From Tierra del Fuego

English Edition / Narratives from the first Swedish Expedition to the Magellan Territories.

On 6th December 1895, on the day of his 26th birthday, a young Swede, recently graduated with a doctorate in mineralogy and geology, arrived on the east coast of Tierra del Fuego. The Argentinian ship Uruguay le  him on a desolate and remote coast, along with 100 boxes of provisions, two Swedish companions - a zoologist and a biologist, and a team of gauchos from the north. And so, began the journey of this curious and adventurous young explorer.

The young man's name was Otto Nordenskjöld and over two seasons he explored, discovered and investigated Tierra del Fuego and Southern Patagonia, deciphering the geological stratification as well as the social one, between the world of the original peoples, then in decline, and that of the emergent world of the colonizers.

This is the first english translation of the book Från Eldslandet originally published in 1898 in a single edition and with few copies. Despite being more than 125 years old, the book provides new pieces to the puzzle we call history and provides an excellent contemporary read, recounting events, landscapes and people during a key moment in the history of Patagonia.

In this edition material has been added that provides context and value to the original; a timeline, descriptions of explorers and Patagonian tribes as well as a prologue by the historian Alberto Harambour Ross who gives us a historical introduction about the situation of the territory during the time of Nordenskjöld’s expeditions.