Olaf Swenson ( December 16, 1883 – August 23, 1938) was a Seattle-based fur trader and adventurer active in Siberia and Alaska in the first third of the 20th century. His career intersected with activities of notable explorers of the period, and with the Russian Civil War. He is credited with leading the rescue of the Karluk survivors from Wrangel Island in 1914. According to historian Thomas C. Owen, Swenson's "practicality and zest for adventure made him an ideal entrepreneur on the arctic frontier..."Owen
Born and raised in Michigan, Swenson first reached the far north as a Nome prospector in 1901. The next year he signed on for a prospecting venture in Siberia, spending two summers and one winter on the Chukchi Peninsula. He returned to Siberia in 1905, this time with his wife and their infant son. His introduction to trading came when their ship was wrecked and he contracted to salvage cargo on a share basis. He continued to trade at Anadyr until 1911. In 1913, Swenson and C.L. Hibbard of Seattle formed the Hibbard-Swenson Company which operated trading schooners and steamers on the Siberian coast, buying furs and ivory and trading a variety of general merchandise until 1921. Swenson continued this business as Olaf Swenson & Co. until 1923 when the Bolshevik victory led to seizure of his business. Two years of negotiations led to a contract with the Soviet government to supply goods on a cost-plus basis and buy furs. This arrangement persisted through 1930. The difficulties of getting furs and personnel out of the Siberian Arctic led to the first commercial flights across the Bering Strait. The fourth such flight crashed in a Siberian winter storm, killing aviation pioneer Carl Ben Eielson and his mechanic in 1929. Swenson's memoir Northwest of the World contains observations on commerce, conditions, and native life in northeast Siberia and won critical praise for its direct style and vivid description.
Early life Olaf Swenson was born in Manistee, Michigan, the second son of Nils and Amelia (née Peterson or Petersen) Swenson. Nils was a Swedish emigrant and at that time a prosperous hotel and saloon keeper. Amelia died in childbirth when Olaf was six years old, and the baby died shortly afterward. Another sister died accidentally in childhood. Nils never remarried, and the two boys were raised in the home of their grandparents, Ole and Sophie Petersen.Swenson pp 1-2,4,241; Washington Digital Archives a.
Prospecting for gold in Alaska and Siberia Nils and Olaf went to Nome, Alaska, in 1901 to prospect for gold. Finding little success, they signed on to help work a claim on shares. This was a paying proposition but nobody got rich, and Olaf and his father returned to Seattle for the winter. The next spring they returned to Nome and signed on for a prospecting expedition to the Chukchi Peninsula of northeastern Siberia sponsored by the Northeastern Siberian Company, Limited. They spent two summers and one winter in Siberia, mostly on the Arctic coast, but found no exploitable gold and returned to Seattle in the fall of 1903. Returning Northeastern Siberian Company prospectors reported promising signs including colors in every stream panned and graphite deposits. Some still thought exploitable placer gold would eventually be found. However, the Deseret News quoted Nels [sic] and Olaf Swenson as expecting that the wealth would come from [gold-bearing] quartz deposits.Swenson pp 6-12; New York Times July 28, 1902, October 30, 1903; Deseret News, Oct 29, 1903
Family
After returning from Siberia, Swenson worked in Seattle for American Biscuit Company for a year and a half.Swenson p 13 In May 1904 he married Emma Charlotte Johnson in Seattle. Charlotte, as she preferred to be known, had immigrated from Sweden in 1903.Washington Digital Archives a, c They had at least one son and two daughters. Their son died in Nome in 1910 of diphtheria contracted on board ship from Seattle.Swenson p 127 Their daughter Marion was born about 1912 and Marjorie (sometimes spelled Marguery or Margery) about 1918.Swenson pp 255-259; Census Seattle 1930, Washington Digital Archives b; Associated Press; New York Times, March 9, 1930
Trading in the Anadyr region of Siberia In 1905, Swenson set out on another prospecting expedition for the Northeastern Siberian Company, this time bringing along his wife and their six-month-old son. In Hanford's account, Swenson was the organizer and by implication the leader of this expedition. Their ship, the gasoline schooner Barbara Hernster, struck a reef near Providence Bay, Siberia, July 28, 1905, and the family reached shore by boat through heavy surf. The ship was subsequently refloated and beached, and Swenson contracted to salvage the cargo in exchange for a share. Subsequently the group and their cargo were picked up and transported to Anadyr, where Swenson set up a trading station selling the salvaged supplies. These found a ready market, since the Russo-Japanese War had disrupted normal supply channels.Crow et al.; Hanford; Bureau of Navigation; Swenson pp 13-17
Swenson is sometimes credited with the first discovery of gold in northeastern Siberia; he credits a group of prospectors headed by Luke Nadeau, part of the same expedition he was on. Swenson was dispatched to Nome with $8,000 worth of gold in 1906. His family went with him. Swenson returned to Anadyr with more trade goods while Charlotte and their son returned "to civilization".Hanford; Lofgren; Swenson pp 17-18
Swenson's trading station of this period is described as lying on St. Nicholas Bay (not named on modern maps), from Russian Spit (Russkaya Koshka, the northern spit delimiting the outer Anadyr estuary) and from mountains. Since there are no mountains sufficiently close on the south side of the estuary and no nearby bays north of the estuary, this puts the likely location on the northern mainland shore of the estuary.Swenson pp 74-76, 86 Swenson (though he does not explicitly say so) was trading under the Northeastern Siberian Company concession.Hunt 1975 pp 262-264, Crow In 1908 the steamer Corwin landed freight and miners at the Northeastern Siberian Company's trading station on the north shore of Anadyr Bay; the current from the river was strong at this location.West p 136.
