The Great Roald Amundsen

Wikipedia:

Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen (16 July 1872 – 18 June 1928) was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He was a key figure of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

. . . Owing to Amundsen’s numerous significant accomplishments in polar exploration, many places in both the Arctic and Antarctic are named after him. The Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, operated by the United States Antarctic Program, was jointly named in honour of Amundsen and his British rival Robert Falcon Scott.[52] The Amundsen crater on the Moon was named after him; the rim of the crater is being considered by NASA as a potential landing location for their Artemis III lunar lander.

Trapped History - Roald Amundsen:

He’s the greatest explorer the world has ever known – the first to navigate the fabled North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the first to reach the South Pole, the first to the impossible North. But how much do we really know about Roald Amundsen?

More precisely, how much do we want to know?

Surely, the tangled heroics of Scott of the Antarctic and of Ernest Shackleton make for more exciting reading than the careful, boring tales of Amundsen? They faced crises with fortitude, didn’t they – while he simply, well, succeeded?

That is, perhaps, the point. So join Oswin and Carla on our enthralling season finale as we dissect ‘The Hero’s Journey’ and the ‘Action Fallacy’ in the company of Professor Martin Gutmann – and find out why we all deserve to know more about Amundsen and his unseen leadership.

An excerpt from, “The South Pole : an account of the Norwegian Antarctic expedition in the “Fram,” 1910-1912″ by Roald Amundsen, translated by A. G. Chater, 1912, published by John Murray. Introduction by Fridtjof Nansen: 

When the explorer comes home victorious, everyone goes out to cheer him. We are all proud of his achievement — proud on behalf of the nation and of humanity. We think it is a new feather in our cap, and one we have come by cheaply.

How many of those who join in the cheering were there when the expedition was fitting out, when it was short of bare necessities, when support and assistance were most urgently wanted ? Was there then any race to be first? At such a time the leader has usually found himself almost alone ; too often he has had to confess that his greatest difficulties were those he had to overcome at home before he could set sail. So it was with Columbus, and so it has been with many since his time.

So it was, too, with Roald Amundsen — not only the first time, when he sailed in the Gjda with the double object of discovering the Magnetic North Pole and of making the North- West Passage, but this time again, when in 1910 he left the fjord on his great expedition in the Fram, to drift right across the North Polar Sea. What anxieties that man has gone through, which might have been spared him if there had been more appreciation on the part of those who had it in their power to make things easier ! And Amundsen had then shown what stuff he was made of: both the great objects of the Gjoa’s expedition were achieved. He has always reached the goal he has aimed at, this man who sailed his little yacht over the whole Arctic Ocean, round the north of America, on the course that had been sought in vain for four hundred years. If he staked his life and abilities, would it not have been natural if we had been proud of having such a man to support ?

But was it so ?

For a long time he struggled to complete his equipment. Money was still lacking, and little interest was shown in him and his work, outside the few who have always helped so far as was in their power. He himself gave everything he possessed in the world. But this time, as last, he nevertheless had to put to sea loaded with anxieties and debts, and, as before, he sailed out quietly on a summer night.

Autumn was drawing on. One day there came a letter from him. In order to raise the money he could not get at home for his North Polar expedition he was going to the South Pole first. People stood still — did not know what to say. This was an unheard-of thing, to make for the North Pole by way of the South Pole !

To make such an immense and entirely new addition to his plans without asking leave ! Some thought it grand ; more thought it doubtful ; but there were many who cried out that it was inadmissible, disloyal — nay, there were some who wanted to have him stopped. But nothing of this reached him. He had steered his course as he himself had set it, without looking back.

Then by degrees it was forgotten, and everyone went on with his own affairs. The mists were upon us day after day, week after week — the mists that are kind to little men and swallow up all that is great and towers above them.

Suddenly a bright spring day cuts through the bank of fog. There is a new message. People stop again and look up. High above them shines a deed, a man. A wave of joy runs through the souls of men ; their eyes are bright as the flags that wave about them.

