A certain Colin Archer, a Scottish naval architect of Norwegian descent, was commissioned to design the vessel, and in 1892, the Fram (“Forward”) was launched. It was a four-hundred-ton tri-mast, steam-powered sailing ship, 127 feet long, made of exceptionally hard wood from Guyana, with a smooth, rounded hull bearing virtually no keel. It had retractable propellers and rudder and it carried a built-in windmill for the generation of electricity. When heavy ice would press the vessel, the cunning design of the iron-clad hull would disallow it to grip the sides, and as the pressure build up from beneath, the ship would be squeezed upward rather than being crushed inward by an unrelenting grip. In Nansen’s words, she would slip upward “like an eel out of the embraces of the ice.”
Twelve men signed on to the bold expedition, including Otto Sverdrup, selected as the Fram’s captain. The seasoned sailor was a close companion to Nansen and had accompanied him on the momentous cross-Greenland ski expedition. Although Nansen calculated that this fresh journey would take two years, when the expedition finally left Christina harbour (known today as Oslo) on June 24, 1893, it carried provisions for six years and fuel for eight. As Jeannette Mirsky observed in To the Arctic!, “The magnificent and novel adventure had begun. Not only was the Fram to be subjected to every whim of the pressed-up ice-fields, but thirteen men were to face the test of three — or five — years of monotonous life, surrounded by monotonous icy wastes, severed entirely from all outside contacts.”
They set off east on Nordenskiöld’s route through the Northern Passage. The expedition passed the Kara Sea to the New Siberian Islands and by the end of September found itself off Bennett Island where it was beset by ice, frozen in, and riding the currents. “The Fram behaved beautifully. On pushed the ice, but down under us it had to go, and we were lifted up … the men have grown so indifferent to the pressure that they do not even get up to look, let it thunder ever so hard.” The boredom of long days was punctuated by astronomical and magnetic studies and by the systematic taking of ocean temperatures and water samples at various levels.[9] From time to time a confrontation was had with a polar bear, but otherwise ennui seems to have been the order of the day.
For over a year, the Fram had been drifting slowly but steadily north and west. In November 1894, however, by the time they had reached 83°N, the troubling realization came to Nansen that their direction had changed imperceptibly to a southward direction, past the pole. Months of inaction, and now they were moving away from his objective: it was too much for the restless man and he would cope with the situation no more. As soon as sufficient daylight was had in spring, he decided, he would quit his ship, and, with a willing companion, make a dash for the pole by ski and snowshoe. The Fram would be left to return home under Sverdrup’s capable command.
In his book, Farthest North, Nansen gives lively details of the trek he and Hjalmar Johansen undertook in those frozen wasteland. Setting out on March 14 with sledges, kayaks, and twenty-eight dogs, every sort of adventure befell the two as they pressed forward … ever forward. Sledges overturned, kayaks were pierced by ice, steep pressure ridges were surmounted, dogs were overcome and had to be put down. Frequent gales detained them, as did pockets of knee-high snow. Once they were ambushed by an attacking bear, which at the last moment Nansen was able to shoot “just as the bear was about to bite [the prone] Johansen in the head … a shot behind the ear, and it fell down dead between us …”
One by one, the dogs were killed to feed those that survived until finally none remained. Heavy perspiration froze clothes “which were now a mass of ice and transformed into complete suits of ice-armour.” The overall situation became dire, viewed by Nansen with despair. His entry for April 8:
No, the ice grew worse and worse, and we got no way. Ridge after ridge, and nothing but rubble to travel over. We made a start at two o’clock or so this morning, and kept at it as long as we could, lifting the sledges all the time; but it grew too bad at last. I went on a good way ahead on snow-shoes, but saw no reasonable prospect of advance, and from the highest hammocks only the same kind of ice to be seen. It was as veritable chaos of ice-blocks, stretching as far as the horizon. There is not much sense in keeping on longer; we are sacrificing valuable time and doing little. If there be much more such ice between here and Franz Josef Land, we shall, indeed, want all the time to have.
The two men had been out for twenty-six days and had reached 86°14' N, but were no closer to the pole. Nansen concluded his entry, “I therefore determined to stop, and shape our course for Cape Fligely [at Franz Joseph Land, Europe’s northern-most point].”
