Olaf Swenson

Olaf Swenson ( December 16, 1883 – August 23, 1938) was a Seattle-based fur trader and adventurer active in Siberia and Alaska in the first third of the 20th century. His career intersected with activities of notable explorers of the period, and with the Russian Civil War. He is credited with leading the rescue of the "Karluk" survivors from Wrangel Island in 1914. According to historian Thomas C. Owen, Swenson's "practicality and zest for adventure made him an ideal entrepreneur on the arctic frontier..."
Born and raised in Michigan, Swenson first reached the far north as a Nome prospector in 1901. The next year he signed on for a prospecting venture in Siberia, spending two summers and one winter on the Chukchi Peninsula. He returned to Siberia in 1905, this time with his wife and their infant son. His introduction to trading came when their ship was wrecked and he contracted to salvage cargo on a share basis. He continued to trade at Anadyr until 1911. In 1913, Swenson and C.L. Hibbard of Seattle formed the Hibbard-Swenson Company which operated trading schooners and steamers on the Siberian coast, buying furs and ivory and trading a variety of general merchandise until 1921. Swenson continued this business as Olaf Swenson & Co. until 1923 when the Bolshevik victory led to seizure of his business. Two years of negotiations led to a contract with the Soviet government to supply goods on a cost-plus basis and buy furs. This arrangement persisted through 1930. The difficulties of getting furs and personnel out of the Siberian Arctic led to the first commercial flights across the Bering Strait. The fourth such flight crashed in a Siberian winter storm, killing aviation pioneer Carl Ben Eielson and his mechanic in 1929. Swenson's memoir "Northwest of the World" contains observations on commerce, conditions, and native life in northeast Siberia and won critical praise for its direct style and vivid description.
Early life.
Olaf Swenson was born in Manistee, Michigan, the second son of Nils and Amelia (née Peterson or Petersen) Swenson. Nils was a Swedish emigrant and at that time a prosperous hotel and saloon keeper. Amelia died in childbirth when Olaf was six years old, and the baby died shortly afterward. Another sister died accidentally in childhood. Nils never remarried, and the two boys were raised in the home of their grandparents, Ole and Sophie Petersen.
Prospecting for gold in Alaska and Siberia.
Nils and Olaf went to Nome, Alaska, in 1901 to prospect for gold. Finding little success, they signed on to help work a claim on shares. This was a paying proposition but nobody got rich, and Olaf and his father returned to Seattle for the winter. The next spring they returned to Nome and signed on for a prospecting expedition to the Chukchi Peninsula of northeastern Siberia sponsored by the Northeastern Siberian Company, Limited. They spent two summers and one winter in Siberia, mostly on the Arctic coast, but found no exploitable gold and returned to Seattle in the fall of 1903. Returning Northeastern Siberian Company prospectors reported promising signs including colors in every stream panned and graphite deposits. Some still thought exploitable placer gold would eventually be found. However, the "Deseret News" quoted Nels [sic] and Olaf Swenson as expecting that the wealth would come from [gold-bearing] quartz deposits.
Family.
After returning from Siberia, Swenson worked in Seattle for American Biscuit Company for a year and a half. In May 1904 he married Emma Charlotte Johnson in Seattle. Charlotte, as she preferred to be known, had immigrated from Sweden in 1903. They had at least one son and two daughters. Their son died in Nome in 1910 of diphtheria contracted on board ship from Seattle. Their daughter Marion was born about 1912 and Marjorie (sometimes spelled Marguery or Margery) about 1918.
Trading in the Anadyr region of Siberia.
In 1905, Swenson set out on another prospecting expedition for the Northeastern Siberian Company, this time bringing along his wife and their six-month-old son. In Hanford's account, Swenson was the organizer and by implication the leader of this expedition. Their ship, the gasoline schooner "Barbara Hernster", struck a reef near Providence Bay, Siberia, July 28, 1905, and the family reached shore by boat through heavy surf. The ship was subsequently refloated and beached, and Swenson contracted to salvage the cargo in exchange for a share. Subsequently the group and their cargo were picked up and transported to Anadyr, where Swenson set up a trading station selling the salvaged supplies. These found a ready market, since the Russo-Japanese War had disrupted normal supply channels.
Swenson is sometimes credited with the first discovery of gold in northeastern Siberia; he credits a group of prospectors headed by Luke Nadeau, part of the same expedition he was on. Swenson was dispatched to Nome with $8,000 worth of gold in 1906. His family went with him. Swenson returned to Anadyr with more trade goods while Charlotte and their son returned "to civilization".
