Nansen and Johansen, when they were stranded on an arctic island after treking over hundreds of miles of ice flows, would wait for a polar bear to poke his head into their cave, then shoot it and eat it. They kept alive in this manner after they ran out of sled dogs to eat.
Nansen and Johansen didn't eat sled dogs, but they did feed them to the other dogs until they had to kill the last two dogs when they ran out of ice, there was no room for dogs in their kayaks. They hunted polar bear for food later on the trip. The most famous encounter was when Johansen was surprised by a bear that knocked him over by hitting him in the head so his teeth rattled. Nansen was standing on the ice floe, his rifle was strapped to the deck of his kayak. He had to get the boat back out of the water before he could get the rifle ready. Johansen was on his back, grabbing the bear's throat with both hands, saying something like "You will have to hurry up a bit, Nansen, or you will be too late." Nansen shot the bear in the head from what was probably contact range.
I suspect Robert Sorlie goes armed on the trail.
I don't know. I grew up 20 yards down the road from him but I haven't seen him in years. He is about ten years older than me, so I didn't know him that well anyway. I did shoot high power rifle with his brother for several years. His father of my father would drive us to practice and matches once or twice a week for years until we were old enough to drive ourselves.
BlackCat: Thanks for the welcome. When I joked about Norwegians in Alaska, I was referring to Robert Sørlie. He is the Norwegian who has been teaching the Alaskans how drive dogs in the Iditarod. His nephew didn't do badly either, I think he finished this year's race as the best rookie ever, in 4th place. Next year it's his turn to pick dogs first out of the "pool" of dogs he is sharing with his uncle...
I half expected some of the Alaskans here to start a "Best caliber for Norwegian dogs"-thread.
Or maybe you could lobby the Norwegian government to reintroduce the strict regulations that made it practically impossible to travel abroad with dogs until recently. That's one of the reasons you haven't seen Norwegians compete internationally in dog racing until now.