Changing direction, they pushed steadily on, with the days becoming weeks. Then, on July 24: “At last the marvel has come to pass — land, land, and after we had almost given up our belief in it! After nearly two years we again see something rising above the never-ending white line on the horizon yonder — a white line which for countless ages has stretched over this lonely sea, and which for millenniums to come shall stretch in the same way” [author’s italics]. Unrealized by them, the island they had reached was part of the Franz Joseph archipelago within a hundred miles of Cape Fligely.
By the end of August, with temperatures rapidly falling and the weather turning for the worse, it became clear that it would be impossible to make their destination before the onset of full winter. They would have to stop where they were, create a shelter and patiently sit out the months ahead.
The tiny semi-underground shelter hastily constructed by Nansen and Johanssen in which they spent the winter of 1884–85. Sleep was their greatest comfort, and “we carried this art in a high pitch of perfection.”
Using a makeshift spade made of a walrus shoulder blade, the two men excavated a hole in the frozen ground. Around this primitive foundation walls carefully placed stones were built and the joints were “plastered in” with moss and earth. Driftwood was found in large quantities, which they gathered and of the larger branches formed “trusses” to support a roof of walrus hides. Fortunately game was plentiful, particularly walrus and the occasional intruding polar bear, therefore not only was there a supply of food at hand, but the melted fat from these animals brought heat and light to the hut. “By the aid of lamps we succeeded in keeping the temperature at about the freezing-point in the middle of the hut, while it was, of course, colder at the walls.” Here the men spent nine mostly dark months, awaiting the daylight of spring with much of the time being spent in sleep. “We carried this art to a high pitch of perfection, and could sometimes put in as much as 20 hours’ sleep in 24.”
It is hard to imagine the men’s primitive living conditions and the hardships and vicissitudes of daily life, all within permeating cold and profound solitude. Nansen seemed to have risen above it all and in places of his journal he reflected a measure of joy and of poetic wonder:
Sunday, 1 December, 1895. Wonderfully beautiful weather for the last few days, one can never weary of going up and down outside, while the moon transforms the whole of this ice world into a fairey-land. The hut is still in shadow under the mountain which hangs above, dark and lowering; the moonlight floats over ice and fjord, and is cast back glittering from every snowy ridge and hill. A weird beauty, without feeling, as though of a dead planet, built of shining white marble. Just so must the mountains stand there, frozen and icy cold; just so must the lakes lie congealed beneath their snowy covering; and now as ever the moon sails silently and slowly on her endless course through the lifeless space. And everything is so still, so awfully still, with the silence that shall one day reign, when the earth again becomes desolate and empty, when the fox will no more haunt those moraines, when the bear will no longer wander about the ice out there; when even the wind will not rage — infinite silence! In the flaming aurora borealis, the spirit of space hovers over the frozen waters. The soul bows down before majesty of night and death …
With the coming of spring and daylight, the two men set out again, once more harnessed to their sledges. Alternating between snowshoes
, skis, and kayaks, the couple progressed steadily south along their laborious path when entirely by chance, almost miraculously, they were delivered from their sorrowful situation. Encamped one day in a “land I believed to be unseen by any human eye and untrodden by any human foot, reposing in Arctic majesty behind its mantle of mist … a sound suddenly reached my ear so like the barking of a dog …”
The barking was indeed that of a dog, one that was accompanying Frederick Jackson to Franz Joseph Land on a British scientific expedition sponsored by the Royal Geographic Society. With waves of hats, the two men came together — Nansen described the scene:
[O]n one side the civilized European in an English check suit and high rubber boots, well shaved, well groomed, bringing with him a perfume of scented soap, perceptible to the wild man’s sharpened senses; on the other side the wild man clad only in dirty rags, black with oil and soot, with long uncombed hair and shaggy beard, black with smoke, with a face in which the natural fair complexion could not possibly be discerned through the thick layer of fat and soot which a winter’s endeavours with warm water, moss, rags, and at last a knife had sought in vain to remove. No one suspected who he was or whence he came.
