All this time of course the purely scientific work was not neglected. In the first rank among these stood the meteorological and magnetical observations, which from the 1st November were made on land every hour. However fast the ice lay around the vessel it was impossible to get on it a sufficiently stable base for the magnetical variation instrument. The magnetical observatory was therefore erected on land of the finest building material any architect has had at his disposal, namely, large parallelopipeds of beautiful blue-coloured ice-blocks. The building was therefore called by the Chukches Tintinyaranga (the ice-house), a name which was soon adopted by the Vega men too. As mortar the builder, Palander, used snow mixed with water, and the whole was covered with a roof of boards. But as after a time it appeared that the storm made its way through the joints and that these were gradually growing larger in consequence of the evaporation of the ice so that the drifting snow could find an entrance, the whole house had a sail drawn over it. As supports of the three variation instruments large blocks of wood were used, whose lower ends were sunk in pits, which, with great trouble, were excavated in the frozen ground, and then, when the block supports were placed, were filled with sand mixed with water.
The ice-house was a spacious observatory, well-fitted for its purpose in every respect. It had but one defect, the temperature was always at an uncomfortably low point. As no iron could be used in the building, and we had no copper-stove with us, we could not have any fireplace there. We endeavoured, indeed, to use a copper fireplace, that had been intended for sledge journeys, for heating, but only with the result that the observatory was like to have gone to pieces. We succeeded little better when we discovered farther on in the winter, while trimming the hold, a forgotten cask of bear's oil. We considered this find a clear indication that instead of a stove fired with wood we should, according to the custom of the Polar races, use oil-lamps to mitigate the severe cold which deprived our stay in Tintinyaranga of part of its pleasure. But this mode of firing proved altogether impracticable. The fumes of the oil smelled worse than those of the charcoal, and the result of this experiment was none other than that the splendid crystals of ice, with which the roof and walls of the ice-house were gradually clothed, were covered with black soot. Firing with oil was abandoned, and the oil presented to our friends at Yinretlen, who just then were complaining loudly that they had no other fuel than wood.
Besides the nine scientific men and officers of the Vega, the engineer Nordström and the seaman Lundgren took part in the magnetical and meteorological observations. Every one had his watch of six hours, five of which were commonly passed in the ice-house. To walk from the vessel to the observatory, distant a kilometre and a half, with the temperature under the freezing point of mercury, or, what was much worse, during storm, with the temperature at -36°, remain in the observatory for five hours in a temperature of -17°, and then return to the vessel, commonly against the wind—for it came nearly always from the north or north-west—was dismal enough. None of us, however, suffered any harm from it. On the contrary, it struck me as if this compulsory interruption to our monotonous life on board and the long-continued stay in the open air had a refreshing influence both on body and soul.
In the neighbourhood of the ice-house the thermometer case was erected, and farther on in the winter there were built in the surrounding snowdrifts, two other observatories, not however of ice, but of snow, in the Greenland snow-building style. Our depôt of provisions was also placed in the neighbourhood, and at a sufficient distance from the magnetical observatory there was a large wooden chest, in which the Remington guns, which were carried for safety in excursions from the vessel, and other iron articles which the observer had with him, were placed before he entered the observatory.
The building of Tintinyaranga was followed by the Chukches with great interest. When they saw that we did not intend to live there, but that rare, glancing metal instruments were set up in it, and that a wonderfully abundant flood of light in comparison with their tent illumination was constantly maintained inside with a kind of light quite unknown to them (stearine candles and photogen lamps) a curious uneasiness began to prevail among them, which we could not quiet with the language of signs mixed with a Chukch word or two, to which our communications with the natives were at that time confined. Even farther on in the year, when an efficient though word-poor international language had gradually been formed between us, they made inquiries on this point, yet with considerable indifference. All sensible people among them had evidently already come to the conclusion that it was profitless trouble to seek a reasonable explanation of all the follies which the strange foreigners, richly provided with many earthly gifts but by no means with practical sense, perpetrated. In any case it was with a certain amazement and awe that they, when they exceptionally obtained permission, entered one by one through the doors in order to see the lamps burn and to peep into the tubes. Many times even a dog-team that had come a long way stopped for a few moments at the ice-house to satisfy the owner's curiosity, and on two occasions in very bad drifting weather we were compelled to give shelter to a wanderer who had gone astray.
When this ice-house was ready and hourly observations began in it, life on board took the stamp which it afterwards retained in the course of the winter. In order to give the reader an idea of our every-day life, I shall reproduce here the spirited sketch of a day on the Vega, which Dr. Kjellman gave in one of his home letters:—
"It is about half-past eight in the morning. He whose watch has expired has returned after five hours' stay in the ice-house, where the temperature during the night has been about -16°. His account of the weather is good enough. There are only thirty-two degrees of cold, it is half-clear, and, to be out of the ordinary, there is no wind. Breakfast is over. Cigars, cigarettes, and pipes are lighted, and the gunroom personnel go up on deck for a little exercise and fresh air, for below it is confined and close. The eye rests on the desolate, still faintly-lighted landscape, which is exactly the same as it was yesterday; a white plain in all directions, across which a low, likewise white, chain of hillocks or torosses here and there raises itself, and over which some ravens, with feeble wing-strokes, fly forward, searching for something to support life with. 'Metschinko Orpist,' 'metschinko Okerpist,' 'metschinko Kellman,' &c., now sounds everywhere on the vessel and from the ice in its neighbourhood. 'Orpist' represents Nordquist, 'Okerpist' again Stuxberg. It is the Chukches' morning salutation to us. To-day the comparatively fine weather has drawn out a larger crowd than usual, thirty to forty human beings, from tender sucking babes to grey old folks, men as well as women; the latter in the word of salutation replacing the tsch-sound with an exceedingly soft caressing ts-sound. That most of them have come driving is shown by the equipages standing in the neighbourhood of the vessel. They consist of small, low, narrow, light sledges, drawn by four to ten or twelve dogs. The sledges are made of small pieces of wood and bits of reindeer-horn, held together by sealskin straps. As runner-shoes thin plates of the ribs of the whale are used. The dogs, sharp-nosed, long-backed, and excessively dirty, have laid themselves to rest, curled together in the snow.
"The salutation is followed almost immediately to-day as on preceding days by some other words: 'Ouinga mouri kauka,' which may be translated thus: 'I am so hungry; I have no food; give me a little bread!' They suffer hunger now, the poor beings. Seal flesh, their main food, they cannot with the best will procure for the time. The only food they can get consists of fish (two kinds of cod), but this is quite too poor diet for them, they have fallen off since we first met with them,
"Soon we are all surrounded by our Chukch acquaintances. The daily market begins. They have various things to offer, which they know to be of value to us, as weapons, furs, ornaments, playthings, fish, bones of the whale, algæ, vegetables, &c. For all this only 'kauka' is now asked. To-day the supply of whales' bones is large, in consequence of our desire, expressed on previous days, to obtain them. One has come with two vertebræ, one with a rib or some fragments of it, one with a shoulder-blade. They are not shy in laying heavy loads on their dogs.