“Death or the west coast of Greenland!” A tall, fair Norwegian made
this resolution in November, 1887, and one year later the great
ice-bound continent of Greenland, the “Sahara of the North,” was
crossed for the first time. It was Fridtjof Nansen who accomplished
this feat, in the face of almost insurmountable difficulties and
terrible dangers. When he first proposed his plan famous scientists and
seasoned explorers laughed at him. But Nansen was determined. Though
his own government would not help him, a wealthy Dane had enough faith
in the “madman,” as he was called, to advance him $1,350 for his daring
enterprise.
It was only after the greatest difficulty that Nansen and his party
reached the east coast of Greenland at all in order to begin their land
journey over the continent. They had to cross an ice stream ten miles
wide to do it. Finally, however, they reached Umivik, and started on
their hazardous journey across the desert of ice. Escapes from death
were many. One day when they were more than halfway across Nansen was
steering the first of the two sledges, which was rushing along under
full sail.
“It was already growing dusk,” writes the great explorer himself,
“when I suddenly saw in the general obscurity something dark lying
right in our path. I took it for some ordinary irregularity in the
snow, and unconcernedly steered straight ahead. The next moment, when
I was within no more than a few yards, I found it to be something very
different, and in an instant swung round sharp, and brought the sledge
up to the wind. It was high time too; for we were on the very edge of
a chasm broad enough to swallow comfortably sledges, steersmen, and
passengers. Another second, and we should have disappeared for good and
all.”
Finally the west coast of Greenland was reached, on September 29, 1888,
and the supposedly impossible had been accomplished.
Fridtjof Nansen was born near Christiania in Norway on October 10,
1861. His first Arctic voyage was made in 1882 in a sealing vessel.
After he had successfully crossed Greenland he was appointed curator of
the Museum of Comparative Anatomy in Christiania University. It was in
1893 that he made his thrilling attempt to reach the North Pole.
He had a ship built, the Fram, especially to withstand ice pressure,
and sailed to the Polar Sea in the neighborhood of the New Siberian
Islands. He figured that he would be drifted by a current over the Pole
and would come out on the east side of Greenland. But, though he found
that the current was in nearly the right direction, it would not carry
him over the Pole; so he and one companion left the Fram at latitude
83° 59´ and started for the North Pole on foot.
On April 8, 1895, when they had reached 86° 14´, “farther north” than
anyone up to that time had reached, they found that they would have to
turn back. They managed to reach Franz Josef Land, where on June 17,
1896, they met part of another Arctic expedition.
When Nansen returned to Norway he was showered with medals and other
honors. In 1905 he was appointed Norwegian minister at London.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 37
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
[Illustration: DUKE OF THE ABRUZZI]
_The Duke of the Abruzzi_