victorian221b | A Norwegian named Sigerson

I came across an article called “A Norwegian named Sigerson or a Swede named Hedin?”, where the authors suggest that everything Watson tells us in EMPT about Holmes’s travels during the Hiatus is mostly falsehoods. It coincides with my headcanon, so the article drew me in.

There was a real Swedish explorer Sven Hedin of whom ACD most probably read since Hedin’s travels had a lot of media coverage. Hedin’s first major expedition to Central Asia started in 1893. If we assume that Hedin existed in Holmes’s universe, it’s two years after Holmes’s disappearance. Therefore, it’s unlikely that Holmes and Hedin were one and the same person. They might have met each other, and Hedin might receive some information from Holmes which later was included into Hedin’s reports, but again the timeline is off, since by 1893 Holmes already returned to Europe. That’s a gist of the article, more or less.

I think it’s very likely that ACD was inspired by Hedin’s travels. After all, he seems to have lifted baritsu from a 1901 Times article where it was misspelled exactly in this way and was called “Japanese wrestling” (Wikipedia). Bartitsu was developed in 1898–1902, so it simply didn’t exist in 1891.

As for the Holmes ‘verse, Watson could do exactly the same: take random things from newspapers and paste them into EMPT, not particularly bothering about their being anachronistic. He obviously couldn’t tell the truth (or complete truth) about Reichenbach, so almost ten years after Holmes’s return Watson wrote a heavily fictionalised version of the events. And the most cool thing about it is how many possibilities it opens, what a leeway for imagination!