The Northern Lights, page 8
The rest of Birkeland’s time was spent settling into his new apartment in Lysaker, an area that was home to several of Norway’s leading intellectuals, explorers, artists, and scientists, including Fridtjof Nansen, who shared a radical, democratic, nationalist outlook and called themselves the Lysaker Group. Their aim was to combine traditional Norwegian folklore and culture with modern art and science, to promote a Norwegian identity distinct from that of any other Scandinavian country, particularly Sweden, and to prove Norway’s “fitness” to take its rightful place among the civilized nations of the world. Nansen had written to Parliament in 1899 that “to me it seems important that a small country like ours should assert itself in as many cultural fields as possible to prevent it being treated as a quantité negligéable by the great powers.” He had already made his political opinions clear in a number of fiery columns to The Times in Britain that denounced the Union as “a constant source of hatred and separation . . . which irritates and humiliates every Norwegian who has a sense of honour in his breast.”
Birkeland was passionate about helping to achieve independence for Norway and promoting his country’s right to stand alone. He believed that his auroral research provided an avenue for advancing national honor as well as developing the role of science in the country—particularly that of physics, defined at the time as the study of heat, electricity, and magnetism. It was important that both the scientific establishment and a popular audience be exposed to his ideas as soon as possible to show that a Norwegian had formulated the most advanced explanation for the aurora borealis. He decided to publish the manuscript he had been preparing about the Haldde expedition and made an appointment to see his acquaintance Jacob Dybwad, editor in chief of a small publishing house in Christiania, mentioning only briefly what the book was about. Birkeland had not written a book before but many of his colleagues at the university had been published by Dybwad, who was often the only editor prepared to find the resources to produce scientific texts. They rarely had a large readership and relied on grants rather than sales to cover the costs of printing and publication.
Dybwad, a tall man who stooped as low as possible to talk to people on their own level, had a habit of repeating the final words in his sentences; this lent him a mantle of eccentricity behind which hid a considerable intellect. He was delighted to deepen his acquaintance with Birkeland and ushered him into his cramped office in a building behind the university. Every surface in the room, including the floor, chairs, table, and two desks, was covered in piles of manuscripts, proof copies, and plate illustrations. Birkeland handed over a slim parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with a piece of wire (he had been unable to find any string in his office). When Dybwad unwound the wire, the paper fell open and on top of the eighty sheets of hand-written manuscript were a photograph and a drawing of the Haldde observatory. The editor held the photograph close to his shortsighted eyes. It was a portrait of a young man, under which was written “In Memoriam. Elisar Boye. Buried by an avalanche at the age of twenty-two on 16 March 1900.” Birkeland explained that his assistant had been tragically killed at the end of the expedition and that he would like to honor his memory and his contribution by including the photograph. Dybwad nodded, then held the drawing close to his nose. Made by Boye days before he died, the colored-pencil sketch depicted the Haldde observatory perched on the mountain with the smaller Talvik building in the foreground.
Dybwad carefully studied the stone buildings that had been erected with great difficulty to shelter Birkeland and his researchers in the notoriously fickle and violent storms on the sub-Arctic peaks of Finnmark. They were the perfect symbol for Norwegian scientific, cultural, and political aspirations. Dybwad was thrilled at the thought of the dramatic frontispiece to the book that the photograph would make, while the drawing could be featured on the cover. The scientific monographs he published did not usually have special covers but in this case it would be worth the extra cost. The photograph and the drawing encapsulated a sense of the dangers involved in the quest for scientific knowledge and the sacrifices that had been made so that this book could reach the reader.
Looking closer at Boye’s drawing, Dybwad noticed that the flag flying from the observatory was a pure Norwegian one, without Sweden’s insignia, and he thought for a while of the consequences of publishing it. He could be reprimanded for doing so by the Swedish government, he might even lose a few readers across the border, but his sympathies lay with Birkeland and his desire for an autonomous Norway. So he said nothing about the flag, simply praising the quality of the drawing. He hoped that, rather than being censured, the book would attract comment in the newspapers not only for its contribution to science but also for its contribution to the cause of independence. The title of the book was to be The Norwegian Expedition of 1899–1900 for the Study of the Aurora Borealis.
Dybwad quickly read the introduction and paused at the key paragraph, Birkeland’s summary of his research:
It emerges from our results, that the magnetic perturbations and the aurora borealis are secondary and local phenomena attaching to the same cosmic phenomenon. This primary phenomenon consists, there is no doubt, of electric currents in the upper levels of the atmosphere; in the polar regions, where they seem to have their point of departure, these currents are fairly well defined and concentrated. The currents pass, on average, at a height of approximately 100 km above the terrestrial surface and can cause strong magnetic perturbations of a total intensity above 400,000 amperes.