There followed a replay of the Stanley-Livingstone African encounter:
Jackson stopped, looked me full in the face, and said quickly, “Aren’t you Nansen?”
“Yes, I am.”
“By Jove! I am glad to see you!”
The two elatedly exchanged information with one another. Nansen and Johansen were then taken to the British base camp, and, a couple of months later, on August 13, 1896, the two came ashore at Vardø in easternmost Norway, close to the Russian border. Within days of their return, they found themselves reunited with their companions on board the Fram. Following Nansen’s abandonment of the ship months earlier, the vessel continued in its ice-lock until June, by which time it had been borne north of Spitzbergen. At that point, after nearly three years of captivity, Sverdrup was successful in blasting the ship free from the melting pack and the Fram found itself under sail once again. The expedition was now safely reunited. “The meeting which followed,” wrote Nansen, “I shall not try to describe. I don’t think any of us knew anything clearly, except that we were all together again — we were in Norway — and the expedition had fulfilled its task … in my heart I sobbed and wept for joy and thankfulness.” Although the North Pole had not been reached, the voyage had been one of high adventure, but more importantly, the meteorological, biological, and oceanographic data that was brought home added generously to the knowledge of the Arctic Ocean.
The laurels belonged to Nansen. Appointed a professor at the University of Oslo, he took to compiling the six-volume record of his extraordinary trip. But he didn’t stop there — always “forward!” Tales of his heroic exploits had spread throughout the country and his popularity had grown so significantly that involvement in national affairs seemed an inevitable encore. In 1905, the Norwegian parliament unilaterally broke the personal union it had with Sweden, and in the negotiations that followed, received full autonomy. Standing behind the independence movement was the tireless Nansen. With self-government granted, the country fell into debate as to the next step — was it to be a monarchy or a republic? A plebiscite gave a 79 percent majority to the monarchists, and here Nansen once more came to the fore. It was largely through his efforts that Prince Carl of Denmark was selected as Haakon VII, King of Norway. (It might be added that as the debate over the government issue raged, Nansen reportedly was asked to become the country’s first king or president. He declined the offers, declaring that science and exploration were his vocations. He did take on, however, a two-year appointment as Norway’s first ambassador to Britain.)
In the chaotic aftermath of the First World War, Nansen once again plunged himself into public affairs, but this time at an international level. In the years 1917–29, he served as a lobbyist at the Peace Conference of Paris, then as Norway’s delegate to the League of Nations, and finally as the League’s Commissioner for Refugees. Among his achievements are the postwar repatriation of 450,000 prisoners; the creation of the “Nansen Passport,” recognized by fifty-two nations, by which stateless refugees received a document of identification; the repatriation and rehabilitation of hundreds of thousands of Russian, Turkish, and Armenian refugees; relief supplies for Russians during the disastrous 1921–22 famine, and the drawing up of a plan for the foundation of the Armenian state. The Norwegian patriot had become an internationalist and perhaps Schumann, Adenauer, and de Gasperi — the fathers of modern Europe — received their cue from Nansen, who, after the First World War, warned that unless Europeans shed their nationalistic mindsets, another war would be hard to avoid. “The only policy an international economic point of view.”[10] Such was the uncommon son of the Arctic and the mettle of a man who lived by what he preached: “The difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes a little longer.”
One of Nansen’s closest companions was Otto Sverdrup who, had accompanied the explorer on the cross-country trek of Greenland and on the odyssey of the Fram. Whereas in later life, Nansen gravitated to academia and politics, Sverdrup continued in the world of Arctic exploration, and in the years 1898–1902, he took the Fram on four expeditions into the Canadian Arctic, each time wintering on Ellesmere Island. To him goes credit for the discovery of three major islands in the archipelago lying west of Ellesmere, including the most prominent, Axel Heiberg. It was on this uninhabited island in 1985 that a sharp-eyed helicopter pilot flying over the land spotted the “fossil forest,” or more accurately, mummified remains of tree stumps. Over 45 million years ago when Arctic climatic conditions were radically different, forests blanketed much of the region and dinosaurs walked the lands. The stumps on Axel Heiberg are the remains of trees that once towered at heights up to 130 feet, relatives of the redwoods of the American West. Scattered about the stumps are beautifully preserved flattened leaves, feathery and easily recognizable as conifer.
