Nansen

Nansen, FRIDTJOF, Arctic voyager, was born, the son of an official, 10th October 1861, near Christiania, and studied there, as well as later at Naples. In 1882 he made a voyage into the Arctic regions in the sealer Viking, and on his return was made keeper of the natural history department of the museum at Bergen. In the summer of 1888 he made an adventurous journey, accompanied by two Norwegians and three Lapps, across Greenland from east to west. He described the voyage in The First Crossing of Greenland (trans. 1890). But his great achievement was the partial accomplishment of his scheme for reaching the North Pole by letting himself and his ship get frozen into the ice north of Siberia and drift with a current setting towards Greenland. He actually started in the Fram, built for the purpose, in August 1893, reached the New Siberian islands in September, made fast to an ice-floe, and gradually drifted north to 84° 4' on 3d March 1895. There, accompanied by Johansen, he left the Fram and pushed across the ice, reaching the highest latitude yet attained, 86° 14' N., on 7th April. The two adventurers wintered in Franz Josef Land, and on 17th June 1896 met the Jackson-Harmsworth expedition there. Nansen's arrival in August in Norway, followed by the Fram, viâ Spitzbergen, was made the occasion of national rejoicings. He received £4000 for his account of the expedition from the Daily Chronicle, and £10,000 for his book on the subject. See the Life by Brogger and Rolfsen (trans. by Archer, 1896).