Hallvard Devold

Hallvard Devold was a Norwegian Arctic explorer, trapper and meteorologist. He was instrumental in the attempt to establish Eric the Red's Land in 1931. His brother Finn Devold shared his vision and helped to establish a Norwegian station at Finnsbu, SE Greenland. Hallvard graduated from the University of Oslo in 1920. He worked as a meteorological assistant at the Haldde Observatory in Alta until 1922. He went for the first time to the Arctic in the summer of 1922 as a coal mining technician in Svalbard. On the following winter he took a radio telegraphy course, and in the spring of 1923 he was hired as a meteorology assistant and radio telegraphist at the Kvadehuken station in Brøggerhalvøya by the director of the Geophysical Institute, along with his brother Finn Devold. Hallvard Devold remained on Kvadehuken until October 1924, when the station was wrapped up for financial reasons. Between 1925 and 1926 Hallvard was the head of the Norwegian radio and weather station at Jan Mayen, which was manned by three Norwegians, not including him. The island was considered no man's land at the time and the League of Nations had given Norway jurisdiction over the island. Hallvard decided to call for its annexation on behalf of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. He placed several signs around the island which read: "Property of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute". By this action the foundation was laid for the acknowledgment of Norway's right to the island of Jan Mayen in 1928. The island came under the sovereignty of Norway by royal decree of 8 May 1929 and finally became officially part of the Norwegian Kingdom on 27 February 1930. Together with geologist Adolf Hoel and jurist Gustav Smedal, Hallvard became one of the main leaders of the "Greenland case" that tried to bring large swathes of East Greenland under Norwegian sovereignty. With Hallvard's inspiration, based on his experiences in Svalbard and Jan Mayen, the movement began to build a network of Norwegian trapping stations, combined with surveys and explorations of the almost uninhabited area. By 1929 the Norges Svalbard og Ishavsundersøkelser (NSIU) —"Norwegian Svalbard and Arctic Ocean Survey", established by Hoel in 1928, sent well-organized research expeditions to East Greenland. Expedition vessels also supplied the trapping stations with equipment financed by the Arctic Trading Co. (Arktisk Næringsdrift), a company that Hallvard had helped to set up and was the CEO of. In 1931, Hallvard led an expedition to Myggbukta, where he raised the Norwegian flag and declared the area as Eric the Red's Land, a Norwegian territory. This action sparked a diplomatic dispute with Denmark, which claimed sovereignty over the whole of Greenland. The case was brought to the Permanent Court of International Justice, which ruled in favor of Denmark in 1933. Hallvard died of a heart attack in 1957 at the age of 58. He was buried in Karmøy, where he had lived since 1946. He was awarded the King's Medal of Merit in gold for his contributions to Norwegian polar exploration.