The very fine ratings (presently 4.07) are fully deserved. need I say more? I turned out that Nansen himself wrote the book! There was definitely a lot of good material. I recently saw an exhibition about Fridtjof Nansen and ”Fram” and though that with a little luck someone wrote a novel about it. Arriving at the North Pole would only have been a lagniappe rather than the avowed purpose of the expedition. This is supposedly an abridged edition on Nansen's original work, but I suspect that what was edited out were mostly scientific observations, which is no loss to me.The journey was a success because what it mainly studied was the movement of the polar ice cap in response to wind and currents. In the meantime, the Fram ran out of ice pack north of Spitzbergen and sailed back to Norway, arriving one week after Nansen. They lived by hunting bears, seals, and walruses.įifth, they ran into a British expedition, which provided them transport back to Norway. They managed to get only some twenty miles farther north than the ship floating on the ice, before they decided to head either for Franz Joseph Land or Spitzbergen using kayaks they carried with them on their sledges.įourth, they landed on an island in the Franz Joseph archipelago and headed south. Third, at that point, Nansen and one crew member left the ship to press farther north and, when they could go no further, turn south to find land. Second, the Fram and its crew rode the ice to as high a northern latitude as the ice traveled, which turned out to be around 86 degrees.
![in nacht und eis in nacht und eis](http://www.mscdn.de/ms/titelbild_gross/119020/1411984323_Verbundenheit.jpg)
![in nacht und eis in nacht und eis](https://live.staticflickr.com/5486/11297477215_e4715e01fc_b.jpg)
No problem, as the ship was custom designed to ride atop the ice rather than be crushed by the pressure. His Farthest North is the description of his trip, which consisted of five parts.įirst was the voyage along the north shore of Russia until his ship, the Fram was stuck in the ice.
![in nacht und eis in nacht und eis](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51zj-69DnyL.jpg)
Were I shopping to join a polar exploration around 1900, I could have done no better than go with the intrepid Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian leader of what strikes me as the most competently led polar journey ever.