This is the century-old script for a popular presentation written by Fridtjof Nansen, a prominent Norwegian explorer, scientist, activist, politician and author. It’s his account of one of the most significant polar expeditions in history, where the ship Fram drifted through the arctic ice for the first time, reaching closer to the north pole than anyone before it. It has been translated from Danish to English by Gitle Mikkelsen. Some annotations and comments have been inserted by the translator. These have an italic font, such as this introductory paragraph.
Man has an irresistible urge to explore all parts of our Earth. The most difficult to access have been the polar regions, with ice and snow and cold hindering man’s progress. Many attempts have been made to penetrate the unknown that surrounds the North Pole; but the ships were stopped by the drift ice, which threatened to destroy them, and those who tried to traverse this drift ice with sledges found it so uneven and difficult to fare that they would soon turn around.
The way in which the Norwegian polar expedition planned to handle the same environment was therefore quite different. When I thought I had found reliable evidence that there had to be a steady drift straight across the very area which longed to be studied, with the ice being carried from the Siberian Sea north of Franz Josef’s Land and Spitsbergen and into the sea between Spitsbergen and Greenland, I thought that one could take advantage of this circumstance, and that the forces at work here could be used in the service of polar research, as a ship which was suitably built and strong enough to withstand the pressure of the ice masses could drift along with the ice, and one would thus be able to traverse the unknown seas easily and comfortably. It was in this way the expedition was carried out.
The ship built for this expedition was “Fram”, and it was on June 24th, 1893, that we, the 13 participants of the expedition, departed from Kristiania (Oslo) to advance eastward along the coast of Asia to the New Siberian Islands, and from there turn north into the unknown ice regions. In July we were at Chabarova, and from there sent our last greetings home to family and friends. (Chabarova was a small hamlet in the Yugor Strait, used as a supply station by arctic explorers at that time, now a ruin.) On the 4th of August we carried on into the dreaded Kara Sea and from then on, for more than three years, we were completely cut off from the rest of the world.
The journey along the north coast of Asia was relatively easy, although there were many kinds of obstacles to overcome there as well. At the island of Taymyr we found, in the last days of August, the ice between the islands landlocked and unbroken, and on the north side of a large archipelago which we discovered here, the drift ice lay close to land, so that there was no possible approach. Fortunately, however, a storm broke the ice on September 6th. It freed us from an overwinter in this place, and we slipped through into the Bay of Taymyr and further north past Cape Chelyuskin, the northernmost headland of the world. The only ship that has passed this place before us is (Adolf Erik) Nordenskiøld’s «Vega».
Our journey continued along the coast. At the Olenyok river we were supposed to fetch dogs, but did not dare sail in there, as it was a little late in the year; it was the 5th of September and it was important to use this time to get north. On the northwest side of the New Siberian Islands we reached open waters farther than we had expected, and it was not until 78° 50' N that the ice prevented us from advancing, and we had to surrender to its power, which was after all what we had intended.
Soon we were firmly surrounded by the ice, and we now drifted with it for three long years. This drifting in the ice is nothing new, many expeditions have tried it before us; the difference is just that while the previous expeditions feared it and were forced to do so much against their will, we did so deliberately, and the faster we drifted, the happier we became.
I will not embark on a detailed description of the many upheavals that such an ice drift entails, I can only say that being led away by such powers over which one has no dominion, summer after summer and winter after winter, it puts the human mind to many hard tests. It is a good lesson in patience. We were to experience this already in the first autumn. My belief was that the ice would lead us northwest, but instead, week after week and month and month went by, and we still drifted southeast, away from our goal. This was a difficult time. By November we had come southeast all the way down to 77 degrees and about 42 minutes; but then the currents finally began to carry us north, and in earnest.
Generally, we drifted mostly in the winter, while in the summer and at the beginning of the autumn our progress often stopped, only to get another push forward next winter. Meanwhile we lived a life aboard the “Fram”, as comfortable as can be imagined on these latitudes. We had plenty of food, had electric light with the help of a windmill, we had a good warm ship, we had enough to do, observations and other work, and in our free time we had enough to read, and if you wanted, there was plenty of opportunity for card games and other entertainment.
On the whole it was a cheerful little colony, us who drifted with the ice up there those years, and if one could have listened to the resounding laughter from “Fram”s salon sounding in the quiet polar night, then one would probably have trouble understanding that these, too, were people who were subjected to all the horrors that humans are often burdened by. And yet we may not have had it worse off than others, the only difference was perhaps that we were better equipped for it, thanks to the experience of previous expeditions.
We had the dreaded cold in abundance. It did not bother us, “Fram” was warm and cozy. Worse were the eerie movements of the ice; but in regards to this we had perhaps the most important advantage of all: “Fram” was so strong that she could withstand all that the ice threw at her. At first, this strange phenomenon naturally interested the participants very much; we would find it amusing to stand and watch as the ice rolled forward with deafening noise against the sturdy sides of “Fram”, crushed, cracked, and then finally forced down under her just to lift her high and safe. We just laughed at it all. There were mighty forces here set in motion. You feel the ground beneath you swaying and rumbling in all directions, no point is stable, even the hardest floe breaks and towers up as if it was thin glass, and then it roars and whines about you on all sides, soon as of howling dogs, soon like thunderous waterfalls, in the darkness you see wall behind wall rising up, heavy blocks of ice forced on top of each other, and in the midst of all this confusion rides a little nutshell, called “Fram”, safely and securely, as if nothing was happening. The trick to the ship’s construction is its curved hull, shaped in such a way as to let ice simply slide off and under it, designed after much pondering on how to overcome such forces.
