Since 2008, through The Characters, Birkeland has given women a position within the landscape while exploring the authenticity of history. On various expeditions, female explorers are staged in Unknown Territory. The Characters are self-portraits expounding time and place, investigating personality and physical limits.
Materials have been gathered from their journeys, yielding stories and installations. Characters #I – V includes large format portraits of Aline Victoria Birkeland (1870-1952), geologist and glaciologist and her travels in the high Arctic and Spitzbergen, Tuva Tengel (1901-1985), desert traveller, author and photographer of the Gobi Desert, Luelle Magdalon Lumière (1873-1973), stereo photographer – a traveller among islands, societies and continents, Anna Aurora Astrup (1871-1968) who sailed along the East Coast of Greenland in 1900 and Bertha Bolette Boyd (1900-1985), mountaineer and author, who travelled to Bhutan in the 1930s.