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from east to west, choosing the most difficult and challenging route: settlements are on the
west coast; setting out from the east coast meant, in effect, no turning back. In 1893 he pro-
posed to the Norwegian Geographical Society to probe a long-standing puzzle: Does polar
ice drift? With sixteen men in a specially constructed ship, The Fram (“Forward”), the ship
was locked into a Siberian ice pack and drifted northward for two years. The ship's hull
was shaped like an egg, a design that pushed it up onto the ice flow, safe from the crushing
ice. Icebound, it drifted safely into Norwegian waters; not a man was lost.
While the Fram was icebound, Nansen and L.H. Johansen traveled north by dogsled
and kayak and reached eighty-six degrees fourteen minutes north, the highest latitude yet
reached by man. After four months, they reached the Franz Josef Islands, where they
wintered over in a hut built of rocks and driftwood, covered with walrus hide. In 1896, with
the spring thaw, Nansen and Johansen began their southward journey. During World War I,
Nansen devoted himself to humanitarian relief efforts, and for these he was subsequently
awarded the Nobel Prize.
Figure 11.1. Roald Amundsen
Roald Amundsen (1872-1928), born near Oslo, was the first to find and sail the North-
west Passage, from the Canadian coast to the Yukon. In 1910, in Nansen's Fram he sailed
south, and on December 4, 1911, became the first man to reach the South Pole. (Robert
Scott, the English explorer, reached the Pole on January 17, 1912, but tragically and unlike
Amundsen, he along with his men perished on the return to base camp.)
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