After a while we got used to all these noisy events, and very soon we became so indifferent that we did not even go up to look at them. The card games carried on briskly and cheerfully throughout the evenings, no matter the noise outside. Sometimes it got so bad that we could hardly hear what was being said, and we could all then wish that the clashing would move ahead a little bit, so that we could get a little peace back in the salon.
Otherwise, life flowed its quiet course during this time, as we slowly drifted forward in our route.
Occasionally a stray bear could visit us. However, they were not very hospitably received, as they always had to pay for their visit with their lives. Once upon a time, however, such a bear visit could have had a different outcome. It was just before Christmas, the first winter. It was then completely dark both night and day. The dogs tied up on the deck made such a deafening ruckus, and it lasted all night long. We did not understand what was going on and thought there must be a bear in the water, but could not detect anything of the sort. The next day we saw that three dogs were gone, and upon investigating this further, we realized that the bear had been on board and picked up some dog roast.
Two of our people, Mogstad and Peder Hendriksen, went off over the ice with a flashlight and some of the dogs, to investigate. They had not gone far before the dogs in front of them started barking terribly and came running back; and in the midst of the pack of dogs they glimpsed in the darkness a large animal, and as they understood what it was, they set off running back to the ship; for none of them had taken weapons with them.
Mogstad was nimble and reached the ship before Hendriksen, who in his heavy wooden snowshoes had tumbled over. Hendriksen was, though, the one who carried the lantern, and as he got up after his fall on the ice floe, he turned and shone with the lantern across the ice to see if the bear was still after them. He saw nothing and turned around to go towards the ship again, when he suddenly saw the bear between him and the ship. At that moment, the bear jumped right at him and slashed him in the hip. The only weapon Hendriksen had was the lantern; and with it he gave the beast such a powerful blow to the skull that it sat down in astonishment and looked at him, while the lantern slid away over the ice. Hendriksen used the opportunity to try to escape on board, just when the bear made signs to set chase again. At that point, however, a dog fortunately came and distracted the animal, and Hendriksen escaped onto the ship’s deck and startled us all down in the salon by yelling for “a gun, a gun, a bear has bitten me in the hip!”. Five or six well-armed men now burst out onto the deck and finally got rid of the animal. We were glad that no greater damage had been done other than the two dogs it had killed and eaten during the night, though, of course, this loss was bad enough.
Before Christmas 1894, “Fram” had reached 83° north, and at New Year’s we were at about 83° 24', the highest latitude ever hitherto reached by humans. But here we were also exposed to the most violent ice that any ship had ever challenged. Before we set out, several of the largest authorities on the Arctic argued that it was probably conceivable that a ship as strong as “Fram” could withstand the ice and be lifted off it in the summer; however they thought it impossible for any ship to withstand the movements of the ice in the winter. Now, however, «Fram» was subjected to proper winter sea ice. We have already experienced this before; but she was now frozen in ice over 30 feet (9 meter) thick. Over this flake came immeasurable masses of ice gliding with irresistible force towards her port side; that is, riding on the flake where she lay frozen. The pressure was immeasurable, the ice towering over the railing of “Fram” and high up the rig; it threatened if not to crush her, then at least to bury her. Hardly a man on board thought she could handle it, and the necessary supplies such as sail kayaks, cooking appliances, fuel, tents, sledges, and skis were all brought to safety onto the ice next to the ship. Every man was ready to leave the ship at short notice, and no one was allowed to sleep except in full clothes.
But “Fram” turned out to be even stronger than our faith in her: when the pressure against the hull was at its highest, and I heard for the first time carpentry and beams in her began to creak; but then she broke free from her bed, in which she was firmly frozen, and was slowly lifted out. It was a triumph. There was not a crack to be discovered in her, not even a single loose chip. A more dangerous position for a ship can hardly be imagined; and yet after that experience we were completely confident in «Fram», and although in the future she would be exposed to many more twists and turns, the men from that day slept peacefully on board. So calm were they, that it even happened that (Otto) Sverdrup himself did not wake up to it, but was sometimes surprised when he came up on deck in the morning to find that the ship was raised several man-heights above the ice, so that one could almost see the bottom of the ship beneath it.
After all we had experienced so far, we could already say with certainty at New Year 1895 that the expedition would succeed at its task, and that “Fram” would complete a route roughly in accordance with that which the expedition’s plan had presupposed. So far, everything was fine.
However, I now realized that it could be possible to do more than what was planned, to examine the sea that lay outside the path “Fram” followed, if one left her and ventured onto the ice with dogs and sleighs. Such an expedition, however, could not count on returning to the ship, as it would be impossible to find again, as the ice drift would carry it in a different direction. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. The only way was to equip this expedition so well that it could fend for itself all the way home. I decided to do it.
Although Sverdrup would perhaps be happy to go, it was difficult for me to send someone else on this trip, as it would be associated with considerable risk. I therefore decided to go with only Lieutenant (Hjalmar) Johansen, who was willing to participate.
I told him that this journey must be determined to make it home on its own; so in addition to dogs and sledges, boats were also needed, so we prepared two light kayaks of bamboo and tarpaulin, so that we could navigate the open water we would eventually have to encounter on the trip.
It was my intention to first go north to explore the sea north of «Fram»’s route as close as possible to the pole, and then to make my way across Franz Josef’s Land to Spitsbergen, where I was sure to find Norwegian hunters, who could lead us back to Norway. I handed over command of «Fram» and the remainder of the primary expedition to the strong-minded Captain Sverdrup, whom I was sure would lead our comrades home safely.
And then, after a couple of attempts, Johansen and I finally set off north on March 14th, 1895, with 28 dogs, 3 well-loaded sleighs, and 2 kayaks. The provisions for the dogs were calculated for 30 days and for Johansen and me for 100 days.