Sverdrup’s Arctic achievements have been eclipsed by the likes of Nansen and Amundsen, but at an unveiling of a monument in his hometown of Steinkjer, Norway, he was referred to as “a prince of polar navigators … the most competent and practical of Norwegian polar explorers.”
Standing shoulder to shoulder with Nansen at the top of the dais of Scandinavian Arctic explorers is Roald Amundsen, the first man to have reached the South Pole. In 1911, Amundsen sailed the Fram into the Antarctic and after a dangerous and gruelling passage, reached the pole on December 12. It must have been a euphoric moment for him, yet he wrote in his account of the event:
The goal was reached, the journey ended. I cannot say — though I know it would sound much more effective — that the object of my life was attained. I had better be honest and admit strait out that I have never known any man to be placed in such a diametrically opposite position to the goal of his desires as I was at that moment. The regions around the North Pole — well, yes, the North Pole itself — had attracted me from childhood, and here I was at the South Pole. Can anything more topsy-turvy be imagined?[11]
Amundsen was indeed a child of the North, notwithstanding his historic Antarctic achievement. The first to reach the South Pole, but the kudos of being the first to the North Pole would not be his — the American explorer Robert Peary had reached it two years earlier. Amundsen, however, was not to be totally undone. In May 1926, he set off from Norway in an airship, the Norge, determined to be the first to reach the pole by air. Accompanying him was a crew of fifteen, including Umberto Nobile, the Italian builder of the dirigible and Lincoln Ellsworth, the wealthy American sponsor of the expedition who spent $100,000 for the privilege of the flight.
Crossing the Barents Sea, Amundsen’s flight stopped briefly at Svalbard, where on Spitzbergen Island he met Richard Byrd of the United States Navy who was in the final stages of preparation to fly his tri-motor Fokker airplane over the same destination. On May 12 at 1:25 a.m., the Norge reached the N
orth Pole, where the flags of Norway, Italy, and the United States were dropped onto the ice. (Within minutes of the deposit, acrimony broke out between Amundsen and Nobile, with the former accusing the latter of providing an Italian banner larger than the others, an incident that coloured their relations for years thereafter.) Three days earlier, Byrd had successfully flown over the pole, the first to have done so. Subsequently, his claim came to be questioned for the flight’s log of sextant readings appeared in variance with those recorded by the aviator in his official report to the National Geographic Society, and to this day some refuse to recognize the American’s achievement. The Norge’s mission having been achieved, it continued on its way and headed to Alaska, where eventually it landed in Nome after a 3,180-mile fight. The crew was enthusiastically greeted as being the first to have flown from Europe to America.
The South Pole and the Norge, two significant accomplishments. But it is not for these successes that Amundsen stands high among polar achievements. At the turn of the twentieth century, after the likes of Franklin, Frobisher, Cabot, and Columbus had failed for over five centuries, he succeeded in completing the entire length of the Northwest Passage, sailing from one end to the other. On June 16, 1903, Amundsen put out of Oslo with a six-man crew on board the Gjøa, a small forty-eight-ton seal hunting vessel built thirty years earlier. The objective of the expedition was to pinpoint the magnetic North Pole and to carry out studies of its forces. Passing the coasts of Greenland and Baffin Island, he sailed through Lancaster Sound, and, after a hazardous passage of violent storms and inordinately thick ice floes, they arrived at King William Island, on the opposite side from where Franklin’s expedition had been abandoned fifty-five years earlier. Here the Gjøa found suitable anchorage and for the next two years it remained on the spot. An observatory was constructed, equipped with the finest instruments of the time, and for the length of their stay the men engaged in magnetic measurements and observations. While those primarily skilled in magnetism attended to their work, Amundsen befriended the local population and went on to study their ways, their arts, and their spiritual lives. In The New Passage, he gives the most comprehensive overview of those remarkable people that was had up to that time. In the process he took to Inuit dress, diet, and hunting methods and in short order “became virtually an Eskimo himself.”
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