Background
Björling was born on 19 October 1871 in Stockholm, Sweden and was the son of Johan Alfred Björling and Lydia Kastengren.
Björling was born on 19 October 1871 in Stockholm, Sweden and was the son of Johan Alfred Björling and Lydia Kastengren.
He passed his studentexamen in 1891 and took part in the 1890 expedition to Spitsbergen and shipped in 1891 a Greenlandic merchant ship to the west coast of Greenland, where he using a rowboat penetrated north to the area of Devils Thumb. He died in 1892 or 1893 in the Canadian Arctic. He was the nephew of Emanuel Björling.
In the summer of 1889 as a 17‑year‑old, he led an expedition along with two companions to become the first to climb the highest mountain in Sweden, Kebnekaise.
In 1890, he participated in an expedition to Greenland and Spitsbergen. He continued his exploration of Greenland by going to Upernivik, which is the northernmost part of Greenland.
From there he successfully rowed an Eskimo boat all the way north to the Devil"s Thumb. In the spring of 1892 he was on the EGG Kallstenius, heading for northwest Greenland.
His planned to explore the largely unexplored polar basin at the northern tip of North America.
His route passed through Newfoundland, where he met bought a schooner called Ripple for the trip north. He also hired a crew and bought provisions for the trip. The ship sailed and was never heard of from again.
The next time people heard about the company was through a telegram, sent on November 1893 by the whaler Aurora, which stated that the ship had passed the wrecks of Ripple on June 17 of that year at the mouth of Smith Sound.
