Louise Arner Boyd (1887–1972) grew up a tomboy. She trailed her older brothers in everything they did. She was also born into a wealthy California family, where her father had made his fortune during the Gold Rush. Despite her tomboyish ways, she was provided a proper education, though she did not attend college, and she was taught to be a socialite. When her brothers died of rheumatic fever at the ages of 16 and 17, she was left as the only child and the eventual sole heir to the family’s wealth. When her mother and father died in 1919 and 1920, respectively, she was left alone, yet singularly wealthy.
Despite her socialite status, she was less inclined to spend her wealth on frivolous parties and instead spent her time and money on travel and adventure. Though even during her years of adventure, she ensured she was always well-dressed and manicured.
Her first travels led her throughout Europe, but in 1924, she decided to visit Spitsbergen, the largest island of the Svalbard archipelago, located between Norway and the North Pole. She immediately became enamored with the Arctic region.
The Expeditions Begin
Between 1926 and 1941, she financed, organized, and led seven Arctic expeditions. Her first expedition in 1926 was strictly to hunt game. Boyd was a crack shot with a rifle and took down several polar bears (some sources suggested as many as 11). Her big game kills were often taxidermied and sent back to the United States to be displayed in natural history museums.During this first expedition, she not only brought her rifle but also her cameras―photography and videography. She shot approximately 21,000 feet of film and 700 photos. Nearly as soon as she left, she started preparing to come back to the Arctic Ocean.
In 1928, she chartered her second expedition, but upon arrival in Greenland, word had spread that Roald Amundsen, who was the first to reach the South Pole and was part of the first expedition to successfully cross the Northwest Passage, had gone missing. Amundsen had gone in search of another missing polar explorer, Umberto Nobile, who had built the first aircraft to reach the North Pole.
Though Amundsen was never found, Boyd’s 10-week search that sailed approximately 10,000 miles from Tromso, Norway, through the Norwegian Sea to Spitsbergen, then across the Greenland Sea to Franz Josef Land and back to Tromso through the Barents Sea was captured on film, shooting nearly as much footage as her 1926 expedition. All of this footage she donated to the American Geographic Society (AGS).
Expeditions for Science
It was during this search-and-rescue mission that Boyd met many Arctic explorers and scientists and decided that her expeditions would focus strictly on the science of the Arctic.Throughout her next two expeditions, she led the exploration of the northeast coast of Greenland, an area that was practically unknown. She was the sole photographer of the ventures, of which she took thousands of photos. Her study of photogrammetry enabled her to accurately map this area of Greenland. During the expeditions, her chartered ship, Veslekari, was the first to reach the inner part of Ice Fjord, the De Geer Glacier was officially discovered, and a connecting valley between the Kjerulf and Dickson fjords was discovered, and with the detailed images provided by Boyd, the AGS was able to create an accurate topographical map.
After these expeditions, she wrote her book “The Fiord Region of East Greenland,” which included 350 of her photographs. The area she surveyed was named “Miss Boyd Land,” an honor she did not know about until she actually saw it on a map put out by the Geodaetizk Institute of Copenhagen. The U.S. Board of Geographic Names updated their maps to include the name too.
Helping the US Military
Her next two expeditions in 1937 and 1938 would result in another book, “The Coast of Northeast Greenland, with Hydrographic Studies in the Greenland Sea.” The publication of that book, however, would be postponed until 1948 at the request of the U.S. government. As Europe began to become embroiled in another massive conflict, Greenland proved to be a military strategic area. Boyd began working intimately with the U.S. military, providing essential information about the geography of Greenland. In 1941, under the guise of another scientific expedition, she studied, photographed, surveyed, and collected information for the National Bureau of Standards, and eventually the War Department.An Arctic Legacy
Throughout her expeditions, she and her scientific teams wrote extensive reports for geographic and other scientific communities, often for the AGS. One of her final Arctic triumphs was chartering a flight in 1955 in which she flew over the North Pole.Through her Arctic expeditions, she was able to combine all of her interests (science, exploration, and photography), her leadership qualities, her socialite status, and tomboy personality into one. She humorously, yet straightforwardly expressed this sentiment in a 1938 interview with The New York Times when she stated, “I like the pleasant things most women enjoy, even if I do wear breeches and boots on an expedition, even sleep in them at times. I have no use for masculine women. At sea I don’t bother with my hands, except to keep them from being frozen, but I powder my nose before going on deck, no matter how rough the sea is. There is no reason why a woman can’t rough it and still remain feminine.”
By the end of her Arctic career, Boyd had received the aforementioned Order of St. Olav, the Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, the Andree Plaque of the Swedish Anthropological and Geographical Society, the medal of King Christian X of Denmark, and a Certificate of Appreciation from the U.S. Army.
She also belonged to a number of renowned societies, including the Royal Horticultural Society of London, the American Society of Photogrammetry, Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, the American Horticultural Society, the Society of Women Geographers, the National League of American Pen Women, the California Botanical Society, and the Geographic Society of Philadelphia, and was a member of the Council of the American Geographic Society, and an Honorary Director of the American Polar Society.
Boyd loved the Arctic regions so much that she requested of her friend Dr. Walter Wood, who had been part of her 1933 expedition, to scatter her ashes in the Arctic Ocean. He did so shortly after she died.
