Leonhard Isaksen Seppala was born on the 14th of September 1877 in Skibotn, Lyngen, Norway. Two years later, his family moved to Skjervøy where his father worked as a smith and a fisherman. Leonhard was the oldest child in his family and he had to work very hard at home at a young age. When his father was out fishing, Leonhard was the man on the farm. He also started very early to help his father with the fishing. He began going with his father in the fishing boat to Finnmark, the northernmost county in Norway, at the age of 12. His duties included baiting the fishing hooks, cooking, washing and doing laundry. Every year until 1897 he joined his father on the yearly fishing trips to Finnmark.

At the age of 20, he went to Kristiania (Oslo). He worked for a couple of months in Aker Mechanical Industries, and then in C.F.Andersersen's Smithy, where he earned his diploma. In Kristiania, he met his first girlfriend Margit. They fell in love again, and they planned to get married. But she died, and Leonhard was full of sorrow. After that, he went back to Skjervøy to work in his father's smithy. In 1899, he read about the gold strikes in Klondyke in the papers. Jafet Lindeberg came home from Nome in Alaska that fall, with his pockets stuffed with gold and US dollars. He had had great luck in Alaska, and was willing to lend money to Seppala so he could go back with him. Seppala could not resist that temptation, and in the year of 1900, he travelled on a boat to America. Just as thousands of others, he had high hopes about the wealth and fortune that was waiting for him over there.

The following is Seppala's account of the job he was assigned: He was ordered to hold a horse-pulled slip-scraper, "which was used to clear away the tailing at the lower end of the sluice boxes. It looked simple enough, but the teamster kept the horses at a trot all the forenoon while I followed filling the scraper and then running behind and dumping it. Later I found out that the dumping was supposed to be the teamster's job." Seppala was saved from total exhaustion by transferring to another job, which was only a bit less strenuous. After the scraper was damaged and taken to the shop for repair, he was put to work shoveling gravel into the sluice boxes, an activity that at first "seemed child's play to me"; but he soon realized that he was falling behind another miner opposite him who "worked like a machine." When the day ended, Seppala's arms "ached and throbbed" and his "blistered hands burned" so he could not sleep.

When each evening approached, Seppala thought of his home in Norway. In his words, "I . . regretted that I had listened to the golden-tongued orators who had persuaded me to come to Alaska.. . . I wanted adventure and I was getting it. . . . Often when I awoke . . . I would try to console myself with the thought that after all this life had one advantage over that of the Norse fisherman -- we at least had ground under our feet, and not hundreds of fathoms of roaring Arctic Ocean. . . . If only the gold had not beckoned and I had been able to stay in Southeastern Alaska and fish as I had planned so long ago!"

One morning late in October, Ole, boss of a nearby group of night workers, stuck his head into Seppala's tent and announced, "Well, it's all off. She froze up on us last night. You clean up the boxes for the last time to-day." Seppala then found a temporary job in a small camp where the men did their own "sourdough cooking.'' He worked with two young Norwegian Americans just out of school and unused to hard work, but the demands were not great and they got along well.

In December, Lindeberg brought news of the gold discovery in the Kougarok and of a plan to send out four men and two dog teams to prospect in the area. He invited three Swedes and Seppala to join the party, causing the latter to dream of making a strike, staking a claim, and becoming rich. The trip with his congenial partners was rich in experience and tragic in its revelation of what white civilization had done to the Eskimo, but it failed in its search for gold. Seppala never "struck it rich," but, as he told the writer in 1948, he was glad of it. He had seen enough of what the metal could do to people like himself.

On these expeditions with sled dogs, Seppala developed a very close relationship to the dogs. He was bitten by the "mushing bug", and soon he got his own dogs. In 1908, Nome Kennel Club was established. Mushing soon became the most popular sport in Alaska. Skiing had been very popular earlier, and Seppala had been doing well in the skiing competitions. Now, mushing interested him the most. The same year, he was talked into participating in his first sled dog race. He even won that race, unexpectedly. He gave much of the honor for this to a buzzard that had been flying over the trail, and that had been pacing the dogs. He says this about the buzzard: "I've always said that this buzzard was the reason why I started sled dog racing. The fact that I won that race, started my career as a sled dog racer"

Roald Amundsen, a famous Norwegian explorer, was planning a trip to the North Pole using dogs and contracted Jafet Lindenberg in Nome. He was to buy and train the dogs for Amundsen. When Robert Peary reached the pole first, Amundsen abandoned his expedition and left his Siberians with Leonhard Seppala. "Togo was a natural leader. As a young dog, Togo couldn't be contained. One day when Seppala set out on a long-distance run, he left instructions for his handler to keep the dog in an enclosure. Instead, Togo tried to climb the fence. He reached the top but got hung up on the far side by his foot. He yelped and the handler came to help him. While doing so, Togo twisted free and ran off, following Seppala and his team who already had several hours headstart. The musher later reported that when he looked up the towline as his dogs were moving, he saw a dog running loose at the head of this team, nipping at the ear of his lead dogs. From then on, Togo became Seppala's number one leader."

During the next 15 years, he won many, many races, including the famous "All Alaskan Sweepstake" three years in a row (1915 - 1917). He and his dogs became famous all over North - America, and the Siberian husky breed is still based on Seppala's dogs. He also became famous for the way he treated his dogs. He never used a whip, and he always finished with all his dogs in harness. Leonhard Seppala got married in 1908. His wife Constance was of belgish origin, and came to Nome in 1905. She was also interested in mushing, and participated in several races herself.

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.

When Leonhard Seppala's turn approached, he left Nome, intending to rest at Nulato and return with the serum. But before he reached Nulato, he met Myles Gonangnan at Shaktoolik. Seppala took the serum from Gonangnan, and without stopping to rest, turned around and headed back to Nome. The weather changed dramatically when Seppala and Togo began their 150-mile return trip to Nome. A blizzard began blowing across the sound, cutting visibility to zero and the temperature dropped to minus 30 degrees. Under these conditions the ice could break up at any time and the precious cargo would drift out to sea.

Seppala, knowing that there was no shorter way back and time was essential to the stricken children in Nome, decided to backtrack across the frozen Sound. The loud wind made it impossible for Sappala to hear any sound of breaking ice and he had to trust Togo's keen sense of smell and direction to lead the team across the dangerous ice. When they reached the west side of the Sound Seppala rested the team overnight. By morning their trail was awash in a sea of ice floes. Seppala had to put all of his trust in Togo to find the way. When he turned the serum over to Charlie Olson in Golovin at 3:00 PM on January 31, after carrying it 91 miles, he and his team, had traveled a total of 260 miles.

Leonhard later went to the lower states to race and introduced racing into the New Hampshire, Vermont and the surrounding area and contributed a great deal to the breeding programs of Siberian Huskies on this continent. He died in 1967.

Today the Leonhard Seppala Humanitarian Award is the highest award given by the Iditarod veterinarians to a musher for his or her superior excellence in dog care and humane treatment of the animals.