Swenson's trading station of this period is described as lying on St. Nicholas Bay (not named on modern maps), from Russian Spit (Russkaya Koshka, the northern spit delimiting the outer Anadyr estuary) and from mountains. Since there are no mountains sufficiently close on the south side of the estuary and no nearby bays north of the estuary, this puts the likely location on the northern mainland shore of the estuary. Swenson (though he does not explicitly say so) was trading under the Northeastern Siberian Company concession. In 1908 the steamer "Corwin" landed freight and miners at the Northeastern Siberian Company's trading station on the north shore of Anadyr Bay; the current from the river was strong at this location.
Swenson traveled by dogsled at least as far as Cape Navarin and Korfa Bay to trade. Trade goods were packed in parcels of roughly uniform value, sized to fit on Chukchi sleds. Swenson also brought some American-style retail practices including premiums and credit sales. The credit extended to trappers could take the form of both operating supplies and household goods against next year's fur harvest or a later delivery. Swenson spent alternate winters in Anadyr through 1910-1911.
1910 was a year of transition for the Northeastern Siberian Company. The Russian government declined to renew its concession, its president resigned, and it was absorbed by a Russian-French partnership. Swenson went into a Montana cattle ranching venture with his father in 1911, but the venture did not last long; Olaf did not like ranching much, and when his father died in 1912 he sold the ranch. Swenson made a short trading voyage to the Siberian coast in a chartered schooner in 1911 and a longer trip in 1912 in the motor schooner "Polar Bear". This second voyage was a partnership with the Hibbard-Stewart company of Seattle and Captain L.L. Lane.
Business of the Hibbard-Swenson and Olaf Swenson companies.
Hibbard-Swenson Company.
This partnership was formed in 1913 with the purchase of the steam bark "Belvedere" (formerly an arctic whaler) and lasted through 1921. It eventually expanded to include multiple ships trading from the Sea of Okhotsk to the north coast of Siberia.
Operations.
The Hibbard-Swenson company bought furs, whalebone, and walrus and mammoth ivory for cash as well as barter; furs included squirrel, ermine, sable, red fox, white fox, cross fox, wolf, wolverine, deer, hair seal, brown bear, and polar bear. The pattern of the trade was to spend the winter purchasing and packaging trade goods. April through August was spent picking up furs on the Siberian coast. The fall included walrus hunting and sometimes whaling, and miscellaneous shipping with stops in Alaska and Siberia. Turnover was about $1 million per year in the early 1920s.
Operations in Kamchatka are described by Sten Bergman, who was in Kamchatka 1920-1922: "Klutchi...is the seat of the Kamchatkan fur trade, and several fur-trading firms have their depots here. The biggest of them are the Hudson's Bay Company and the Olaf Swenson Company — the latter is the concern of a Swedish American of that name. His name is known and esteemed in every dwelling throughout the entire peninsula. Every spring Swenson comes over from Seattle with his steamer, which is laden with everything imaginable that Kamchatka can stand in need of."
Swenson described financing local agents prior to the Bolshevik victory: "It had been our custom to pick out a local spot, put a good man in charge there, and finance him against the business he would do for us, letting him operate in his own name and extend credit according to his own judgment." According to a Soviet source, Swenson had 16 personal agents and provided financing to an additional 14 independent traders, with a total annual turnover in excess of $1 million.
In the period before the Bolshevik victory, trade goods included "foodstuffs, canned milk, canned fruit, clothing of every kind (including frilly things for women), hardware of all kinds, toys for children, a great many luxuries which many of them had never known before." Trade goods mentioned at other locations in Swenson's narrative include flour, wieners (in barrels), oranges, sugar, tea, tobacco, pilot bread, eggs, calico, dishes, needles, thread, knives, pots, pans, chamber pots, firearms and ammunition, motor launches, gasoline, kerosene, Mackinaws and other waterproof clothing, boots, caps, heavy woolen clothing, and corduroy breeches with lacings on the legs. Customers included Russians as well as natives. Alcohol is not mentioned in his lists of trade goods. 
Impact of the Russian Revolution and civil war.