In the beginning it went quite well; but the drift ice with its irregularities, its stacks and overlaps, and then cracks with open water or covered with thin ice, is not easy to navigate, and in many respects it was a hard trip.
On the 22nd of March we had already reached 85° 10' N. But the ice was now beginning to become even more uneven, and the drift, which had hitherto been weak, was now against us, and led us south, while we pushed north. On the 25th of March we had not reached further than 85° 19', on the 29th only 85° 30'. The ice was clearly drifting with considerable speed to the south. Our progress was now slow over the uneven ice. It was an endless task to make our way through and get our sledges over the high-topped ice ridges that were still forming and which the snowstorms never had time to cover.
In such ice the dogs were of relatively little help. When we came across such obstacles they waited patiently until we were able to carry the sledges safely over, and they could again pull them a stretch over even ice, until new obstacles stopped them. Meanwhile the ice was still moving, and thunderous crashing ice could be heard from all sides around us.
On the 3rd of April we had finally reached as far as 85° 59' N. We carried on as far as we could bear in the hope of hitting better ice ahead. On the 4th of April we had reached 86° 3'; but still the ice became worse and worse, until at last, on the 7th of April, it was so poor that I found it inadvisable to continue farther north. If it was to be the same in the direction of Franz Josef’s Land, it could be difficult enough to reach there. We were then at 86° 14' N, and about 95° E. To investigate the condition of the ice and the possibility of soldiering on further ahead, I went north on skis, but could not discover any reasonable path. From the highest point I could find, I just saw packed and stacked ice all the way to the horizon. It looked like a sea full of stormy waves, except that the waves were ice. Here, like the rest of our whole journey, we saw no signs of land in any direction north of us. The ice seemed to drift with the wind without being stopped by any mainland or islands for as far as I could see, and it seems to me unlikely that land, at least of any significance, could be found on this side of the North Pole, though one could suppose that on the other side, something like a continuation of the North American Arctic archipelago may be found.
So far we had not suffered much from the cold during this time. As the spring was approaching, and the temperature when we were on board had become relatively agreeable, we did not think we would get any strong cold periods again now, in the months of March and April. So to save weight and to make us as agile as possible, we left our warm fur coats on board. But we would bitterly regret it. For about 3 weeks the temperature remained at about 40°F below zero (-40°C). In such a temperature, and with wind as well, we often found it bitterly cold, and our good, but far too light, woollen clothes were gradually transforming into ice armor due to our evaporated sweat freezing. Our woollen outer jackets were the worst. They were covered by a thick layer of ice which crunched when we moved, and which were so stiff and hard that they cut deep sores into the flesh in our wrists, by the constant rubbing during walking.
When we finally crawled into our frozen sleeping bag in the evenings, it took us over an hour every night to get our clothes thawed inside the bag, and with that, a not insignificant part of the body heat that we so desperately needed, was wasted. Only after we had lain down and ground our teeth for an hour and a half did we finally begin to feel a little of the warmth that we had longed for all day.
A few minutes after we got out of the sleeping bags in the morning, our clothes were ice again. And then during the day, when we had walked, and we were to sit and rest a little on our sledges, the wind cut right through us. We crawled down behind the sledges; but there was no proper shelter to be found, and it was bitter and cold wherever we turned. I think neither Johansen nor I will ever want to live those days again.
In March, the lowest temperature was -49° F (-45°C). Oh how exhausted and tired we were every night when we stopped, after trudging our way forward in the uneven ice. When, at last, the dogs had been fed, the tent had been set up, the stove had been set in motion to cook us a delicious stew of pemmican and dried potatoes, and we had stuffed ourselves into our sleeping bags and lay there shivering, then our eyelids would often start to droop. I, who was the cook, had to keep them open as best I could to get the food ready; but how often did I not fall asleep anyway. And when the stew was finally finished, it even happened many times that the eyes closed and I fell asleep at the very moment I had a spoon in my hand, on the way from the cup to my mouth, and the spoon fell and spilled stew over my sleeping bag.
It was on the 8th of April that we changed course and began to head south in the direction of Franz Josef’s land. After a while we met some better ice and the progress somewhat hastened.
We used to wind our watches every night before we went to sleep; but as we were very anxious to get going, our day marches sometimes became very long, and on the 12th of April there had been over 36 hours since we had last camped when we again stopped for the night. When we now came to think of our watches, it was too late; they had all stopped. We wound the watches again; but it was an unfortunate accident, as I had not had a longitude observation in three days. Of course, as soon as possible, I made a new time observation, and by accounting for the three day’s trip, a calculation that I knew had to be fairly accurate, I got a reasonable idea of the longitude we now had to be at, and thus a fairly good determination of the time of our watches in relation to Greenwich time. The only misfortune was that I could not know how the ice had drifted in these three days, and in addition the longitudes here in the north are so narrow; they are not even 4 nautical miles, and a short error in distance gives a relatively large error in longitude. To increase accuracy, I would now have to make some lunar distance measurements; but when I was about to do so, I discovered to my annoyance that the table necessary for these calculations had been mistakenly forgotten on board the ship. During our later journey, of course, we continued to make length observations with undiminished care, assuming that the error could not be very large.
What most hindered our march southwest were cracks and ravines in the ice. In the low temperatures, these were usually covered by a thin layer of ice, which made it impossible to use our kayaks to cross them. We therefore often had to make detours of several English miles, and it could sometimes take half a day, yes, sometimes even a whole day was spent getting over these chasms.
