By: Christine- Smith-Simonsen and Ellen Kathrine Bludd // UiT – The Arctic University of Norway
Musher Leonhard Seppala posing with six of his sled dogs, circa 1924 – 1925. Dogs from left to right: Togo, Karinsky, Jafet, Pete, unknown, Fritz.
Photo: Carrie McLain Memorial Museum/AlaskaStock/Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication
At Christmas 1899, the Kven Jafet Lindeberg rowed a boat around the fjord of Kvænangen in northern Norway showing off gold nuggets from Alaska and offering glasses of madeira. His mission: to find trustworthy people from his own community to work in his goldmine in Nome.
Jafet had accompanied a shipment of reindeer from Alta to Alaska in February 1898. Once there, he joined the gold rush. He was one of the lucky ones, and together with two Swedes, he established the Pioneer Mining Company and founded the gold rush town of Nome.
The following Christmas, Jafet managed to recruit several men from his home community to Nome—including the Kven Leonhard Seppala (1877–1967) from Skjervøy.
Leonhard never found much gold, and his first few years in Nome were a struggle. However, he did find Constance, whom he married in 1908.
In 1914, life took a new turn for Leonard.
Roald Amundsen was planning a new expedition with Fram, via Nome, and Jafet Lindeberg was asked to provide dogs and equipment for the journey. Only the best would do, and that included a team of Siberian huskies, recently imported from Russia. Leonhard was assigned the task of keeping and training the dogs.
The outbreak of the Great War put the Fram expedition on hold, but the team of sled dogs remained in the ownership of the mining company and in Leonhard’s care.
Dog sledding as a means of transportation and recreation was a time-honoured tradition among indigenous people in Alaska. When the immigrants mastered the art, they began to organise their own races. Leonhard now had a great team on his hands, and was tempted to compete. The first race was no major success, but at least he made it to the finish line. The second race, he won!
This victory emboldened him to try the All Alaska Sweepstakes. Running 656 km from Nome to Candle and back again, it was the longest of these early races. It was first held in 1908 and is considered the beginning of dog sledding as a modern sport. Leonhard’s first attempt was a miserable failure, but the following year he won by a landslide, and from then on he kept winning.
If Leonhard’s achievements earned him a local reputation as a musher, it was the Serum Race that brought him international fame. This was not a competition, but a relay of 20 dog sledders organised in 1925 to transport medicine 1085 km from the railway station in Nenana to Nome, where there was deadly diphtheria outbreak. Leonhard, with his lead dog Togo, did the longest leg at a total of 420 km.
That same fall, Leonhard travelled south on tour with Togo and 43 other huskies. He had teamed up with Lomen & Company for their Christmas Cavalcade, which travelled with 76 reindeer to promote their meat production. Together, huskies and reindeer paraded the major cities in the United States. Leonhard was celebrated as a hero for his role in the Serum Race. Everywhere he went, he was interviewed, invited to banquets and events, and introduced to celebrities.
He quickly became a celebrity in his own right. The tour also marked the beginning of his participation in races in the northern US and Canada—many of which he won—and he formed partnerships to breed his line of Seppala huskies.
Leonhard presented himself as a Kven to journalists and others as his fame grew. In the US, the Kven ethnic group was completely unknown, and since Leonhard was small in stature and often dressed in fur clothing, he was usually perceived as being indigenous.
In 1950, Leonhard returned home to Norway for a longer visit. He was received as a hero both in the north and in the south, with dinners and festivities, and he became an honorary member of sled dog associations in both Oslo and Tromsø. The Norwegian Sled Dog Association established a race in his honour, the Seppala Race, which is still running.
After Leonhard’s death in 1967, the Iditarod, the world’s longest dogsled race, honoured him with bib number 1 until 1980, and since 1982 the award for best dog care has been the Leonhard Seppala Humanitarian Award. He was known for his excellent handling of dogs, and he was adamant that you could never force a dog to work for you.