Dybwad was intrigued and wanted to know what the “cosmic phenomenon” was that could cause electric currents to flow above the surface of the Earth, but he realized that he should perhaps read the book first. He told Birkeland that he would look for funding and apply for a grant to the Fridtjof Nansen Foundation set up by Waldemar Christopher Brøgger, a prominent academic at the university and acquaintance of Birkeland’s. Brøgger had telegraphed Nansen as the explorer was sailing triumphantly down Norway’s coast after the Fram expedition in 1896, asking if he could use his name to start a foundation to publish academic books on science and letters and give financial aid to new expeditions. Nansen, himself an excellent biologist and talented also in other scientific fields, had readily agreed. As Brøgger’s father owned a printing company, he was able to keep down the costs for such publications while also providing his father with steady work. Dybwad told Birkeland that he was awaiting the foundation’s reply but hoped that the book could be published soon—he wanted to capitalize on the exploration fever that still gripped the country in the wake of Nansen’s return from the Arctic.
As the foundation would only provide money for the book to be published once, the two men had to decide in what language it should appear. The Norwegian audience for the book would be tiny: the population was very small, science education was poor except in the best schools, and only those who had passed through the university would be likely to read it (a very small number indeed and most of those would be fluent in another language). In order to transmit his ideas to a wider Norwegian audience, an aim close to his heart, Birkeland planned to write popular articles in newspapers, but there was little point in using Norwegian for the book if he wanted to convince the world, particularly the scientific world, of his arguments. The second language most Norwegians spoke was German. There were many cultural and economic links between the two countries because many Germans had emigrated to Norway in previous centuries and become eminent burghers. But Birkeland’s German was not fluent and he had not enjoyed his stay in Bonn, nor did he feel it was the best language for a wide readership. English was widely read but he did not speak it well and had no particular links with any British scientists, although he admired many of them. For him, the language of science was French. At the turn of the twentieth century, French was still the language of diplomacy and was spoken across the European continent as widely as English. Birkeland spoke and wrote it fluently; his mentor, Poincaré, lived in Paris and the French Academy of Science frequently published his papers. Dybwad and Birkeland agreed the book should be published in French.
From the editor’s office, it was not far for Birkeland to walk to the university along Carl Johan Gate. This gracious avenue, always bustling during the day except in bitter weather, began at the foot of the Royal Palace and stretched eastward for a mile, past the new Parliament building to the railway station. The Royal Norwegian Fredrik’s University was the largest building on Carl Johan Gate, with an impressive façade of columns and shallow steps, flanked by two stories of tall windows. Birkeland could see the windows of his office to the left of the main portico, on the raised ground floor. He walked up the broad stairs and turned left through the double doors, into a corridor lit by narrow windows. The first double doors on the left opened into his large office, which was crammed from floor to ceiling with papers, books, instruments, electric cables, maps, globes, and unidentifiable pieces of dismantled equipment. Three tall windows looked onto the square in front of the university and beyond to the street.
Sæland, at his desk in one corner of the office, was pleased to hear that Dybwad wanted to publish the book. It was a relief to have some good news. Since Boye’s death Birkeland had been easily distracted, jittery and short-tempered, particularly in the mornings; he frequently complained of insomnia, and he ate little. After the informal camaraderie of the mountaintop observatory, Birkeland felt uncomfortable in the formal, hierarchical atmosphere of the university, a highly conservative institution with a history of upholding anachronistic opinions and rituals even against its own best interests. A key example of this had come while he was a student, during the 1880s, when a debate raged between the Norwegian Parliament and the Swedish king over the sovereign’s power to elect the government of Norway, regardless of which party was voted in. During this furor, the university had sided with the king against the forces of democracy in Norway. When the king backed down and agreed to appoint only the leader of the main elected party, the university’s credibility was severely damaged; it was perceived in Norway as antidemocratic and élitist, and Parliament reduced its funding. By the time Birkeland was elected a professor in 1898, some members of the university were trying to improve its image, among them Waldemar Brøgger, dean of the Science Faculty. Brøgger arranged for Fridtjof Nansen, the most famous man in Norway after his attempt to reach the North Pole, to be granted a professorship not only in acknowledgment of his extraordinary achievements but also to allow the university to benefit from association with the great hero. Brøgger’s was a slow and difficult struggle though, and the unapologetic conservative professors clung to their power within the institution.
Like Brøgger, Birkeland was a reformer and therefore not universally popular. His drive and energy exhausted or irritated many of his colleagues, who were resigned to the university’s reputation as an intellectual backwater. As a student he had realized that the science teaching was parochial, and when he returned from a three-year pilgrimage to the greatest scientists and laboratories of Europe, he endeavored to implement many of the practices he had seen abroad. Until the Faculty of Mathematics and Science was established in 1862, the only natural science degree available at the university was in “mining science.” When Birkeland was appointed professor, it was the first time that the university had had two professors of physics simultaneously. Determined to drag the science department into the twentieth century, he acted as the grain of sand in the oyster, slowly producing a pearl by the use of friction against those who considered his science too controversial and his dislike of tradition unsettling. Since his return from the expedition to Haldde, opposition against him had hardened. Among certain professors there had been criticism of the enthusiastic physicist whose foolhardy schemes had led to the death of a talented young man. His grand ideas were also a drain on the annual science budget of 500 crowns, a meager amount that would not have covered even the cost of installing the telephone between the observatories on Haldde Mountain.