The further south we came, the more cracks were there, and they encumbered us considerably, while our supply of food dwindled, and the dogs had to be killed one after another for food for the remaining ones. At first some of the dogs showed great aversion to eating their own; but as they became hungrier, and they received no other food, they gradually became so greedy that it was difficult to hold them back as soon as a dog was killed. Their rations had to be reduced to a minimum so that the little we had could stretch and the dogs were kept alive for as long as possible. But little by little, they became pitiably worn out and thin, skinny and miserable. Many of them faithfully pulled their load until they suddenly dropped over by fatigue and were no longer able to stand on their feet. We then could then do nothing but kill them on the spot, or lay them on one of the sledges and take them with us to kill them when we encamped in the evening.
It was animal cruelty without equal, and it can still send shivers down my spine every time I think back on it. One can become quite sad when one remembers how these magnificent, faithful animals, which, for as far as they could muster, pulled for us, now lie back up there on the endless ice fields, one by one, along our path. But was there anything else we could have done? When the choice is between oneself and dogs, then it is unfortunately human nature to sacrifice the latter.
By the end of April, we had started to expect land. According to (Julius) Payer’s map, Peterman’s Land was to be at 83° N; but time passed, we approached this latitude, but we saw no land. April ended, May began, still no land; May ended, June began, still no land. And now we were all the way south at 82° 20'. The ice was getting worse and worse, the cracks had now become more numerous and cumbersome than ever before, and the ice floes themselves were also very tough to cross. Dogs, skis, and sledges went through the frozen crust and sank deep into the soft, wet snow below. The number of dogs was now also very small and grew ever smaller.
It seemed almost hopeless to continue now; but we had no choice, and therefore we forced ourselves forward as best we could, while the rations for both dogs and humans were reduced to a minimum. Oh how we longed for land now; that was all I was hoping for, and counted on. Along the coast we were sure to find smoother ice or perhaps even open waters to use with our kayaks, and all our suffering would be over. But still no land, and meanwhile we were subject to the whims of the ice.
On the 4th of June we were down to 82° 18' N, and should not be more than a few tens of kilometers from Cape Fligely on Crown Prince Rudolf’s land. On the 15th of June we had been driven to the northwest again up to 82° 26' and should then not be more than 20 English miles north of Cape Fligely. We were becoming more and more surprised because we still saw nothing, and the condition of the ice only got worse. Finally on the 22nd of June we shot a big seal and now decided to wait until the snow melted and the conditions got better, and in the meantime we lived on seal meat. A little later we also shot three bears, and we now had plenty of food, so that the last two dogs we now had left could live well on raw meat and become strong again.
It was not until July 22th that we moved on, and the conditions now became somewhat better, as most of the snow had melted away. Two days later we finally had unknown land in sight; we were then at about 82° N; but we had another hard battle to endure before we could reach the land. The current was strong, and everywhere the ice was broken up into small floes, the channels between them were usually filled with smaller pieces of crushed ice, which made it impossible to use the kayaks. It often took a long time to find transitions where we could jump from one flake of ice to another and pull the sledges after us with the constant danger of seeing them tumble into the water. We continued this battle for 14 days, and meanwhile the ice drifted with rapid speed eastwards and set us farther away from the land we had seen, and which we at first had thought we could easily get to in just a day or two.
During this time we had an experience that could have become very grave. We were just about to cross a crack with our kayaks. This was done by tying both kayaks to each other on the ice, then they were put in the water standing on the sledges, and we crawled on board them with the dogs and paddled over. This time we had just brought my kayak to the edge of the ice floe, and while I was busy with it, Johansen returned to pull his kayak next to mine. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, and Johansen called to me saying I should grab the gun. When I turned around, I saw him lying on his back with a bear over him, holding the animal by the throat. I grabbed at my rifle, which lay on the deck of the kayak; but at the same moment the boat standing on the slippery sledge slipped into the water, and the rifle with it. By mobilizing all my strength, I was able to pull the heavily loaded kayak back up, and while I was lying on my knees on the ice edge doing this and trying to reach the rifle, I heard Johansen calmly say: “You’ll have to hurry now, lest it be too late.” Yes, hurry indeed. Finally I had a grip of the rifle, and when I turned around, sitting on the ice, the bear was standing directly opposite me. In the haste of the moment, as I brought the gun to my cheek, I had cocked the right-hand barrel, which was loaded with shot; but the shot hit the bear behind its ear, and it fell over between us, dead. The only wound Johansen had received was a small tear on the back of one hand, and then the bear, when he hit him on the cheek, had scraped off the dirt there, so that he had a white stripe down his cheek for several days later. Well stocked with fresh bear meat, we now moved on.
Finally, on the 6th of August, we reached open water and could now enter our kayaks, and row towards land. It was at about 81° 40' N. and 63° E. This sad land consisted of four islands, completely covered by glaciers, which I, after an old Norwegian fairy tale, named Hvittenland, i.e. the white land, where the fairy princesses lived. (The biggest of these islands is named Eva-Liv Island today, after Eva and Liv Nansen, the author Fridtjof Nansen’s wife and daughter.)
But even though the land was barren and desolate, it still seemed to us a paradise: now all our toil and trouble in the drift ice would finally be at an end, and we could smoothly continue in our kayaks along the coast, south-westward.
When we reached this water, there was not much prospect of us needing the two dogs that were left, and since it was rather inconvenient to take them with us on the deck of the kayaks, we then had to, as sad as it was, shoot them and leave them lying back on the drift ice.
Now, we could even put sails on our tied-together kayaks and could in that way leisurely move forward mile after mile effortlessly. But our troubles with the drift ice should not be over yet. It constantly moved together, and towards the land, and closed the path ahead of us, and we again had to move over the floes until we hopefully reached open water again on the other side.