In June 1920, the "New York Times" reported that Bolshevik partisans had attacked, seized, and looted the Anadyr post of the Hibbard-Swenson Company the preceding January. The leader of the Anadyr Bolsheviks was misidentified as a Seattle seaman named Mikoff, possibly a confusion of the Bolshevik leader Montikoff and a German-American seaman Walter Ahrns who was also involved. According to a report collected in 1922 by Lieutenant John Marie Creighton, USN, from Swenson's local manager John Lampe, the store was seized but not looted and was eventually reclaimed, though not before Lampe found it necessary to flee temporarily. Lampe also managed to maintain a position of neutrality between the first Revcom headed by Montickoff and the group of traders who violently deposed it. (For a synopsis of events as reported by Soviet sources, see P. Gray.)
For a brief period in 1921 and 1922, the White forces were resurgent in the Russian Far East and maintained a tenuous control along the coast. This development had its advantages and its disadvantages. As Swenson put it, Kamchatka was "full of Russians who had come up with the Whites" and they all wanted American clothing and gear. However, "the revolution didn't care much about the importance of the fur traffic and was constantly getting in our way." At one point Swenson's ship was required to evacuate ninety White troops, disarmed at Swenson's insistence, from Okhotsk to Ola. This period also let Swenson get to know several White officers including Colonels Bochkarev [Swenson writes Bochkarov] and Fielkovsky at Gizhiga. Some of these associations would cause him trouble later.
Hibbard-Swenson Company dissolved early in 1922. C.L. Hibbard withdrew from Asian ventures, but Swenson wanted to continue. He formed Olaf Swenson & Company in March 1922 to take over the assets and trading network. Backers included Bryner & Company of Vladivostok, a major trading house in the Russian Far East, Denbigh and Company of Japan and Vladivostok, which had interests in Kamchatka fishing, and other Russian firms. Swenson was President and Treasurer.
The Red Army took Vladivostok in October 1922, and the Soviet government began to consolidate its control of the Northeast. In early 1923 the Soviets seized four trading schooners at East Cape, Siberia, including one owned by Olaf Swenson & Company (the "Blue Sea") and one chartered to Swenson, on charges of trafficking alcohol. (The "New York Times" article suggested that competition with the Hudson's Bay Company could have been a factor, since that company's country manager was the brother of the Soviet governor). Swenson does not discuss this seizure or charge specifically. Later that year the Yakut Revolt was suppressed and the last organized White force under Anatoly Pepelyayev was defeated at Ayan (a port village on the Sea of Okhotsk) on June 17, 1923. In October 1923, G.G. Suddock, Agent for Olaf Swenson Co. at Ayan, arriving in Seattle from Ayan by way of Japan, confirmed to a reporter for the "Prescott (AZ) Evening Courier" that the Bolshevik victory was complete and there was no more White resistance.
Adapting to the Bolshevik victory.
With the Bolshevik victory, Swenson found not just two schooners but his entire Siberian business and stock impounded and a warrant out for his arrest. The issues besides alcohol (if that was really an issue) were taxes and his perceived close association with the Whites. He briefly discusses allegations of selling guns to the Whites, suggesting they were inflated, and attributes some allegations to disgruntled competitors. (Hunting arms and ammunition were a regular part of his business.) He does not mention an allegation of a check for $500,000 found in the pocket of an executed White officer. Swenson reports he declined an offer from a former White officer to raid the coast and recover the furs by force. Instead he and R.S. Pollister (Vice President of Olaf Swenson & Co.) went to China to obtain a Soviet visa and began a long slow process of negotiation to release the furs, trading stock, and books. The ultimate resolution was a contract entered in 1925 to deliver goods in Siberia to Moscow's specification on a cost-plus basis and export furs. This contract was renewed for five years in 1926 and expanded in 1928 after negotiations with the head of the Soviet fur trust in London. Other associates in this venture were Maurice Cantor and Irving W. Herskovits of New York. In this period, the business name often appears as Swenson Trading Company or Swenson Fur Trading Company. Local trade was handled by a Soviet government trading organization which specified the goods and set fur prices. Swenson reports prices paid to the trappers were reduced in this period and the range of trade goods narrowed to necessities.
The contract appears not to have been renewed after 1930. Swenson spent time in Russia in 1931, 1932, and 1933 settling accounts, attending fur sales, and winding up affairs.
Shipping losses.
The companies operated multiple vessels at various times. This list of losses may be incomplete.
"Belvedere".
This former whaler, the company's first ship, sank off the Russian coast, September 16, 1919. The ship was forced into ice near shore by a storm and holed or crushed. All 30 crew and 3 passengers survived.
