Part 1 - The Author's Foreword
I fear the seemingly incredible story which I am about to relate will be
regarded as the result of a distorted intellect superinduced, possibly, by
the glamour of unveiling a marvelous mystery, rather than a truthful
record of the unparalleled experiences related by one Olaf Jansen, whose
eloquent madness so appealed to my imagination that all thought of an
analytical criticism has been effectually dispelled. Marco Polo will
doubtless shift uneasily in his grave at the strange story I am called
upon to chronicle; a story as strange as a Munchausen tale. It is also
incongruous that I, a disbeliever, should be the one to edit the story of
Olaf Jansen, whose name is now for the first time given to the world, yet
who must hereafter rank as one of the notables of earth. I freely confess
his statements admit of no rational analysis, but have to do with the
profound mystery concerning the frozen North that for centuries has
claimed the attention of scientists and laymen alike. However much they
are at variance with the cosmographical manuscripts of the past, these
plain statements may be relied upon as a record of the things Olaf Jansen
claims to have seen with his own eyes. A hundred times I have asked myself
whether it is possible that the world's geography is incomplete, and that
the startling narrative of Olaf Jansen is predicated upon demonstrable
facts. The reader may be able to answer these queries to his own
satisfaction, however far the chronicler of this narrative may be from
having reached a conviction. Yet sometimes even I am at a loss to know
whether I have been led away from an abstract truth by the ignes fatui of
a clever superstition, or whether heretofore accepted facts are, after
all, founded upon falsity. It may be that the true home of Apollo was not
at Delphi, but in that older earth-center of which Plato speaks, where he
says: "Apollo's real home is among the Hyperboreans, in a land of
perpetual life, where mythology tells us two doves flying from the two
opposite ends of the world met in this fair region, the home of Apollo.
Indeed, according to Hecataeus, Leto, the mother of Apollo, was born on an
island in the Arctic Ocean far beyond the North Wind." It is not my
intention to attempt a discussion of the theogony of the deities nor the
cosmogony of the world. My simple duty is to enlighten the world
concerning a heretofore unknown portion of the universe, as it was seen
and described by the old Norseman, Olaf Jansen. Interest in northern
research is international. Eleven nations are engaged in, or have
contributed to, the perilous work of trying to solve Earth's one remaining
cosmological mystery. There is a saying, ancient as the hills, that "truth
is stranger than fiction," and in a most startling manner has this axiom
been brought home to me within the last fortnight. It was just two o'clock
in the morning when I was aroused from a restful sleep by the vigorous
ringing of my door-bell. The untimely disturber proved to be a messenger
bearing a note, scrawled almost to the point of illegibility, from an old
Norseman by the name of Olaf Jansen. After much deciphering, I made out
the writing, which simply said: "Am ill unto death. Come." The call was
imperative, and I lost no time in making ready to comply. Perhaps I may as
well explain here that Olaf Jansen, a man who quite recently celebrated
his ninety-fifth birthday, has for the last half-dozen years been living
alone in an unpretentious bungalow out Greendale way, a short distance
from the business district of Los Angeles, California. It was less then
two years ago, while out walking one afternoon, that I was attracted by
Olaf Jansen's house and it's homelike surroundings, toward its owner and
occupant, whom I afterward came to know as a believer in the ancient
worship of Odin and Thor. There was a gentleness in his face, and a kindly
expression in the keenly alert grey eyes of this man who had lived more
than four-score years and ten; and, withal, a sense of loneliness that
appealed to my sympathy. Slightly stooped, and with his hands clasped
behind him, he walked back and forth with slow and measured tread, that
day when first we met. I can hardly say what particular motive impelled me
to pause in my walk and engage him in conversation. He seemed pleased when
I complimented him on the attractiveness of his bungalow, and on the
well-tended vines and flowers clustering in profusion over its windows,
roof and wide piazza. I soon discovered that my new acquaintance was no
ordinary person, but one profound and learned to a remarkable degree; a
man who, in the later years of his long life, had dug deeply into books
and become strong in the power of meditative silence. I encouraged him to
talk, and soon gathered that he had resided only six or seven years in
Southern California, but had passed the dozen years prior in one of the
middle Eastern states. Before that he had been a fisherman off the coast
of Norway, in the region of the Lofoden Islands, from whence he had made
trips still farther north to Spitzbergen and even to Franz Josef Land.
