waters, imposed by the Canadian
government in 1992.

Helge Marcus Ingstad was born on 30 December 1899
at Meraker, near Trondheim, where he enjoyed a hardy
upbringing among the mountains. After taking a law
degree in 1922, he worked for four years as a lawyer,
before embarking on a life of adventure and research. In
1926-30, he worked as a fur-trapper in northern Canada,
and there acquired a lifelong interest in the Arctic, which
he was able to indulge in a series of privately organized
expeditions, with the emphasis on ethnography and
archaeology. He wrote up his travels and research in a long
series of popular books and scholarly papers. His Canadian
experience is recorded in Land of feast and famine (1933),

dealing with the region of Great Slave Lake and the upper
Thelon River. His expedition to East Greenland, 1932-34,
isdescribed'm East of the great glacier(\937). From 1936
to 1938, he served as a district judge in Svalbard, and
became an authority on the history and development of
those Arctic islands.

After the war, Ingstad resumed his travels with an
expedition to northern Alaska, 1949-50, to study the
Nunamuit Inuit of the Brooks Range, of whom he published
an account in Nunamuit (1952). His visits to Norse sites in
West Greenland in the 1950s were described in Land under
the pole star (1966), and a popular account of his great
discovery in Newfoundland is contained in Westward to
Vinland (1969). Finally, Ingstad and his wife set the seal
on their work in Newfoundland with the publication by the
Oslo University Press of The Norse discovery of North
America (1986, two volumes), containing a full report on
the excavations at L'Anse aux Meadows.

Ingstad was recognized in his own country as a Knight
of St Olav, Honorary Doctor of Oslo University, and
Fridtjof Nansen Medalist. Other honours came to him,
including the Andree Medal of the Royal Swedish
Geographical Society, and honorary doctorates from the
University of Calgary, McGill University, and Memorial
University in Canada. Finally, in 1991, jointly with his
wife, he received the Founder's Gold Medal of the Royal
Geographical Society, a belated award but one that he
greatly prized. He must have been the oldest recipient of
a Royal medal from that Society; in his quiet and modest
way, he took a wry pleasure in receiving it in the year
before the quincentennial celebrations of the official
discovery of North America by Christopher Columbus.

Anne-Stine, for 56 years his devoted wife and co-
worker in the field, died in 1997, aged 79 (Polar Record34
(190): 273 (1998), and Ingstad is survived by their daughter
and grandchildren.
Geoffrey Hattersley-Smith

Pyotr 'Peter' Typykhkak, chairman of the Association
of Traditional Marine Mammal Hunters of Chukotka (for-
merly known as the Union of Marine Mammal Hunters),
died of complications associated with stomach cancer on
9 December 2000 in the village of Sireniki, Provideniya
Region, Chukotka Autonomous District, Russia.
Typykhkak was born in 1933 in Imtuk, a settlement near
Sireniki. His Eskimo name was Typykhkak.

Typykhkak spent most of his life in Sireniki. When he
was 15 years old he was already an assistant marine
mammal hunter on the schooner Oktober. He spent his
entire career at sea, and, in addition to being a leading
traditional marine mammal hunter, he also worked in the
Soviet state system, working his way up from shooter, to
motor-man, and then to brigadier (whaling crew captain).
Although partially blind in one eye, he was a good shot. He
was widely considered one of the most respected elders,
and he spent much time teaching young hunters in Chukotka.
Typykhkak was active in civic life and served as a deputy



OBITUARIES 71

(legislator) in village, regional, and district government.
He was a member of the Magadan Regional Party Commit-
tee.

Typykhkak particularly showed his wisdom and talent
as a leader after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As the
old restrictions melted away, he became extremely active
in bringing his people and his organization in close contact
with the people of St Lawrence Island, and of northwest
and northern Alaska. He forged very close alliances with
the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, the North Slope
Borough, the Alaska Nanuuq (polar bear) Commission,
the Eskimo Walrus Commission, and other native hunting
organizations.

He was committed to renew the traditional bowhead
whale hunt for the Chukotka native people. Typykhkak
had been on the last bowhead whale hunt allowed by the
Soviet government in 1972. He related that on his wife's
deathbed she asked to taste, one last time, some bowhead
wha\e muktuk, which he was not able to give her. In 1996,
standing on the beach in front of his village, he pressed a
delegation from the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission
and the North Slope Borough about what he could do to
renew the traditional bowhead whale hunt. His persistence
led to a long process that involved securing the cooperation
of the Russian and US governments and ended with an
aboriginal quota for bowhead whales for the Russian
Federation from the International Whaling Commission.
Typykhkak assisted his younger son's crew to harvest a
bowhead whale in 1998, after a more than a 25-year hiatus
of the tradition.

In 1997, Typykhkak helped form and was elected the
president of the Union of Marine Mammal Hunters, and

was able to employ his skills and knowledge protecting
traditional subsistence. Under his leadership, the Union of
Marine Mammal Hunters became well-known in Russia
and internationally as a native organization interested in
protecting the traditional lifestyle of the native people
while being actively involved in the management of ma-
rine resources. Typykhkak represented the organization at
the 2000 meeting of the International Whaling Commis-
sion in Australia.

He is greatly mourned by his Russian colleagues. In his
obituary in the Russian press it was written that 'Peter was
one of the most reliable protectors of the traditional marine
mammal hunt and the spirit of the Eskimo people, and he
prepared an entire generation of talented hunters, sailors,
and Arctic naturalists. He was especially known for his
wisdom, his love of people, his drive, his integrity, and his
honesty.'

Typykhkak was also well liked by Alaskans. He often
visited Alaska representing the native people of Chukotka.
Early in 2000, the US National Park Service and employ-
ees of the North Slope Borough arranged for a Fairbanks
ophthalmologist, Dr Zamber, to volunteer his time to
operate on Typykhkak's cataracts, which had made him
almost blind. People from all over Alaska contributed
money to the operation, which was a success. Sponsored
by Roman Abramovich, Typykhkak returned for medical
attention to Anchorage in October 2000. Unfortunately, he
was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer and returned
to his native village in November. He is survived by three
sons and two daughters.
Vladimir Etylin
John Tichotsky