"Kolyma".
This power schooner was stranded and wrecked on Sledge Island July 22, 1920, driven ashore in a storm after having left Nome to take shelter in the lea of the island. The vessel was a total loss. All the crew reached safety.
"Kamchatka".
The Hibbard-Swenson Company diesel auxiliary schooner "Kamchatka" (formerly the whaling bark "Thrasher") was lost to fire in the Bering Sea April 14, 1921. The crew, including Swenson, escaped without loss of life and reached Alaska in a motor launch and a whaleboat. They had no water and subsisted on wieners and oranges from the cargo, running the launch's engine on distillate due to a lack of gasoline.
The office of Hibbard-Swenson company's Japanese affiliate was destroyed by fire the same night the "Kamchatka" was lost.
"Elisif".
The "Elisif", captained by Edwin Larson, was frozen in on the Arctic coast during the winter 1928-9. Resupplied by the "Nanuk", she attempted to reach Kolyma with R.S. Pollister aboard as supercargo and A.P. Jochimsen as ice pilot. The ship was punctured by floating ice and beached to prevent sinking. The ship's company evacuated in boats. They initially reached Uelen and planned to wait there for pickup. However a fierce storm came up and when they tried to move their boats to a safer location, they were unable to land again. They made for Little Diomede Island, landed there, and were picked up by the Coast Guard cutter "Northland" and taken to Nome.
Involvement with the Canadian Arctic Expedition.
Icebound ships and a trek with news.
"Belvedere", with Stephen Cottle as her captain and Olaf Swenson on board, became stuck in the ice off the north coast of Alaska in the fall of 1913 while carrying supplies for Vilhjalmur Stefansson's Canadian Arctic Expedition to the transfer point at Herschel Island. The expedition ship "Karluk" was frozen in about offshore and subsequently was carried away by moving ice. The whaler "Elvira" under Captain C.T. Pedersen was frozen in, damaged by the ice and further damaged in a storm, requiring her crew to transfer to the "Belvedere". Swenson and Pedersen (accompanied by Enuk, a north-slope Iñupiaq, and later also by Peter, an Indian from the Chandlar lake area) traveled to Circle City and then Fairbanks by foot and dogsled to carry news and arrange relief supplies. They left Icy Reef October 21 and reached Fairbanks November 15, covering an estimated distance of . Their route initially took them up the Kongakut River. They lost their compass in deep snow during a storm and thereafter navigated by topography alone, adding considerable distance to their planned route. They eventually crossed over the divide, reaching what they believed to be the head of the Salmon River. From there they went overland to Chandlar Lake, and thence to Fort Yukon and Circle by old trails. The final leg to Fairbanks used the Government winter mail trail.
"Karluk" rescue 1914.
In 1914 Hibbard-Swenson Company chartered the newly built motor schooner "King & Winge" to carry relief supplies to the "Belvedere" and complete the normal trading run. "King & Winge" became stuck in the ice near Point Barrow and bent her propeller. The ship was extricated by the revenue cutter "Bear" on August 22. They met the "Belvedere" at Point Barrow, delivered the supplies, took on some crewmen from the "Elvira", and subsequently put into at Nome August 30. "Bear" arrived the same day and reported that its attempt to rescue the crew of the "Karluk" from Wrangel Island off the northeast Siberian coast had been thwarted by bad weather, ice and low fuel. Stefansson's former secretary Burt McConnell then requested that "King & Winge" attempt a rescue; this request was reiterated by Captain Bartlett of the "Karluk". Swenson set out for Wrangel Island in the "King & Winge" with A.P. Jochimsen as Master. They stopped at East Cape, Siberia, and picked up an umiak and a party of natives to man it, in case they had to cross ice interspersed with open water. As they approached the beach in the umiak, the native crew was alarmed to see one of the "Karluk" survivors vigorously pumping a rifle, but Swenson reassured them in their language. They removed a total of twelve expedition survivors from two separate camps. The survivors included an Inupiaq couple and their two children. The survivors were later transferred to the "Bear".
The H.W. McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest gives a somewhat different account, with Swenson returning to Seattle and C.L. Hibbard on the "King & Winge" with Jochimsen. McCurdy's does not list sources; the origin of this account is unknown. It conflicts with both contemporary and later sources listed for the preceding paragraph.
North Cape to Irkutsk trek 1928-9.
