In April, 2015, one year after my first voyage In the Wake of Louise Arner Boyd, I again went to the Arctic to renew my search for evidence of Boyd’s explorations. I flew London- Oslo and then Oslo-Longyearbyen, Svalbard (formerly Spitzbergen). I knew Boyd had visited Spitzbergen (now Svalbard). She wrote:

After the disappointment of not finding the presence of Louise Arner Boyd in the Polar Museum, Tromsø (2014) where they specialise on Arctic explorers (male explorers only) I wondered whether I might find information about her presence here at the Norwegian Polar Institute, Longyearbyen, Svalbard. I knew that the University of Svalbard’s research was more specifically about climate mapping and environmental monitoring in the Arctic, however, I wondered if they would at least have evidence of Boyd’s amazing photographic images of glaciers and fiords that were now beginning to be used in climate research in America.

I asked if they had any information, or evidence of Louise Arner Boyd’s scientific research carried out on her voyages to the Arctic regions including Svalbard. They showed me how to access their Polar Archives and I typed in Boyd’s name – nothing. I typed in the ship she had sailed on ‘Veslekari’, again nothing. I wondered how this could be. No sign of the presence of Louise Arner Boyd. What does a woman have to do to be acknowledged in the important academic spaces of Arctic exploration.

Anne Lydiat, Norwegian Polar Institute, Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Photo: © Chris Wainwright, 2015

North Pole Expedition Museum, Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Photo: © Chris Wainwright, 2015

Finally on my last day I visited the North Pole Expedition Museum also in Longyerabyen, Svalbard and asked if they had heard of Louise Arner Boyd and whether they had any information about her polar voyages. The young woman at the desk said they did not have anything.  I walked around the museum and just as I was leaving I recognised photographs and text relating to Boyd’s flight over the North Pole in 1955.