When I started to make my leave, he seemed reluctant to have me go, and
asked me to come again. Although at the time I thought nothing of it, I
remember now that he made a peculiar remark as I extended my hand in
leave-taking. "You will come again?" he asked. "Yes, you will come again
some day. I am sure you will; and I shall show you my library and tell you
many things of which you have never dreamed, things so wonderful that it
may be you will not believe me." I laughingly assured him that I would not
only come again, but would be ready to believe whatever he might choose to
tell me of his travels and adventures. In the days that followed I became
well acquainted with Olaf Jansen, and, little by little, he told me his
story, so marvelous, that its very daring challenges reason and belief.
The old Norseman always expressed himself with so much earnestness and
sincerity that I became enthralled by his strange narrations. Then came
the messengers's call that night, and within the hour I was at Olaf Junsen
bungalow. He was very impatient at the long wait, although after being
summoned I had come immediately to his bedside. "I must husten", he
exclaimed, while yet he held my hand in greeting. "I have much to tell you
that you know not, and I will trust no one but you. I fully realize," he
went on hurriedly, "that I shall not survive the night. The time has come
to join my fathers in the great sleep." I adjusted the pillows to make him
more comfortable, and assured him I was glad to be able to serve him in
any way possible, for I was begining to realize the seriousness of his
condition. The lateness of the hour, the stillness of the surroundings,
the uncanny feeling of being alone with the dying man, together with his
weird story, all combined to make my heart beat fast and loud with a
feeling for which I have no name. Indeed, there were many times that night
by the old Norseman's couch, and there have been many times since, when a
sensation rather than a conviction took posession of my very soul, and I
seemed not only to believe in, but actually see, the strange lands, the
strange people and the strange world of which he told, and to hear the
mighty orchestral chorus of a thousand lusty voices. For over two hours he
seemed endowed with almost superhuman strength, talking rapidly, and to
all appearances, rationally. Finally he gave me into my hands certain
data, drawings and crude maps. "These," said he in conclusion, "I leave in
your hands. If I can have your promise to give them to the world, I shall
die happy, because I desire that people may know the truth, for then all
mystery concerning the frozen Northland will be explained. There is no
chance of your suffering the fate I suffered. They will not put you in
irons, nor confine you in a mad-house, because you are not telling your
own story, but mine, and I, thanks to the gods, Odin and Thor, will be in
my grave, and so beyond the reach of disbelievers who would persecute."
Without a thought of the far-reaching results the promise entailed, or
foreseeing the many sleepless nights which the obligation has since
brought me, I gave my hand and with it a pledge to discharge faithfully
his dying wish. As the sun rose over the peaks of the San Jacinto, far to
the eastward, the spirit of Olaf Jansen, the navigator, the explorer and
worshiper of Odin and Thor, the man whose experiences and travels, as
related, are without a parallel in the world's history, passed away, and I
was left alone with the dead. And now, after having paid the last sad
rites to this strange man from the Lofoden Islands, and the still farther
"Northward Ho!", the courageous explorer of frozen regions, who in his
declining years (after he had passed the four-score mark) had sought an
asylum of restful peace in sunfavored California, I will undertake to make
public his story. But, first of all, let me indulge in one or two
reflections: Generation follows generation, and the traditions from the
misty past are handed down from sire to son, but for some strange reason
interest in the ice-locked unknown does not abate with the receding years,
either in the minds of the ignorant or the tutored. With each new
generation a restless impulse stirs the hearts of men to capture the
veiled citadel of the Arctic, the circle of silence, the land of glaciers,
cold wastes of waters and winds that are strangely warm. Increasing
interest is manifested in mountainous icebergs, and marvelous speculations
are indulged in concerning the earth's center of gravity, the cradle of
the tides, where the whales have their nurseries, where the magnetic
neddle goes mad, where the Aurora Borealis illumines the night, and where
brave and courageous spirits of every generation dare to venture and
explore, defying the dangers of the "Farthest North." One of the ablest
works of recent years is "Paradise Found, or the Cradle of The Human Race
at the North Pole," by William F. Warren. In his carefully prepared
volume, Mr. Warren almost stubbed his toe against the real truth, but
missed it seemingly by only a hair's breadth, if the old Norseman's
revelation be true. Dr. Orville Livingston Leech, scientist, in a recent
article, says: "The possibilities of land inside the earth were first
brought to my attention when I picked up a geode on the shores of the
Great Lakes. The geode is a spherical and apparently solid stone, but when
broken is found to be hollow and coated with crystals. The earth is only a
large form of geode, and the law that created the geode in its hollow form
undoubtedly fashioned the earth in the same way." In presenting the theme
of this almost incredible story, as told by Olaf Jansen, and supplemented
by manuscript, maps and crude drawings entrusted to me, a fitting
introduction is found in the following qoutation: "In the beginnig God
created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and
void." And also, "God created man in his own image." Therefore, even in
things material, man must be God-like, because he is in the likeness of
the Father. A man builds a house for himself and family. The porches or
verandas are all without, and are secondary. The building is really
constructed for conveniences within. Olaf Jansen makes the startling
announcement through me, an humble instrument, that in like manner, God
created the earth for the "within" - that is to say, for its lands, seas,
rivers, mountains, forests and valleys, and for its other internal
conveniences, while the outside surface of the earth is merely the
veranda, the porch, where things grow by comparison but sparsely, like the
lichen on the mountain side, clinging determinedly for bare existance.
