Magnus Giver collection

The collection contains correspondence by Giver to Henry Gore Booth regarding the British Exploring Expedition, 1881-1882 (leader Benjamin Leigh Smith) to the Russian Arctic (Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa)

Magnus K Giver was owner and captain of the Norwegian vessel Laura, which was charted by Max Fleischmann in 1906 to take a small group of friends and relatives on a United States hunting trip to Svalbard waters. The expedition sailed to Spitsbergen in June, making excursions in Isfjorden where they hunted for reindeer and birds. In July, they headed west toward Greenland, hunting for seals along the way, but thick ice impeded their progress. They continued hunting for seals and bears in that region until August, when they began their return to Norway. The following year, Giver's ship was chartered by Alfred Leverkus and a number of German friends on a German Norwegian sport-hunting expedition. Laura entered the ice of the Greenland Sea on 29 July 1907 and soon afterwards the passengers began hunting for seals and bears. In August, members of the expedition landed briefly on the east coast of Greenland at Sabine and Shannon. Later in the month, the ship entered dense pack ice and became beset, drifting off the coast of Liverpool Land before eventually breaking free in September. The expedition arrived in Troms in October.

The correspondence to Booth is arranged chronologically

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Descriptions compiled by N. Boneham, Assistant Archivist with assistance from R. Stancombe and reference to Arctic, exploration and development c500 BC to 1915, an encyclopaedia by Clive Holland, Garland Publishing, London (1994) ISBN number 0824076486 and Exploring Polar Frontiers, a historical encyclopaedia by William Mills, San Diego and Oxford, 2003

Clive Holland Manuscripts in the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, England - a catalogue, Garland Publishing New York and London (1982) ISBN 0824093941.

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