Fridtjof Nansen, our foremost living Arctic worthy, a devoted scientific enquirer and a profound student of Arctic history, had always taken a broad view of the Arctic problem, mainly with reference to currents and ocean depths. But the discovery of articles on the coast of Greenland which had drifted westward from the wreck of the Jeanette off the Liakhov Islands, first gave him the idea of his great enterprise157. Nansen conceived the project of forcing a vessel into the pack on the Siberian side, and being drifted across the polar ocean. From most Arctic experts the idea received no encouragement whatsoever, but I had a full belief, based on careful study, in the successful issue of such an expedition158.

Every article of equipment down to the minutest detail was Nansen’s own conception. Originality has always been a marked feature of his character. The matter of first importance then, in his projected enterprise, was the building of a special vessel to come out uninjured after the long Arctic drift. In Mr Colin Archer of Laurvik Nansen found a constructor, careful and resourceful as himself, with long experience in boat and ship-building. The son of a Scotch boat-builder who had settled in Norway early in the last century, Colin Archer was brought up to the craft, and he was the very man to turn Nansen’s ideas into realities. The result was the Fram. The main points were great strength, and sides constructed in such a manner that the ship would readily rise during ice pressure. She was also to have large carrying capacity, her beam being nearly a third of her length159. She was provided with a triple-expansion engine, and her rig was that of a three-masted fore-and-aft schooner. But the main object of Nansen and Colin Archer was that “she should slip like an eel out of the embraces of the ice.”

Nansen’s friend, Baron von Toll, went to the New Siberia Islands in May 1893, and established a depôt of a month’s provisions at the house he built in 1886 on the coast of Kotelnoi Island. Dogs were to be stationed at Khabarova in Pett Strait.

The crew of the Fram numbered 13 including the commander. Sverdrup, the companion of Nansen on the inland ice of Greenland, was the master; Sigurd Scott Hansen, a first lieutenant in the navy, went as navigator and scientific observer; Dr Blessing was surgeon.

In July 1893, the Fram sailed from Norway on this great and novel enterprise, and on the 29th of that month the dogs were taken on board at Khabarova. Nansen crossed the Kara Sea, and proceeded along the coast of Siberia, discovering several small islands. On September 8th, Cape Chelyuskin was rounded. On the 16th a northern course was shaped, a little to the west of the new Siberian Islands, and for some days good progress was made. It was not until the 25th of September that the Fram was finally frozen in and the famous drift began. Scott Hansen took astronomical observations every second day, and a snow house was built on the floe for magnetic observations. Deep sea soundings, with temperatures at various depths, were periodically taken.

In October 1893 the first great pressure was experienced. The ice was piling up around the Fram, tossing itself into lofty ridges, and breaking against her sides. In January 1894 matters looked so serious that preparations were made to abandon the ship, but she withstood and rose to any pressure, thus fully confirming the correctness of Colin Archer’s structural plan.

The drift during the first year, from September 1893 to September 1894, was 189 miles in a northerly direction, from 78° N. to 82° N. In the second winter Nansen resolved to leave the ship with one companion, make an attempt to reach the Pole, and return by Franz Josef Land and Spitsbergen. Sverdrup was to complete the voyage. Nansen selected Frederik Hjalmar Johansen, a native of Skien, then aged 28, as his companion. He took 28 dogs, intending to feed them on each other. His sledges—which were too narrow—were the same pattern as on the Greenland journey, the runners 3⅙ in. wide and slightly convex, covered with a thin plate of German silver, and with loose well-tarred guard-runners of maple underneath the metal ones160. Two kayaks were carried on the sledges, as open lanes of water were sure to be encountered. His clothing was woollen, his shoes made of the skin of the hind leg of a reindeer filled with “senegraes” or sedge (Carex arenaria). Leather Lapp boots were used for warmer weather. The tent was square at the base, ending in a point with a central pole, and had a canvas floor. The double sleeping-bags were of reindeer skin.

Nansen’s cooking apparatus was rather complicated. Petroleum was found to generate more heat than spirit in comparison with the weight, 4 gallons lasting 100 days with two hot meals a day. The lamp, called a “Primus,” was of German silver with lid and cap of aluminium, and heated two boilers and a vessel for melting snow. For food there was a sort of pemmican, fish flour, dried boiled potatoes, pea soup, butter, chocolate, and biscuit. This was no improvement on M’Clintock’s scale of diet.

Starting on the 14th March, 1895, the ship being in 84° N., there was good travelling for the first week. But on the 29th ridges of hummocks commenced, and there was trouble with the sledges, which capsized, and holes were torn in the kayaks. The travelling got worse and worse, with ridge after ridge of hummocks, and occasional lanes of water only covered with thin ice. After 26 days Nansen, who had reached a latitude of 86° 28′ N., had to turn south and make for the land. It was very hard work, the dogs were much reduced both in numbers and in strength, and in May the travellers came to soft snow up to the knees. In June there was water on the floes, the lanes were opening, and the five surviving dogs were nearly starving. On the 5th June they halted for the very necessary business of repairing the kayaks. The open water stopped all progress with sledges and they were now obliged to launch the kayaks with the sledges on them. Two dogs only were left.

Land was at length sighted on the 24th July, the Hoidtenland group, as Nansen named it, consisting of Eva, Liv, and Adelaide Isles, all covered with glaciers. These little islets are specially interesting, because Ross’s roseate gull (Rhodostethia rosea) was here found to be numerous, and the group appeared to be their breeding place.