In the following days, a dense fog prevented us from seeing any land to the south or west of these islands; but on the 12th of August, when we had already left them behind us, the fog lifted a little, and a large expanse of land, or rather a number of islands, now lay before us. The islands stretched from southeast to northwest. This became more and more worrisome to us. There was nothing similar on Payer’s map. I thought we must have been very close to the longitude of the Austrian Strait; but if this was true, we should now be sailing through Wilczek Land and not see anything but the sea covered by the drift ice around us. I could also not detect any sign of the northern part of Austrian Strait and Rawlinson’s Sound, the narrow sound that was supposed to be between the northern end of Wilczek Land, Dove Gletscheen and Crown Prince Rudolf’s Land. It had completely disappeared. It is therefore hardly surprising that I came to the conclusion that there must have been some considerable error in our longitude calculations. How this could be the case was not clear to me. Perhaps the watches had been running completely wrong lately, perhaps the ice from the days immediately preceding the 12th of April, when the watches had stopped, had drifted fiercely to the west.
Whatever the case, I had to assume that we were far west of where we had thought we were. We had to either be on the unknown west coast of Franz Josef’s Land, or we must have come to the mythical land that on the maps is marked Gillies Land (now Kvitøya), which is now generally considered to be located between Franz Josef’s Land and Spitsbergen, and was at one time said to have been spotted by a hollandish skipper, Captain Gillies (sic, Cornelis Giles).
One thing, however, I was sure of, namely that by heading south and south-west, we would reach Spitsbergen, our original objective, where we could find a Norwegian fisherman who could take us home. Part rowing, part trekking over the ice, we therefore continued to the west through a sound at 81° 30'. When we had passed through this, we found a great stretch of open waters, and we rowed southwest along the northwestern coast of the islands. We searched in vain for land to the west.
The 18th of August the wind from the sea suddenly drove the ice towards the land again, and we were trapped for a whole week. After we went on, the journey only continued a few days before we were, the 26th August, again trapped at 81° 13' N. and 55 1/2° E. It was now so late in the autumn that I thought it too late to start on the long way to Spitsbergen, where it would be hard to find a ship, and where we would therefore have to overwinter without having enough time to gather supplies and make preparations.
Instead, the place we were right now seemed well suited for wintering, since it seemed to provide sufficient opportunity for hunting, and we considered it safest to rest here and prepare for the winter. But it wasn’t much we had. Two guns, some cartridges, and four hands, that was about it. Yes, we also had a good, large knife, as well as a smaller one.
We immediately started shooting walrus in order to get blubber for fuel and to get skins for the roof of our cabin. For two men, however, it was difficult work to handle these great animals. To drag them on land or up on the ice, we soon had to give up, and the only option was then to sit on top of them in the water while we flayed the skin and fat off, during which process we got our only set of clothes completely drenched in oil and blood, so they were awful to wear in the winter as they were very little suited to protect us from its cold and storms. There was also no shortage of bears and we shot them for food for the winter.
After securing a preliminary supply of necessities, we started working on a cabin. We dragged stones together, dug ourselves as best we could into the ground, and then built a hut of stone, gravel, and moss. Luckily we found a piece of driftwood that had been thrown up on the beach. The log was about a foot thick; there was a root on it which had to be cut off so that we could get it loose; but to cut it with our little axe, which was only a few inches wide, took a day. Finally we got the log on top of the hut like a beam, and then we stretched the walrus skin across it from wall to wall and weighed the sides down with stones. If we now covered it well with moss and snow, we got the hut fairly insulated and cozy.
Building a chimney on this walrus skin was not easy. The only material we had there was icy snow; but from that we built a quite impressive pipe which provided a good draft. However, it is definitely not a material that I would recommend for people who have access to more refractory stones, and our chimney had to be renewed one to three times during our stay.
In this little cottage we spent the winter. It was so tall that in one place I could stand inside almost upright. It was 10 feet long, and so wide that when we lay across it, our legs touched one wall and our heads the other. But considering the circumstances, we had it well here. For heating and lighting, we used walrus blubber and bear fat. Meat and fat from bears was our only food. In the evening we fried it in a large aluminium frying pan, and in the morning we ate it cooked. Our bed and sleeping bag we made of bearskin, and to keep it warmer we both slept in one and the same sleeping bag. The hut was low and, as mentioned, half buried in the ground. It was soon covered with fresh snow, and was so well protected from the violent winter storms which still raged above us, and which one day made off with Johansen’s kayak. After a long hike we found the kayak again far up the hill by the mountainside and were glad that we had not lost it completely. Another day the storm ran off with my sled down towards the sea. A third day it blew away our skis that had been firmly stuck in the snow outside.
With the help of our lamps, we were able to keep the temperature at about the freezing point in the middle of the room, while it was of course lower by the walls. These were covered with a thick layer of frost and ice, which in the lamplight gave them a splendid marble-like appearance, so that in our happiest moments we could dream that we were in halls of marble.
We had very little to do. Oh how much we longed for just a book to read, because a calendar log and a logarithmic table is not an entertaining read in the long run. Most of the time we spent sleeping, and if anyone should still have the old-fashioned notion that scurvy is due to lack of movement, then we are living proof of the opposite. Our bed, on which we lay for at least 20 hours out of 24, consisted of heavy boulders. We never managed to arrange them evenly enough, and our most important occupation throughout the winter was therefore to twist and turn the body in the most varied of positions to find the one in which the hard rock surface was the least noticeable. It never got better, and it happened that at times we developed sores on our hips from lying down.