In the fall of 1928, Swenson was frozen in off North Cape, Siberia (now Cape Schmidt) in the "M.S. Elisif". Impatient to get back to Seattle and hungry for adventure, Swenson decided on an overland trek to Irkutsk, which was served by the Trans-Siberian Railway.
The first stage employed dogsleds, leaving North Cape October 19, 1928. The route proceeded along the coast, cutting inland on either side of Chaunskaya Bay, to the Kolyma River. Then the party went up the river to Srednekolymsk, arriving December 4. They left Srednekolmysk cutting west overland on an old Government trail through flat, forested country dotted by lakes. They switched from dogsleds to reindeer sleds at a village he records as Solgutter.
Much of the ensuing leg of the trip employed an established relay network of reindeer teams and drivers. They crossed the Indigirka River at Zashiversk and then proceeded through Abbi (this is presumably Abyy but if so they seem to have taken a circuitous route) to reach Verkhoyansk January 6, 1929. Heading south for Yakutsk, they were asked to carry the mail; this improved their access to reindeer teams but involved traveling day and night. The route to Yakutsk went over Tukulan Pass with a spectacular, precipitous descent into the valley of the Aldan River. At the foot of the pass they switched to horse sleighs and proceeded to Yakutsk. They arrived in Yakutsk January 16. Swenson was held up in Yakutsk four days due to visa problems and then proceeded to Irkutsk, arriving February 9. A dispatch from Moscow to the "New York Times", datelined March 5, reports his trip. The entire trek amounted to over .
The "New York Times" dispatch also disclosed plans for airplane service between Alaska and the Siberian coast, for which Swenson had just secured permission from the Soviet government. These plans were soon realized when Noel Wien flew $150,000 in furs from the "Elisif" on March 8. Three further flights were planned but the Soviet government withdrew permission.
Eielson plane crash near North Cape.
The "Nanuk" was frozen in for the winter of 1929-30 at North Cape, with Swenson and his 17-year-old daughter Marion aboard. Swenson contracted with Alaskan Airways, headed by the noted arctic flyer and explorer Carl Ben Eielson, to fly out furs and crew members. After one successful round trip, Eielson was delayed by a search for a downed plane in Alaska. Resuming after the delay, Eielson and his mechanic Frank Borland flew into a fierce storm over the Siberian coast and crashed, flying into terrain with the throttle wide open. A faulty altimeter may have been a contributing factor. A major search ensued, using both aircraft (American, Canadian, and Soviet) and dogsleds. The fate of both the plane and the ship (with a high-school girl aboard) captured the public's imagination. "The New York Times" arranged for Marion Swenson to send regular dispatches on the progress of the search. The downed plane was found January 24, 1930, by Joe Crossan and Harold Gillam, and the first body was discovered February 13 by Soviet searchers from the ship "Stavropol", Mavriky Slepnyov, and Joe Crossan. Gillam arrived in the evening and identified Borland. Four days later the body of Eielson was found. Swenson and his daughter were flown out February 7 by T.M. (Pat) Reid. The "Nanuk" returned successfully to Nome and then Seattle, arriving in early August 1930.
Sled dogs.
Swenson is sometimes erroneously credited with introducing the Siberian Husky to the United States. He was an enthusiastic dogsledder who regularly used sled dogs in his work and made at least two long treks. He wrote about selecting dogs for enthusiasm and stamina and about the characteristics of a good lead dog. It is not clear whether Swenson's favorite lead dog Billkoff ever reached the United States. There were Siberian sled dogs in Alaska since 1908 and the early importers are known. Swenson imported Chukchi dogs for Leonhard Seppala in 1927 and for Seppala's collaborator Elizabeth (Peg) Ricker in 1930. These dogs are believed to have been the last Siberian sled dogs exported for many years. The Ricker dogs were used a working team by the crew of the "Nanuk" in 1929-30.
Death.
Swenson died August 23, 1938 (age 54) in Seattle of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The reports in the "New York Times" and the "Polar Times" mentioned the possibility of an accident while cleaning the newly purchased gun.
Writings.
Four short nonfiction pieces by Olaf Swenson in "Blue Book" magazine 1938-39 are listed in a web database.
"Northwest of the World" was published by Dodd Mead, New York, in 1944. An English edition with different pagination was published by Hale, London in 1951. A French edition was published under the title "Au Pays du Renard Blanc" in 1953 and 1957. There were also Swedish and Norwegian editions. The book has been cited by historians of Siberia and Alaska.