Take an egg-shell, and from each end break out a piece as large as the end
of this pencil. Extract its contents, and then you will have a perfect
representation of Olaf Jansen's earth. The distance from the inside
surface to the outside surface, according to him, is about three hundred
miles. The center of gravity is not in the center of the earth, but in the
center of the shell or crust; therefore, if the thickness of the earth's
crust or shell is three hundred miles, the center of gravity is one
hundred and fifty miles below the surface. In their log-books Arctic
explorers tell us of the dipping of the needle as the vessel sails in
regios of the farthest north known. In reality, they are at the curve; on
the edge of the shell, where gravity is geometrically increased, and while
the electric current seemingly dashes off into space toward the phantom
idea of the North Pole, yet this same electric current drops again and
continues its course southward along the inside surface of the earth's
crust. In the appendix to his work, Captain Sabine gives an account of
experiments to determine the acceleration of the pendulum in different
latitudes. This appears to have resulted from the joint labor of Peary and
Sabine. He sais: "The accidental discovery that a pendulum on being
removed from Paris to the neighborhood of the equator increased its time
of vibration, gave the first step to our present knowledge that the polar
axis of the globe is less than equatorial; that the force of gravity at
the surface of the earth increases progressively from the equator toward
the poles." According to Olaf Jansen, in the beginning this old world of
ours was created solely for the "within" world, where are located the four
great rivers - the Euphrates, the Pison, the Gihon and the Hiddekel. These
same names of rivers, when applied to streams on the "outside" surface of
the earth, are purely traditional from an antiquity beyond the memory of
man. On the top of a high mountain, near the fountain-head of this four
rivers, Olaf Jansen, the Norseman, claims to have discovered the long-lost
"Garden of Eden," the veritable navel of the earth, and to have spent over
two years studying and reconnoitering in this marvelous "within" land,
exuberant with stupendous plant life and abounding in giant animals; a
land where the people live to be centuries old, after the order of
Methuselah and other Biblical characters; a region where one-quarter of
the "inner" surface is water and three-quarters land; where there are
large oceans and many rivers and lakes; where modes of transportation are
as far in advance of ours as we with our boasted achievements are in
advance of the inhabitants of "darkest Africa." The distance directly
across the space from inner surface to inner surface is about six hundred
miles less then the recognized diameter of the earth. In the identical
center of this vast vacuum is the seat of electricity - a mammoth ball of
dull red fire - not startlingly brilliant, but surrounded by a white,
mild, luminous cloud, giving out uniform warmth, and held in its place in
the center of this internal space by the immutable law of gravitation.
