Ancestry of Gunnar Øyvind Kaasen

Gunnar Øyvind Kaasen was born in 1882 in Kvænangen, Troms, Norway. He went to Alaska during the gold rush in 1903 together with he's brothers: Harald, John and Peder. It was during this territorial period that Alaska's most famous freight delivery took place via dogsled. In January of 1925, a diphtheria epidemic threatened the children and native Americans of Nome. Isolated by ice pack and snow, with no roads to the outside even today, Nome could have been decimated or worse. The local health service physician ran out of antitoxin, but was able to telegraph to Anchorage for help. Serum was located there, but the train could only go as far as Nanana (still 674 miles from Nome). The only two planes in Alaska had been dimantled for the winter, and the frozen sea prevented delivery by ship. Dog sled teams were the only hope. Twenty of the best dog drivers in Alaska stationed themselves down the trail to relay the serum. They mushed through blizzards and temperatures that plummeted to 80 degrees below zero.

The storm raged as the serum was passed to Gunnar Kaasen in the tiny village of Bluff. He reached the next relay station late in the night, but because of the storm the next man did not expect his arrival and went to sleep. Rather than taking the time to find and wake him, Gunnar continued on the next and last leg of the relay. While crossing the Topkok River, Balto halted and refused to move. Kaasen walked up to Balto, and saw that the dog was standing in a shallow overflow from the river. After drying Balto’s feet, the team moved around the overflow and pressed on. At Bonanza Flats, high winds flipped the sled over. Kaasen looked for the serum, but it was not on the sled. In the failing light, Kaasen stripped off his gloves, and searched bare-handed through the snow, finally retrieving the package.

Frozen and Exhausted, Gunnar reached Nome on Monday, February 2 at 5:30 in the morning. Dr. Welch was awakened by a persistent knocking on his front door. When he opened it Kaasen handed him a twenty pound, fur-and-canvas-covered package containing the 300,000 units of serum. In the street were his 13 dogs harnessed to a sled, their heads and bushy tails hanging almost to the ground. They had covered the last fifty-three miles of the epic relay in seven and a half hours. These dogs, and the teams that preceeded them, had traversed 674 ice-and-snow covered miles in less than six days. They delivered to Dr. Welch the life-saving serum that within a week would break the back of the diphtheria epidemic.

"It was a pretty tough trip, all right," Kaasen later said, "The fact is, it was the roughest I've ever had on the trails, and I've been mushing since 1901. But Balto brought us through the darkness and storm. He kept the trail when no human being could possibly have found the way."

The driver who covered the largest distance in the relay was Leonhard Seppala, whether you count only the distance he traveled carrying the serum (91 miles) or the total distance he covered in order to get into position for his portion (260 miles.) Leonhard was also from Troms. Gunnar's lead dog, Balto, was Leonard's dog, but Gunnar trained and used him. Balto was named after a "Sami" man named "Samuel Johannesen Balto" who accompanied Fitjof Nansen on his historic expedition and later joined Lafet Lindebergs expedition with a herd of raindeer across the Atlantic and to Alaska. In honor of the the dog who brought the serum to Nome, a statue of Balto now stands in Central Park, New York. On the marble plate below the statue is written: Endurance - Intelligence - Fidelity An Animated film called "Balto" has also been made about his story.

Gunnar later married a woman named Anna. They did not have any children. They visited Norway some years before the second world war (1940-45). Gunnar also came back some year after the war. They settled down in Seattle and Gunnar died in 1964.