From November we were not visited by bears until March, and our only company in the winter was some foxes that frequently sat on the roof of our hut, and we could hear how they constantly gnawed on our frozen bear thighs up there. It often made us dream that we sat cozily at home and heard the rats in the attic above us, and we in no way envied them for taking a bit of our abundance of food. We could easily have shot them, but decided not to. We did not have enough ammunition for it; we thought bears were the minimum we should get in return for our cartridges. To provide some insight into how we felt, I will, as an example of one day, read out a description that I find in my diary of Christmas Eve 1895:
«Tuesday, December 24, 1895.
-24°C., 768 mm, cum. 2.07 m.
So this is Christmas Eve, it is cold and windy outside, and it is cold and windy inside, how desolate it is. We will surely never have a Christmas Eve like this again. Now they ring in the Christmas holiday at home, I can hear the bells ringing through the air from the church towers, how beautiful it sounds. Now the lights on the Christmas trees are turned on, the flocks of children are let in and dance around in jubilant joy. I must hold a Christmas party for the children when I return. Now is the time of joy and there is celebration in every cottage at home.
But we also hold our own meagre celebration. Johansen has turned his shirt inside out, and he has also switched the outermost layer with the innermost. I have done the same, but also changed my underpants for the other pair which I had twisted up in hot water — and then I kept my body washed with a quarter cup of hot water and the discarded underpants as a sponge and towel. Now I feel like a whole new human being, the clothes do not stick to the body like before.
In the evening we then had fish gratin of fishmeal, and cornmeal with cod liver oil as butter, fried and cooked just dry, and for dessert we had bread fried in cod liver oil. Early tomorrow we will have chocolate and bread.»
On the whole, though, the winter exceeded our expectations. Our health was excellent, and if we had had some books, some flour, and some sugar, we had thought we could have lived as gentlemen.
“But oh dear, did you not become enemies?” Johansen was asked by an acquaintance when he came home, “I do not understand that two men who are so isolated can endure each other for so long.”
“Oh no,” replied Johansen, “we were not really enemies; the only thing was that I have a habit of snoring when I sleep, and then Nansen would kick me in the back, because we lay so close together there in the sleeping bag, you see.”
Finally spring came with sunshine and birds. I remember so well the first evening a few days before the sun appeared over the horizon, when we stood there outside our little hut and saw some little dovekies rush past us along the mountainside to the north. It was like the first greeting from life and spring. Many more followed, and soon, after the sun had come, the mountains around us swarmed with these little summer guests, who cheered us up with their cheerful chirping.
Now things became busy, as we prepared to break up camp and head south and over to Spitsbergen. However, this preparation was not so easy. Our clothes were so worn and soaked with grease that they were anything but comfortable for a trip of this kind. We therefore sewed each of us new sets of clothes from two wool blankets that we had with us. We tried to wash our underwear as best we could in every possible way; but I had never before understood what a wonderful invention soap really is. It was hard enough to keep oneself clean; but we managed this to a certain extent, partly by scraping ourselves with a knife, partly also by rubbing ourselves in with bear blood and fat and then rubbing it off again with a ball of moss. But this method could not be applied to the clothes. In our despair we found no other way but to boil them well in our pot and then afterwards scrape them with a knife. In that way we got so much fat off them that it was possible to travel with them. A sleeping bag for the trip we sewed ourselves from light bear skins. We made provisions from raw bear meat and fat, and fuel from cod liver oil and lard, and in addition we had our bags and ammunition and were sure to find game on the road when the supply of food we took with us ran out.
Finally on the 19th of May we were done, and got started on the way south. Partly we now pulled our gear over the ice, partly we found open waters that we could row in or sail in, partly we got flat ice and favourable winds so we could set sail on our sleds and standing on our skis in front of them we could now glide merrily day after day southward through a wide strait. On this trip we met a lot of walruses lying on the ice, and they were so unafraid of us that we could go to them and photograph them from all sides.
On the 12th of June we finally reached the south side of the archipelago we had passed through, and found there very open water, which stretched west along the south coast of the archipelago. The wind was still favourable. By tying our two kayaks together, setting up our bamboo pole as a mast and hoisting up our sledge sails, we were now able to sail on the open water along the coast, and made good speed. When the wind calmed down or became less favourable, we took our sails down and rowed. In this way we began to get so far that we could see the southwestern tip of the archipelago, and rejoiced at the thought of being able to get over to Spitsbergen where we could be sure of being on board a returning Norwegian ship in a few weeks .
As we walked along this coast, we noticed how strikingly well the geographical latitude I found with my observations matched the latitude that (Benjamin) Leigh Smith had found for the southwest coast of Franz Joseph’s land. It was also strange how well this coast in its appearance seemed to agree with Leigh-Smith’s map, and I began to get a suspicion that we were still, after all, on Franz Josef’s Land and had come south through a wide strait that cut through Zichy Land which was considered by Payer to be coherent, but which in reality here dissolved into a number of small islands.
During our journey along this coast we had a couple of accidents, however, luckily all ended well. The first day, when we had sailed along the ice off land, we made land in the evening to get an overview of how things looked in the direction we were going, further west. As we walked up the ice, we moored the kayaks with a strong line that we thought was completely safe.
While we were a short distance away on top of a mound, however, we discovered that our moored boats had come loose and drifted away with the wind, fast. All our provisions were on board, our rifles, our ammunition and all our equipment, and we were left there on the ice completely devoid of any means by which we could take up the fight for survival in these indefinable surroundings, indeed we did not even have as much as a knife on hand. Our only hope was to reach our kayaks, and I had no choice but to jump into the water to try to catch up while swimming. It was a fight for our lives; and the kayaks, with their high rigs, seemed to drift faster with the wind than I could swim. The icy water gradually numbed the whole body, and it became more and more difficult for me to use my limbs. At last, however, I reached the side of the boat; but it was only by exerting my last remnant of energy that I finally succeeded in getting on board, and we were saved.