This electrical cloud is known to the people "within" as the abode of "The
Smoky God." They believe it to be the throne of "The Most High." Olaf
Jansen reminded me of how, in the old college days, we were all familiar
with the labaratory demonstrations of centrifugal motion, which clearly
proved that, if the earth was a solid, the rapidity of its revolution upon
its axis would tear it into a thousand fragments. The old Norseman also
maintained that from the farthest points of land on the islands of
Spitzbergen and Franz Josef Land, flocks of geese may be seen annually
flying still farther northward, just as the sailors and explorers record
in their log-books. No scientist has yet been audacious enough to attempt
to explain, even to his own satisfaction, toward what lands these winged
fowls are guided by their subtle instinct. However, Olaf Jansen has given
us a most reasonable explanation. The presence of the open sea in the
Northland is also explaind. Olaf Jansen claims that the northern aperture,
intake or hole, so to speak, is about fourteen hundred miles across. In
connection with this, let us read what Explorer Nansen writes, on page 288
of his book: "I have never had such a splendid sail. On to the north,
steadily north, with a good wind, as fast as stream and sail can take us,
an open sea mile after mile, watch after watch, through these unknown
regions, always clearer and clearer of ice, one might almost say: 'How
long will it last?' The eye always turns to the northward as one paces the
bridge. It is gazing into the future. But there is always the same dark
sky ahead which means open sea." Again, the Norwood Review of England, in
its issue of May 10, 1884, says: "We do not admit that there is ice up to
the Pole - once inside the great ice barrier, a new world breaks upon the
explorer, the climat is mild like that of England, and, afterward, balmy
as the Greek Isles." Some of the rivers "within," Olaf Jansen claims, are
large then our Mississippi and Amazon rivers combined, in point of volume
of water carried; indeed their greatness is occasioned by their width and
depth rather than their length, and it is at the mouths of these mighty
rivers, as they flow northward and southward along the inside surface of
the earth, that mammoth icebergs are found, some of them fifteen and
twenty miles wide and from forty to one hundred miles in length. Is it not
strange that there has never been an iceberg encountered either in the
Arctice or Antarctic Ocean that is not composed of fresh water? Modern
scientists claim that freezing eliminates the salt, but Olaf Jansen claims
differently. Ancient Hindoo, Japanese and Chinese writings, as well as
hieroglyphics of the extinct races of the North American continent, all
speak of the custom of sun- worshiping, and it is possible, in the
startling light of Olaf Jansen's revelations, that the people of the inner
world, lured away by glimpses of the sun as it shone upon the inner
surface of the earth, either from the northern or the southern opening,
became dissatisfied with "The Smoky God," the great pillar or mother cloud
of electricity, and, weary of their continuously mild and pleasant
atmosphere, followed the brighter light, and were finally led beyond the
ice belt and scattered over the "outer" surface of the earth, through
Asia, Europe, North America and, later, Africa, Australia and South
America. The following quotation is significant; "It follows that man
issuing from a mother-region still undertermined but which a number of
considerations indicate to have been in the North, has radiated in several
directions; that his migrations have been constantly from North to South."
- M. le Marquis G. de Saporta, in Popular Science Montly, October, 1883,
page 753. It is a notable fact that, as we approach the Equator, the
stature of the human race grows less. But the Patagonians of the South
America are probably the only aborigines from the center of the earth who
came out through the aperture usually designated as the South Pole, and
they are called the giant race. Olaf Jansen avers that, in the beginning,
the world was created by the Great Architect of the Universe, so that man
might dwell upon its "inside" surface, which has ever since beeb the
habitation of the "chosen." They who were driven out of the "Garden of
Eden" brought their traditional history with them. The history of the
people living "within" contains a narrative suggesting the story of Noah
and the ark with which we are familiar. He sailed away, as did Columbus,
from a certain port, to a strange land he had heard of far to the
northward, carrying with him all manner of beasts of the fields and fowls
of the air, but was never heard of afterward. On the northern boundaries
of Alaska, and still more frequently on Siberian coast, are found
bone-yards containing tusks of ivory in quantities so great as to suggest
the burying-places of antiquity, From Olaf Jansen's account, they have
come from the great prolific animal life that abounds in the fields and
forests and on the banks of numerous rivers of the Inner World. The
materials were caught in the ocean currents, or carried on ice-floes, and
have accumulated like driftwood on the Siberian coast. This has been going
on for ages, and hence these mysterious bone-yards. On this subject
William F. Warren, in his book already cited, pages 297 and 298, says:
"The Arctic rocks tell of a lost Atlantis more wonderful than Plato's. The
fossil ivory beds of Siberia excel everything of the kind in the world.
From the days of Pliny, at least, they have constantly been undergoing
exploitation, and still they are the chief headquarters of supply. The
remains of mammoths are so abundant that, as Gratacap says, 'the northern
islands of Siberia seem built up of crowded bones.' Another scientific
writer, speaking of the islands of New Siberia, northward of the mouth of
the River Lena, uses this language: 'Large quantities of ivory are dug out
of the ground every year. Indeed, some of the islands are believed to be
nothing but an accumulation of drift-timber and the bodies of mammoths and
other antediluvian animals frozen together.' From this we may infer that,
during the years that have elapsed since the Russian conquest of Siberia,
useful tusks from more than twenty thousand mammoths have been collected."
But now for the story of Olaf Jansen. I give it in detail, as set down by
himself in manuscript, and woven into the tale, just as he placed them are
certain quotations from recent works on Arctic exploration, showing how
carefully the old Norseman compared with his own experiences those of
other voyagers to the frozen North. Thus wrote the disciple of Odin and
Thor: