Thomas Vilhelm Garde
Danish naval officer and explorer (1859-1926)
Thomas Vilhelm Garde (22 October 1859 – 24 June 1926) was a Danish naval officer, distinguished for his explorations in Greenland.
Garde became a sub-lieutenant of the Danish Navy in 1880, rising to the rank of First lieutenant in 1881, captain in 1898, Commander in 1908 and Rear Admiral in 1918. He retired from active service in 1921.
Explorations
Garde was junior leader of the Umiak Expedition of 1883-85 led by Gustav Holm. They thoroughly explored the coast of southeast Greenland, by journeys from Cape Farewell using umiak boats. Garde explored Lindenow Fjord (62° 15' N), where have been found the Scandinavian ruins on the east coast. Wintering at Nanortalik, he discovered between there and Cape Farewell 200 live glaciers, of which 70 had a sea face more than a mile (1.61 km) wide. During his 1893 surveys of the Julianehaab district in the southwest of Greenland, he made a long journey over the Greenland ice cap, which proved to be of unsuspected height. In his trip of 13 days he traveled 180 miles (290 km) across the ice and reached an elevation of more than 8000 feet (2438 m). He was awarded the Roquette medal by the Société de Géographie of Paris.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas Vilhelm Garde” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.