The Far North - Norway - page 808

Growing up in rural Store Frøen outside Oslo (then known as Christiania), he en-
joyed a privileged childhood. An excellent athlete, he won a dozen or so national
nordic-skiing championships and broke the world 1-mile skating record. Studies in
zoology at the University of Christiania led to a voyage aboard the sealing ship Vik-
ing to observe ocean currents, ice movements and wildlife. His first tantalising
glimpses of Greenland planted the dream of travelling across its central icecap.
He didn't hang around. In 1888 Nansen, still only 27, headed a six-man expedi-
tion. He overwintered in Greenland and his detailed observations of the Inuit
(Eskimo) people formed the backbone of his 1891 book, Eskimo Life.
In June 1893, aboard the 400-tonne, oak-hulled, steel-reinforced ship Fram,
Nansen's next expedition left Christiania for the Arctic with provisions for six whole
years. Nansen left behind his wife Eva and six-month-old daughter Liv, not knowing
when, if ever, he'd return.
On 14 March 1895, he and Hjalmar Johansen set out in the Fram for the North
Pole. They journeyed for five months, including 550km on foot over the ice, before
holing up for nine winter months in a tiny stone hut they'd built on an island. On
heading south, they encountered lone British explorer Frederick Jackson (for whom
Nansen later, magnanimously, named the island where they'd spent the winter). Hav-
ing given up on reaching the Pole, all three headed back to Vardø.
In 1905 a political crisis arose as Norway sought independence from Sweden.
Nansen, by then a national hero, was dispatched to Copenhagen and Britain to rep-
resent the Norwegian cause.
Upon independence, Nansen was offered the job of prime minister but declined in
order to keep exploring (he's also rumoured to have turned down offers to be king or
president). He did, however, accept King Håkon's offer to serve as ambassador to
Britain. In 1907, after the sudden death of his wife, he abandoned his dreams of con-
quering the South Pole and - again with a generosity untypical of the competitive
world of polar exploration at the time - allowed fellow Norwegian explorer Roald
Amundsen to take over the Fram for an expedition north of Siberia.
After WWI Nansen threw himself into large-scale humanitarian efforts: the new
League of Nations, repatriating half a million German soldiers imprisoned in the
Soviet Union, and an International Red Cross program against famine and pestilence
in Russia. When some two million Russians and Ukrainians became stateless after
fleeing the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, 'Nansen Passports' enabled thousands of
them to settle elsewhere. Perhaps Nansen's greatest diplomatic achievement was the
resettlement of several hundred thousand Greeks and Turks after the massive popula-
tion shifts in the eastern Mediterranean following WWI.
In 1922 Nansen received the Nobel Peace Prize - then gave it all away to interna-
tional relief efforts. After 1925 he concentrated on disarmament and lobbying for a