Proceeding on their perilous voyage, Nansen and Johansen found that they could make safer and quicker progress by securing the kayaks together. On August 28th they reached an island in the Franz Josef group, where they resolved to winter. They built a hut, and having managed to shoot some walrus, they made lamps in which to burn the oil. But they were in a very precarious position, and suffered great hardships, remaining in these wretched winter quarters from August 1895 to May 1896.

On May 17th, 1896, the voyage was continued with kayaks lashed and a sail set. They were stopped twice by gales of wind. Then there was very nearly a fatal disaster. The two men were busy on shore, when Johansen suddenly cried out that the kayaks were adrift. It was too true, and their loss would be certain death. They were lashed together and drifting along. Nansen plunged into the ice-cold water with his clothes on. He swam to them but was nearly exhausted before he could get a hold. At last he tumbled on to them, stiff and half-frozen, and in paddling them back to the shore he coolly took his gun and shot two little auks. He was, however, more dead than alive and it was long before Johansen, using all possible means, could recover him. In the end of June they again patched the kayaks, and were starting on the perilous voyage to Spitsbergen, when they had the extraordinary good fortune to be found by Jackson. They received most cordial hospitality, and embarked in Jackson’s relief ship for Norway, which they reached safely in August 1896.

Meanwhile the drift of the Fram had been ably continued by Captain Sverdrup, with deep-sea soundings and temperatures. On the 17th August 1895 the vessel sustained another severe nip, but rose to it easily. One more winter, that of 1895–96, was passed, and on May 7th 1896 Sverdrup found that the Fram was in 83° 45′ N., and 12° 50′ E., with Spitsbergen to the south. He determined to force his way into open water, and in 28 days he had worked the ship through 180 miles of closely-packed ice, reaching the navigable sea to the north of Spitsbergen and sighting land after 1041 days.

The Fram arrived off Danes Island, where my friend Arnold Pike, who has all the makings, with opportunities, of a first-rate Arctic explorer, had built a house, wintering there in 1888–89. In 1897 he cruised east of Spitsbergen and landed on the Wiche Islands. His house in Danes Gat was used by the ill-fated Andrée when he was preparing to start in his balloon, and Sverdrup and his companions found the latter there with the steamer Virgo. But the season was not favourable, and Andrée returned to Sweden. In 1897 he was again at Pike’s house, and on July 11th ascended with two companions in the balloon Eagle. They were never more heard of.

The Fram arrived in Norway a few days after Nansen, and the whole party were once more united, and were welcomed with unbounded enthusiasm by their countrymen at Christiania.

The drift of the Fram, with its continuous scientific observations, worked out exactly as Nansen hoped and expected. The results threw new light on the whole Arctic problem. Nansen lifted the veil, and his expedition was the most important in modern times. It was discovered that there was a deep ocean to the north of Spitsbergen and Franz Josef Land, extending beyond the Pole, and the whole of the vast annual harvest of ice which drifts south between Spitsbergen and Greenland comes from the north of the Fram’s track. Nansen fixed the position of the Siberian continental shelf and found that beyond it there was an ocean with a depth of 2000 fathoms, which is covered with a continual breaking and shifting expanse of drift ice. The most striking result of the deep-sea soundings was that while the surface water was very cold, there was warmer water in the depths.

The results of the expedition were published in six folio volumes, containing reports on the biology by Professors Collett and Sars, the geology of Franz Josef Land, and the bathymetrical, astronomical, meteorological, and magnetic observations. The most valuable and interesting papers are those by Nansen himself on the bathymetrical features of the polar seas, and on the continental shelves.

At the great meeting in February 1897 in the Albert Hall Nansen received a memorable welcome from his English friends. The late King Edward, then Prince of Wales, who was present, suggested to me that, though the popular reception had been a great success, he thought that there should also be a meeting to discuss the scientific results of Nansen’s expedition. Acting on this advice I called such a meeting and the result was the best discussion I have ever heard at any meeting of the Geographical Society. It appeared to me, as I stated at the time, that the light thrown upon the Arctic problem by Nansen not only extended our knowledge positively, but had the effect of piecing together what appeared before to be fragmentary, and of making detached pieces fit into their proper places and form a consistent whole.

Nansen continued the work in which he took the deepest interest—the bathymetrical features of the Norwegian Sea, his chief aim being the greatest attainable accuracy in the construction of instruments and the working out of results161. In 1914 he accompanied a Russian expedition through the Kara Sea to the Yenisei, and went by land across Siberia as far as Vladivostok. The result was a most interesting narrative, but it is the appendix which will prove most valuable to polar students and navigators. He here gives a list of all the Kara Sea expeditions from Stephen Burrough in 1556 to the date at which he wrote, with the results of their voyages; and then, with the information derived both from books and from his own experience, he explains the causes of the prevalence of obstructive ice and of its absence. His conclusion is that steamers should very rarely fail to get through the ice of the Kara Sea162.

The great literary achievement of Fridtjof Nansen was the publication of the valuable work entitled In Northern Mists—Arctic Exploration in Early Times (1911). It is a monumental work, entailing an incredible amount of careful research, and the materials are put together and presented with the skill and judgment of a master hand. In his deeply interesting introduction, Nansen answers the question “What were they seeking in the ice and cold,” by a quotation from the old Norse chronicle, the King’s Mirror:—

Nansen himself puts it more tersely yet scarcely less impressively. “From first to last the history of polar exploration is a single mighty manifestation of the power of the unknown over the mind of man.”