Why ? On account of the great geographical discoveries, the important scientific results ? Oh no ; that will come later, for the few specialists. This is something all can understand. A victory of human mind and human strength over the dominion and powers of Nature ; a deed that lifts us above the grey monotony of daily life ; a view over shining plains, with lofty mountains against the cold blue sky, and lands covered by ice-sheets of inconceivable extent ; a vision of longvanished glacial times ; the triumph of the living over the stiffened realm of death. There is a ring of steeled, purposeful human will — through icy frosts, snowstorms, and death.

For the victory is not due to the great inventions of the present day and the many new appliances of every kind. The means used are of immense antiquity, the same as were known to the nomad thousands of years ago, when he pushed forward across the snow-covered plains of Siberia and Northern Europe. But everything, great and small, was thoroughly thought out, and the plan was splendidly executed. It is the man that matters, here as everywhere.

Like everything great, it all looks so plain and simple. Of course, that is just as it had to be, we think.

Apart from the discoveries and experiences of earlier explorers — which, of course, were a necessary condition of success — both the plan and its execution are the ripe fruit of Norwegian life and experience in ancient and modern times. The Norwegians’ daily winter life in snow and frost, our peasants’ constant use of ski and ski-sledge in forest and mountain, our sailors’ yearly whaling and sealing life in the Polar Sea, our explorers’ journeys in the Arctic regions — it was all this, with the dog as a draught animal borrowed from the primitive races, that formed the foundation of the plan and rendered its execution possible — when the man appeared.

Therefore, when the man is there, it carries him through all difficulties as if they did not exist ; every one of them has been foreseen and encountered in advance. Let no one come and prate about luck and chance. (Amundsen’s luck is that of the strong man who looks ahead).

How like him and the whole expedition is his telegram home — as simple and straightforward as if it concerned a holiday tour in the mountains. It speaks of what is achieved, not of their hardships. Every word a manly one. That is the mark of the right man, quiet and strong.

It is still too early to measure the extent of the new discoveries, but the cablegram has already dispersed the mists so far that the outlines are beginning to shape themselves. That fairyland of ice, so different from all other lands, is gradually rising out of the clouds.

In this wonderful world of ice Amundsen has found his own way. From first to last he and his companions have traversed entirely unknown regions on their ski, and there are not many expeditions in history that have brought under the foot of man so long a range of country hitherto unseen by human eye. People thought it a matter of course that he would make for Beardmore Glacier, which Shackleton had discovered, and by that route come out on to the high snow plateau near the Pole, since there he would be sure of getting forward. We who knew Amundsen thought it would be more like him to avoid a place for the very reason that it had been trodden by others. Happily we were right. Not at any point does his route touch that of the Englishmen — except by the Pole itself.

This is a great gain to research. When in a year’s time we have Captain Scott back safe and sound with all his discoveries and observations on the other route, Amundsen’s results will greatly increase in value, since the conditions will then be illuminated from two sides. The simultaneous advance towards the Pole from two separate points was precisely the most fortunate thing that could happen for science. The region investigated becomes so much greater, the discoveries so many more, and the importance of the observations is more than doubled, often multiplied many times. Take, for instance, the meteorological conditions : a single series of observations from one spot no doubt has its value, but if we get a simultaneous series from another spot in the same region, the value of both becomes very much greater, because we then have an opportunity of understanding the movements of the atmosphere. And so with other investigations. Scott’s expedition will certainly bring back rich and important results in many departments, but the value of his observations will also be enhanced when placed side by side with Amundsen’s.

Video Title: Roald Amundsen and the Golden Age of Arctic Exploration | Mossback’s Northwest. Source: Cascade PBS. Date Published: October 7, 2022. Description:

Norwegian Roald Amundsen was perhaps the greatest star of the so-called “golden age” of Arctic and Antarctic exploration and he used Seattle as a base for his efforts in the Arctic. And he left artifacts behind: parts of the airship and, at the National Nordic Museum, his snowshoes, are relics of his expedition.