The Bitter Fruits of Victory

The Greenland Expedition 2018 was a journey in my grandfather Hans H. Engebrigtsen’s wake—retracing, in large part, the route sailed by him and his close friend Alf Sundt Jacobsen during the second world war. From mainland Norway to Svalbard, by Iceland to Greenland. This was our way of honoring them: by sailing in spirit of the freedom they gave their all to preserve.

My Grandfather Babba

My grandfather (whom we called “Babba”) loved sailing. He and his friends had a small wooden sailing boat, a Færdersnekke—docked in the beautiful archipelago where it was built, in Sandøsund, Færder. They entered her in local regattas. Rarely winning—but the share joys this little boat gave them was immense. Even in his final years, when he had to be carried aboard, he still insisted on sailing. I think it reminded him of flying—and of that epic row, in a tiny open boat around the southern tip of Greenland …

In late summer 1940, Babba and Alf made a bold decision: to head for Canada and join the Allied Air Force. They’d already fought as volunteers in the Winter War in Finland, and then again against the German occupation in Gjøvik and Hamar, Norway. In Oslo, they tried to rally resistance—but someone had snitched and as friends and comrades were arrested by the nazis, and their choices were grim: flee or take cover.

Training Camp in Canada

Some Norwegians had managed to reach “Little Norway,” the training camp in Canada for exiled pilots. But very few chose the long and brutal detour via Svalbard and Greenland—a refugee’s voyage filled with hardship. The first leg was over land. Still, the ten degrees of latitude separating Oslo and Tromsø was a rough patch as stowaways—and they were nearly caught enroute. When they finally made it over to Greenland, ropes tightened once again—they were mistaken for German spies! While they were being held, they watched the last mail steamer of the season sail away without them. They were left behind, with nothing but a small open rowboat—and a fierce will to survive!

Leaving home and family

Leaving home, family, and everything familiar—hoping one day to return “on wings”—must have been a hard decision to make, emotional in many ways. A flight, yes, but not an escape.

Babba later wrote about his wartime journey in The Bitter Fruits of Victory. The book received little critical acclaim when it was published in 1991—but for him, it was a final reckoning with the dark clouds of war. A soldier’s last attempt to make sense of it all.

Needless to say, The Bitter Fruits of Victory is required reading on our Greenland expeditions. 

From the book; The Bitter Fruits of Victory

Here are a few excerpts from their harrowing row around Cape Farewell:

The boat was barely seaworthy for such a long journey. We made two new oars and fitted a second pair of thole pins so we could row four-handed in rough weather. We rigged a mast and stitched sails from old coal sacks—enough for fair-weather sailing.

At dawn on September 11th, everything was ready, the ice was shattered in small floes throughout the bay. As the wind freshened, we hoisted our square sail, set a steering oar astern, and aimed for the headland across the fjord. The wind veered head-on and built to a gale, the seas started chopping up. Then the icebergs began to drift—the massive blue giants that we had only heard stories of, thirty or forty meters high—bearing right down on us. 

We chanted to pace the rowing toward the icebergs—there was nothing for it but to haste through. Our strength faded, but just as we approached one of the towering icebergs, we found shelter in the lee under one of its cliffs. Then, it was as if the next iceberg slowed to let us pass.

We rowed what we could with whatever energy we had left—and as we finally made our way to a tiny ledge of rock on the headlands, we barely managed to throw our supplies ashore. We stumbled ashore ourselves and just as we exhaustingly had hauled the boat—a massive ice floe slammed onto the rock below.

After some time, we saw a faint light above. Alf signaled SOS with his flashlight—three short, three long, three short—again and again. The light faded, then vanished. We looked at each other and understood that we’d been hallucinating—that the icebergs had scared the wits out of us.

In memory of Hans H. Engebrigtsen,

Emil Engebrigtsen, 
Founder, SeilNorge

Expeditions to Greenland Summer 2025