Although Birkeland attracted criticism, he also enjoyed a degree of admiration from those with a more modern outlook. One of his greatest friends was Amund Helland, an eccentric but brilliant geologist working on an encyclopedia of The Land and People of Norway in thirty-nine volumes, who wrote in the newspaper Dagbladet, “I love everything Norwegian—from Amund Helland to herring and cod.” He spoke Old Norse, excelled in Norwegian history, but was also blessed with a cosmopolitan outlook, having traveled after graduating to Greenland and Shetland and throughout mainland Europe to study mines and glaciers. Twenty years Birkeland’s senior, Helland spoke to everyone in the same manner, regardless of age, rank, or sex. He was a committed socialist, renowned throughout Christiania for his extreme views, which were regularly expressed through his column in Morgenbladet, the most left-leaning paper of the time. He would attack any public figure he felt deserved a good drubbing by writing three highly critical pieces and publishing them week after week without paying any heed to the victim’s response. When granted a decoration by the king, he sent it back. Helland was not made a professor until 1885, many years after he had become eligible, due to his outspoken politics, and even then it was an “extraordinary” professorship, narrowly voted in by the government. Christiania was a conservative town.
Birkeland frequently left the university with Helland in the evenings and repaired to Helland’s house on Drammensveien, where he held an informal salon, attended by politicians, newspaper editors, and scientists. At these evenings, Birkeland was nicknamed the “Boy Professor”; he looked so young and sweet compared to his colleagues, most of whom were of Helland’s generation. Women were encouraged to attend, and Helland favored those who were intelligent and independent—journalists and writers. He was unconventional in his approach to women, forming friendships with widows and divorcées, and even the occasional wife—though all his approaches were platonic. He would dispatch sacks of potatoes to any woman he admired (he did not approve of fancy gifts), and his most loving gesture was to send dried flatfish. He himself adored dried fish and would use it as a bookmark in case he became peckish while reading. On one sack of potatoes he sent to a young assistant in a perfumery he attached a note: “These potatoes are for your fair mouth only. Do not let your husband eat any.”
Whiling away evenings with Helland provided comfort to Birkeland, who was suffering from the loss of Boye, his father, and his family home in the space of a month. His eating became so erratic that his friends began to invite him to dinner to ensure that he ate well at least occasionally. Birkeland’s mother had charged Professor Henrik Mohn and his wife, Julie, with keeping an eye on her son once she left. The Mohns had been near neighbors of the Birkelands at 8 Nordal Bruns Gate and Henrik Mohn had encouraged Birkeland’s desire to follow a career in science. He was patient at explaining scientific concepts to the young Birkeland and would allow him into his office, a secret world adorned with mysterious instruments and incomprehensible charts covered in arrows and figures.
Mohn was the founder of meteorological science in Norway and had become the director of the Meteorological Institute, where he organized systematic weather observations as a foundation for the world’s first forecasts—particularly storm warnings. He had encouraged international cooperation for meteorological observations, realizing early that the weather was a worldwide phenomenon, not a national one, an ambitious and cosmopolitan attitude that influenced Birkeland greatly in his student days. Mohn was also interested in the effects of the aurora borealis on the weather. He had sent Birkeland several papers and cuttings while he was at the observatory and they frequently discussed the matter. Mohn and his wife had only one child, Louise, named after his first wife, who had died at the age of twenty-nine. He had given his daughter a thorough science training and subsequently employed her to make calculations for weather predictions. Although Birkeland spent more time in the Mohn house than his own as a young man, he had taken little notice of Louise. She was six years younger than he was and perpetually surrounded by an endless stream of cousins, having ten uncles and aunts on her father’s side and seven on her mother’s, most with children.
When Birkeland was invited to dinner with Henrik and Julie, a few weeks after his mother had left for Porsgrund, he noticed how much Louise had changed since he had last seen her. She was now twenty-six and able to converse with him about the complexities and difficulties she and her father were facing in developing a science of weather forecasting. Birkeland’s attention, however, was drawn to another of the guests, a niece of Mohn’s whom he did not recall meeting before, Ida Charlotte Hammer. Ida was the daughter of Mohn’s next youngest sibling, Justine, born the year after him. Ida explained that she had five sisters and therefore it was understandable if Birkeland had no recollection of her but she remembered him because he had let them experiment with his new magnet when he was twelve or thirteen. She had been sixteen then; now she was thirty-seven but with the air of a younger woman.
Ida wore subdued colors and simple clothes that suited her small frame and unadorned face. Her black silk dress, pulled in sharply at her tiny waist, emphasized her narrow shoulders but was softened at the neck with a striped purple and gray silk cravat, carefully tucked into the bodice of her dress and held in place with a modest silver brooch. Her chestnut hair was parted in the middle, twisted and pinned to the crown of her head with two wooden hairpins, each tipped with a carved flower. The style was severe, but a few fine hairs refused to be smoothed into place and curled around the nape of her neck. Her pronounced earlobes were ornamented with small pearl studs set in silver and she wore several narrow gold bracelets, a surprisingly Bohemian touch to an otherwise somber outfit. Her large eyes protruded a little either side of the narrow bridge of her nose and her lips were very thin. A tiny pointed chin gave her an appealing, elfin grace but the overall effect was neat and kempt rather than pretty.