Two days later my kayak was attacked by a walrus. These monsters had several times tried to put an end to us by suddenly ducking under water and ramming the kayak with a violent blow from below, which could easily have overturned it. But this had so far been unsuccessful for them. This time the attack was fiercer. The walrus suddenly shot up from the water beside my kayak and tried to overturn it by placing one of its flippers over the edge. At the same time it thrust its long fangs through the bottom and tore a gash in it with a length of 5–6 inch (12–16 cm), luckily without hitting me with its teeth. I gave the walrus a blow to its head as hard as I could. It rose a little in the water, threatening to overrun me, but in the next moment it disappeared as quickly as it had come. The water flowed into the kayak, and it quickly began to sink. At the last moment, however, I managed to get the kayak onto a floe, and I got onto the ice safely.
The next day was spent repairing the kayak, drying clothes, photographic apparatus, instruments, etc., which had all been soaked in water. Fortunately, however, no permanent damage was caused.
As we, the following day, were intending to continue our journey, and just as I was preparing lunch before we set off, I climbed a small buildup of ice near us to look inlands. As I stood there, gusts of wind from shore carried a confused noise from the flocks of auks and other seabirds that lived on the mountain. While I was listening to all these bird voices, I was suddenly startled by hearing quite a different sound, so similar to the barking of a dog that for a moment it seemed to me that there could be no doubt that that was it. Then it faded, came back weakly, and for some time I hovered between belief and uncertainty, until finally the sound became so clear that there was no longer any doubt about it. I jumped down, roused Johansen in the sleeping bag, and told him I had heard dogs. He stood up, rubbed his eyes, didn’t want to believe me, and it was impossible to convince him that it really was so. In the meantime, I inhaled my breakfast, put on my skis and set off as fast as I could.
After a while I saw a man coming to meet me, and thus followed my meeting with (Frederick George) Jackson which has been so often described that I shall not go into it here.
(This meeting was quite famous at the time, that’s why Nansen skips talking about it. But not so these days, which is a shame because it is such a miraculous chance meeting. I will therefore insert Jackson’s account of it, from his book “A thousand days in the Arctic”):
“Just after dinner, (Albert Borlase) Armitage came rushing in to tell me that through his field-glass he could see a man on the floe to the S.S.E. of Cape Flora, about four miles off. I could hardly believe it, such a thing seemed utterly impossible, and thought he had mistaken a walrus on the ice for a man; but having got a glass I could see he was correct. I could also make out somewhat indistinctly a staff or mast, with another man apparently standing near it close to the water’s edge. I got a gun with all speed, and firing off a shot on the bank to endeavor to arrest the stranger’s attention, I started off to meet him coming across the ice, having placed Armitage on the roof of the hut to direct my course.
On our approaching each other, about three miles distant from the land, I saw a tall man on ski with roughly made clothes, and an old felt hat on his head. He was covered with oil and grease, and black from head to foot. I at once concluded from his wearing ski that he was no English sailor, but that he must be a man from some Norwegian walrus sloop who had come to grief, and wintered somewhere on Franz-Joseph Land in very rough circumstances. His hair was very long and dirty, his complexion appeared to be fair, but dirt prevented me from being sure on this point, and his beard was straggly and dirty also.
We shook hands heartily, and I expressed the greatest pleasure at seeing him. I inquired if he had a ship. No, he replied, my ship is not here, rather sadly I thought, and then he remarked, in reply to my question, that he had only one companion, who was at the floe edge.
It then struck me that his features, in spite of the black grease and long hair and beard, resembled Nansen, whom I had met once in London before he started in 1893, and I exclaimed:
Aren’t you Nansen?
To which he replied
Yes, I am Nansen.
With much heartiness I shook him warmly by the hand and said,
By Jove, I’m glad to see you, and congratulated him on his safe arrival. Then I inquired,
Where have you come from?
He gave me a brief sketch of what had occurred, and replied,
I left the Fram in 84° north latitude and 102° east longitude after drifting for two years, and I reached the 86° 15 parallel and have now come here.
I congratulate you most heartily, I answered; you have made a deuced good trip of it, and I am awfully glad to be the first person to congratulate you. Again we shook hands.”
(Back to Nansen’s writings:)
With Jackson and his men we were received with a hospitality and cordiality that is difficult to describe, and instead of going on to Spitsbergen we could not resist their kind invitation to stay here and wait for the “Windward” to go home with her. I shall never forget how lovely it was, when we got to Jackson’s cozy house, to have a hot bath. It was certainly not possible to get clean the first time; but the bath did bring a feeling of cleanliness, and then to get nice clean and soft woollen clothes, to be shaved and to have my hair cut. It had been a long time in the year that had passed since we left “Fram”. And then to have a good dinner, coffee, cigars, port wine, and last, but not least, the latest literature; well, it was two years old, but still new to us. In short, we felt transported, as if by magic, to the midst of civilization. The attention and care that all members of the expedition showed us was touching and made an unforgettable impression on us.
Here we also came to understand that we had in fact come to Franz Josef Land, that we had travelled across the country visited by Payer, that our watches had not been so wrong after all, the accident was just that Payer had made a mistake in his map and had extended Wilczek Land towards one degree of latitude too far to the north. He had, when he came there, weather with very poor visibility, and what he had taken for land had probably been banks of fog which had lain low above the ice, and which, when it glistens in the sunshine, can often have a deceptive resemblance to snowy glaciers.
