Case file · Folklore / legend
'The Smoky God': a voyage into the inner Earth
In 1908 Willis George Emerson published 'The Smoky God', presented as the true story of a Norwegian fisherman, Olaf Jansen, who sailed through an opening at the North Pole into a world inside the Earth lit by a smoky central sun.
1908 CE · 89.90, 0.00 · status: claim
The account
It became a key text of hollow-Earth belief, alongside Symmes's 1818 circular and the later Byrd 'diary'.
The sceptical view
There is no evidence Jansen existed; the book reads as fiction. Satellites cover both poles and show no opening.
Connections in the atlas
- The 'hole at the North Pole' satellite photo
- Symmes's hollow-earth circular
- Raymond Bernard's 'The Hollow Earth' and the Byrd myth