Swenson traveled by dogsled at least as far as Cape Navarin and Korfa Bay to trade.Swenson p 23 Trade goods were packed in parcels of roughly uniform value, sized to fit on Chukchi sleds. Swenson also brought some American-style retail practices including premiums and credit sales. The credit extended to trappers could take the form of both operating supplies and household goods against next year's fur harvest or a later delivery. Swenson spent alternate winters in Anadyr through 1910-1911.Swenson pp 27-28, 77-78, 90-91
1910 was a year of transition for the Northeastern Siberian Company. The Russian government declined to renew its concession, its president resigned, and it was absorbed by a Russian-French partnership. Swenson went into a Montana cattle ranching venture with his father in 1911, but the venture did not last long; Olaf did not like ranching much, and when his father died in 1912 he sold the ranch. Swenson made a short trading voyage to the Siberian coast in a chartered schooner in 1911 and a longer trip in 1912 in the motor schooner Polar Bear. This second voyage was a partnership with the Hibbard-Stewart company of Seattle and Captain L.L. Lane.Swenson pp 90-91
Business of the Hibbard-Swenson and Olaf Swenson companies
Hibbard-Swenson Company
This partnership was formed in 1913 with the purchase of the steam bark Belvedere (formerly an arctic whaler) and lasted through 1921. It eventually expanded to include multiple ships trading from the Sea of Okhotsk to the north coast of Siberia.Swenson pp 91,163
Operations The Hibbard-Swenson company bought furs, whalebone, and walrus and mammoth ivory for cash as well as barter; furs included squirrel, ermine, sable, red fox, white fox, cross fox, wolf, wolverine, deer, hair seal, brown bear, and polar bear. The pattern of the trade was to spend the winter purchasing and packaging trade goods. April through August was spent picking up furs on the Siberian coast. The fall included walrus hunting and sometimes whaling, and miscellaneous shipping with stops in Alaska and Siberia. Turnover was about $1 million per year in the early 1920s.Swenson p 91New York Times March 13, 1916; Fur Trade Review
Operations in Kamchatka are described by Sten Bergman, who was in Kamchatka 1920-1922: "Klutchi....is the seat of the Kamchatkan fur trade, and several fur-trading firms have their depots here. The biggest of them are the Hudson's Bay Company and the Olaf Swenson Company — the latter is the concern of a Swedish American of that name. His name is known and esteemed in every dwelling throughout the entire peninsula. Every spring Swenson comes over from Seattle with his steamer, which is laden with everything imaginable that Kamchatka can stand in need of."Bergman
Swenson described financing local agents prior to the Bolshevik victory: "It had been our custom to pick out a local spot, put a good man in charge there, and finance him against the business he would do for us, letting him operate in his own name and extend credit according to his own judgment."Swenson p 165 According to a Soviet source, Swenson had 16 personal agents and provided financing to an additional 14 independent traders, with a total annual turnover in excess of $1 million.Letter of E.A. Minkin, head of the Commission of Concessions, quoted by Crow et al.
In the period before the Bolshevik victory, trade goods included "foodstuffs, canned milk, canned fruit, clothing of every kind (including frilly things for women), hardware of all kinds, toys for children, a great many luxuries which many of them had never known before." Trade goods mentioned at other locations in Swenson's narrative include flour, wieners (in barrels), oranges, sugar, tea, tobacco, pilot bread, eggs, calico, dishes, needles, thread, knives, pots, pans, chamber pots, firearms and ammunition, motor launches, gasoline, kerosene, Mackinaws and other waterproof clothing, boots, caps, heavy woolen clothing, and corduroy breeches with lacings on the legs. Customers included Russians as well as natives.Swenson pp 162-163 and various locations Alcohol is not mentioned in his lists of trade goods.
Impact of the Russian Revolution and civil war In June 1920, The New York Times reported that Bolshevik partisans had attacked, seized, and looted the Anadyr post of the Hibbard-Swenson Company the preceding January. The leader of the Anadyr Bolsheviks was misidentified as a Seattle seaman named Mikoff, possibly a confusion of the Bolshevik leader Montikoff and a German-American seaman Walter Ahrns who was also involved. According to a report collected in 1922 by Lieutenant John Marie Creighton, USN, from Swenson's local manager John Lampe, the store was seized but not looted and was eventually reclaimed, though not before Lampe found it necessary to flee temporarily. Lampe also managed to maintain a position of neutrality between the first Revcom headed by Montickoff and the group of traders who violently deposed it. (For a synopsis of events as reported by Soviet sources, see P. Gray.)New York Times June 22, 1920, Gay, P. Gray