It was the 17th of June when we arrived at Jackson’s station on Cape Flora. The time passed pleasantly for us, with all kinds of entertainment, partly of a scientific nature, partly calculating observations from the trip, making maps of our route, etc. etc., partly also hunting. Finally, when 6 weeks had passed, I was woken up one night at the end of July by Mr. Jackson with the message that «Windward» had arrived. The cheers and shouts of joy with which the news of our arrival at Cape Flora was also received on board the “Windward” were further proof of the sympathy which prevails between the English and Norwegian people.
Soon the supplies that the ship brought to Jackson’s expedition were distributed, and finally on the 7th of August “Windward” was able to leave Cape Flora again to set course for home, with four participants of Jackson’s expedition and with two participants of the Norwegian polar expedition on board. Thanks to the skill of the magnificent Captain Brown, we had an exceptionally short and pleasant voyage home, and on board this ship we were shown so much kindness on the part of the captain and crew, and so much English hospitality, that these days shall certainly not be forgotten, neither by Johansen nor me.
On the 13th of August, six days after I had left Cape Flora, the “Windward” anchored in Vardø, and we were able to telegraph home that two participants in the Norwegian polar expedition had arrived. I was undeniably reassured when I got home and learned that “Fram” had not yet arrived; for if “Fram” had come before us, I was afraid that our friends at home would lose all hope of ever seeing us again. I immediately telegraphed to the King of Norway and the Norwegian government that everything was well on the “Fram” when I left it, and that I fully expected that the ship and the remaining members of the expedition would shortly return home in good condition.
When Johansen and I had left «Windward» in Vardø and arrived at Hammerfest with a Norwegian steamboat, I was quite astonished to find an elegant, white English pleasure yacht festively adorned from top to deck. I put the binoculars to my eyes, and who else should I discover on board other than my friend Sir George Baden-Powell, who had gone out to search for us. Hospitably, he immediately put his yacht at my disposal. Johansen and I moved on board, in the evening my wife also came, and on board we spent a few glorious days, surrounded by all the comfort that an English pleasure yacht offers.
Great was also the joy when in Hammerfest on the morning of August 20th I received a telegram from Skjærvø. It was Sverdrup, reporting that “Fram” had arrived there during the night and that everyone on board was safe. It was a notification so strange that I found it almost impossible to believe. It all seemed to me for a long time like a sweet dream, which would have been lovely if it had really been true. But it was true, and the very next day I was able to shake the hands of all of «Fram»’s stout men, and the expedition crew was again fully reunited.
With a few words, before I finish, I must explain the travels of “Fram” from the point after Johansen and I had left it. In the first summer, it moved relatively straight due west; but towards the end of June the ice began to crack around it, and a rift formed directly behind its stern. More cracks appeared in various other directions too, and soon the ship was almost completely freed of the ice. With some explosives, the last flake that was attached underneath was removed.
In the ice that had surrounded the “Fram”, you could see a precise cast of the «Fram»’s sides after all those nights in its ice skin. After a short time, “Fram” was again brought to a safe harbor between the ice, to freeze once more and spend its last winter up there.
On July 22, 1895, “Fram” was at 84° 50' N and 73° E. During the latter part of the summer, the south-westerly and westerly winds stopped, which even led “Fram” back into a north-easterly direction. It wasn’t until October that it blew west again, and for the rest of the autumn and the winter it blew faster than ever. Oddly enough, “Fram” reached almost as far north as Johansen and I had been, as, on the 16th of October, they were at 85° 57' N and 66° E.
As they went further west, the drift again began to veer southward, and in the middle of February 1896, “Fram” was at 84° 20' N and 24° E. Now the southerly wind came and stopped the ship in its tracks for several months, until it finally began to drift south again in May, and on the 19th of July they were down to 83° 14' N and 14° E.
Here began the work of blasting “Fram” out of the ice, and now, under Captain Sverdrup’s expert leadership, the greatest work that had probably yet been done in the drift ice was carried out, as “Fram” made its way straight from this high northern latitude and completely out into open waters north of Spitsbergen through the most difficult polar ice that any ship had yet attempted, and covered the longest distance any ship had yet travelled in ice. And strangely enough, on the 13th of August, the very same day that Johansen and I had arrived at Vardø, “Fram” finally got completely free of the ice and out into open water.
The first news that greeted them when they met people was that nothing had been heard from the two comrades who had left them in the spring of 1895, and the atmosphere on board became sad and mournful. It was not expected there that we would have to spend the winter for a year on Franz Josef’s land; one was sure that either we must be near home that same year, or we must have succumbed, and now there was little hope left of ever seeing us again.
Therefore, the joy was all the greater when “Fram” pulled into Skjærvø in Norway on the night of August 20, and the first message that was brought to them was that Johansen and Nansen had reached Vardø exactly a week before them. Thus every man, as well as ship and equipment, after three years in the ice, had come home safely. The Norwegian polar expedition had finished its task, and the journey was over.
What has this expedition yielded? Yes, this is a question that it is still too early to answer, as an adequate answer will only be able to be given after the entire large material of observations and measurements that “Fram” brought with her is fully studied by the various professionals; but this much I think I can say at the moment: That with the help of our experiences, mankind will now be able to form a fairly complete picture of the physical conditions and nature up there in the regions that surround the North Pole, and which until now was considered close to inaccessible. They will understand from these experiences how the Arctic Circle consists of a great deep sea, covered with ice, which is still in motion. The immovable ice cap, which one would previously tend to draw on the northern tips of our globes, has disappeared. Everything is in motion, the whole ocean drifts ceaselessly from one side of the hemisphere to the other, it is all part of the eternal change in the eternal cycle of nature, and this ice is as mobile and unstable as the theories of man.
