Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In 1893 Fridtjof Nansen set sail for the North Pole in the Fram, a ship specially designed to be frozen into the polar ice cap, withstand its crushing pressures and drift to the North Pole as a scientific experiment to prove that the polar cap was a sheet of ice floating on the oceans. Experts said that such a mission was tantamount to suicide. His disappearance for three years created such a media sensation that when he was found paddling back to civilisation dressed in walrus skin his stirring first-person account of the expedition's historic achievements became an instant international bestseller, the first of its kind
Synopsis
Like a modern Viking, 32-year-old Nansen set sail from Norway in 1893 to reach the North Pole. Experts warned him that his voyage was tantamount to suicide. Compact and nimble, his ship the Fram was equiped with the latest tools to gather scientific data. As yet untested, the ship was specially built to withstand the relentless pressure of the polar ice cap. To complete the final leg, Nansen was to strike out into the polar desert by sledge.
Nansen became an overnight sensation when - having been given up for dead - he emerged three years later, alive. His single-minded struggle against snow drifts, ice floes, polar bears, scurvy, gnawing hunger and the loneliness of the polar night would inspire young explorers such as Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen a generation later to make new conquests. Even Sigmund Freud was enthused.
Today, Nansen's adventure journal is a rare, heroic window on an untamed Arctic world still untouched by man and rising temperatures.