Our Correspondent from Tromso

In the Tromso harbour, the Polar Museum occupies the premises of what used to be the customs house 200 years ago. M/S Polstjerna is moored outside, with its brilliant thirty-three year career as a sealer and base for scientific data gathering in the Artic.

The Fram starting from Oslo

The Norse love nature, but are not fussy as much as ecologists, so the destiny of seals and whales does not really touch their hearts more than that of pigs or chicken. Inside you will find the “Nansen floor”, including a whole range of finds from one of the most incredible human adventures, Fridtjof Nansen’s attempt to reach the North Pole, by see and by land, through an expedition which lasted three years.

The arrangement of this collection in the Tromso museum is a bit far-fetched: Nansen’s ship Fram (literally: Forward), indeed left from Tromso, but this town represented one of its last stops: it was neither the first nor the lasts; it all started in Oslo, which in those years was called Cristiania; an almost immediate landing took place here, after which the adventure made a fresh start, a bit further to the north, from the Vardoi northern headland on 21 July 1893.
Between Tromso and Vardoi is the North Cape, which now hosts some sort of tourist resort connected to the headland. When the wind blows, you may actually be swept away, but the scene is spectacular, as if you were standing on the highest peak of the West facing the Artic Ocean.
The first man who set foot here, in mid seventeenth century, was an Italian priest, Francesco Negri: every time we speak ironically about our provinciality, we should give some thought to the fact that, up to the end of the Eighteenth century, we used to rush around the world quite a lot and, while we are on this subject, it appears that the Norwegians dedicated a monument to the Duke of Abruzzi and to Captain Nobile, whereas we are only left with a faded interest for them.

Fram, which was built exactly 110 years ago, has given its name to a museum located on the Bygdoy Peninsula in Oslo. Once towed and beached, the structure which today surrounds it and protects it was built. You can board it and visit it, see the tiny cabins which were occupied by Nansen and by the 12 men making up his crew, and which were subsequently used by Amundsen to reach the South Pole. This was the first ship built to successfully sail among ice blocks, created by a genius in boat construction, called Colin Archer. Archer laid out to profit one of Nansen’s ideas, a rather obvious solution if seen with hindsight: to avoid being crushed by pressure, he thought the ship would need a keel that could avoid the pressure itself, by rising above the ice blocks, rather than getting stuck in between. And this was in fact achieved. Nansen is a popular hero in Norway and it could not be otherwise.


The expedition Group

The Fram adventure and his being the first explorer who reached by land, 86 degrees and 14 minutes north, the nearest point to the Pole which had ever been touched, coincided with one of the most frustrating times of Norway’s history in search of itself. In 1984, its attempt to break away from Sweden had harshly failed following Sweden’s reaction, and Norway was in need for somebody to let the world know that it was able to play a lone hand. Nansen, with his effort, proved to be that very person. Despite the hagiography created about him and his men, he was not an easy person; the Fram adventure was not idyllic, as far as modus vivendi is concerned, nor was it lightened up by mutual respect or appreciation. The ship’s doctor, Enrik Blessing, became morphine addict during the voyage; the captain of the ship, Otto Sverdrup, bore hard Nansen’s interferences, since he was not a sailor and the crew members, who had no interest in the scientific significance of the expedition, called its deviser “Mr Himself”, and kept their distance from him


Nansen and Captain Otto Svendrup, on the right

For three years, the Fram drifted across the Artic Ocean, which seemed to support Nansens’s idea as to the existence of an artic East-West current, moving from Siberia to the North Pole and therefore to Greenland. A drifting voyage full of boredom, exhaustion and disappointment, which in the long-run proved more dangerous than the perils of ice which were brilliantly overcome by the ship. “I feel I must stop this inertia, this wait, and do something”, the explorer wrote in his diary. “The North Pole Game”, which Norwegian children used to play in those days, turned the expedition into a throw at dice: it simply meant moving one step forward of backward across the board. There were no unforeseen events.

Fergus Fleming, who has now written "Ninety Degrees North. The quest for the North Pole" (Granta Books), has outlined a genuine picture of Nansen, locked up in his own world, in no way prone to friendship, obsessed by his theories and by the goal he had set for himself. Great men are hardly ever popular: they don’t really care about this aspect; they have other things to think about. And Nansen was certainly a great man. He was the type of person who is fond of amateurism, which he viewed as a spiritual feature. He was a sportsman, an artist, a scientist, a good teacher, a cleaver drawer, a curious, determined and above all instinctive person. When the Fram drift started to feel a never-ending journey, he decided he would reach the Pole on foot. He left the ship on 14 March 1895 with only one mate, Hialmar Johansen. They covered 500 kilometres in five months, they reached the northernmost point a human being had ever reached, they wintered and then left for the south. In the Land of Francesco Giuseppe they met with a British expedition and finally, on 3 August 1896, they landed at Vadso, in Northern Norway.
One week later, the FRAM, which had got afloat again from the ice pack near the Spitzbergen, landed at Skiervoy. At thirty-five years of age, Nansen found he was the most famous man in the world.



He subsequently measured up to this first achievement. He played a leading role in the independence of Norway, he was ambassador in London, after World War One he headed the Commission of the League of Nations for the repatriation of the prisoners of war, he led a project of the International Red Cross for conveying aids to the Soviet Union, which was suffering from the post-war and post-revolution famine, in his capacity as High Commissioner for the Refugees, he invented the Nansen passport, whereby he granted them a status, he organised the transfer of half a million people (including Greek and Turkish people) back to their respective countries of origin, he embraced the Armenian people’s cause and won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Looking at Norway’s being and wellbeing, we appreciate the idea of being able to find in this figure a point of contact, self-realisation, care for other people, a non-chauvinistic nationalism and an opening towards different cultures.
Sometimes future consists in being able to look back.
Translated by interpres sas

Triumphal welcome in Oslo