Amundsen's Way

by Joanna Grochowicz

  It is 4 December. Haunted by the threat of the Scott stealing the show, the Norwegians have become battle hardened, acting like a marauding Viking party taking ill winds and dire peril in their stride. And it’s not just the weather conspiring against them. This final section of the Devil’s Glacier is by far the worst they’ve encountered.

  ‘Wonderful conditions for a skater,’ says Amundsen drily, as he appraises the wide valley of sheet ice.

  Apart from Amundsen, who skitters about on his skis, everyone has decided to proceed on foot. Every step sends a bone-rattling shudder through the surface like a dungeon door slamming. It is obviously hollow underneath. If they can shuttle the dogs across quickly enough, it might just hold.

  ‘This must be the Devil’s Dancefloor,’ someone suggests through gritted teeth.

  The dogs’ claws scratch and scrape, unable to get purchase on the slick surface. Ultimately much pushing from behind is necessary, but with unexpected results. Oscar’s sledge breaks the surface and tips over onto its side, one runner dipping into a crevasse. Sverre is quick to his side. Together they lie with their heads in the hole, discussing the best course of action while Bjaaland calmly gets his camera out and takes a photo.

  Oscar eyes the deadly fate he narrowly escaped.

  ‘What does the crevasse look like?’ Amundsen yells from the front.

  ‘You know, the usual … bottomless,’ shouts Sverre casually.

  How accustomed they’ve become to danger.

  APRIL 1910 – BUNDE FJORD, NORWAY

  He’s a tall man. It is extremely difficult for him to hide. The dark recess under his heavy desk is just big enough to accommodate his length. He draws his long, thin legs up under his chin and listens. The voices in the next room are muffled. He cannot make out one single word. Not even the language they’re speaking.

  The door to his study creaks open. ‘Roald?’

  His brother whispers again. ‘Roald, are you there?’

  ‘Under here,’ Roald hisses.

  ‘What on earth are you doing under there?’ Leon peers at his brother. ‘Captain Scott is here. He’s in the sitting room with Tryggve Gran. To see you. Remember I told you he was expected today?’

  Roald Amundsen is red in the face, annoyed that his brother has put him in this ridiculous situation. ‘Well, he can sit there all he likes. I won’t be meeting either of them.’

  ‘But I told you he was coming to see you. He telephoned several weeks ago. He’s been to see Nansen. He wants to discuss his plans for the South Pole and to coordinate some scientific experiments with you, while you are at the North Pole. It sounds splendid.’

  ‘That may be, but I shall not be meeting with him. Not today or any other day. I am unavailable.’

  Leon groans and gets to his feet. ‘I’m not sure what to tell them, Roald.’

  ‘Just get rid of them. I don’t have time for this kind of interruption.’

  Amundsen winces as the door into the hall clacks behind him. He purses his lips. So Nansen is behind this. Friend, mentor. Forcing a proud Norwegian into the arms of the Englishman, wanting them to be partners in science. He wants everyone to work together for the common good. Explorers don’t pair up. The thought is ludicrous. He has his own plans, his own expedition to prepare for. He doesn’t have time to be drawn into the plans of others.

  Carefully he unfolds himself from under the desk. He sits for a moment, listening. Voices, barely audible through the wall, continue to taunt him. Why doesn’t Leon get rid of them?

  Years have gone into the preparations, the planning, the provisioning. He’s got influential sponsors and a boat. He’s got a small party of men signed up for adventure. For months he’s toured the United States, Europe and Britain, lecturing on his Northwest Passage adventure to generate publicity and raise cash for wages, equipment, food and fuel to last the five years he’s estimated the drift across the North Pole would take him and his crew. Again his eye flits to the copy of the New York Times on his desk. The headline seems to mock him.

  PEARY DISCOVERS THE NORTH POLE AFTER EIGHT TRIALS IN 23 YEARS

  It matters little to Amundsen that his friend Dr Cook also claims to have reached the North Pole first. What matters is the fact that the northern prize is no longer a prize. Who in their right mind would want to finance an expedition to drift across the North Pole on Arctic currents now? After Peary and Cook, Amundsen’s planned attempt is pointless.

  A minor setback, Amundsen muses. Nothing that cannot be overcome. The clothing remains the same, the skills of the men, the ice-breaking capability of the boat, the eagerness of the sledging dogs – why wouldn’t I turn my gaze southward? The British don’t own Antarctica. And Scott has yet to stamp his name on the South Pole. Why should Scott claim the prize before he has even earned it? Partners in science, Nansen thinks! Scott and I will never be partners. We’re rivals. It’s just that Scott doesn’t know that yet. And what he thinks is his, will certainly be mine.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  It’s a fine day for breaking records. For once the surface is perfect in every way. The sun is out. Helmer carries the flagpole on the leading sledge and Amundsen, who has set out in front as usual, instructs him to raise it when the sledge-meter confirms that they have knocked Shackleton off his perch.

  For the best part of a day Amundsen suffers the usual monotony associated with being the frontrunner – the lonely tedium of aiming one’s skis into the empty landscape, the impossibility of trying to maintain a straight course into the nothingness with Helmer’s constant course corrections of ‘more left’ and ‘more right’ wearing thin – but then suddenly he hears:

  ‘Halt!’

  The resounding cheer from behind brings Amundsen up sharply. To turn and see the Norwegian flag fluttering in the sunshine infuses him with intense feelings of pride. Whether they are tears of joy or of tears of sweet relief Amundsen isn’t sure – he’s just happy to hide such uncharacteristic emotion behind dark glasses.

  This will be the site of their final depot. Sverre and Oscar offload 45 kilograms of weight from their sledges to ease the burden on their faltering dogs, now as skinny as goats. Hollow-sided, they eat their own excrement and gnaw the wood of the sledging cases. Bjaaland’s are in even worse shape. He’s bitter at being saddled with such wretched beasts, who struggle even on the flat. If it weren’t for them, he’d have skied to the pole already.

  Feeding time is even more a fight for survival than usual. Madeiro has become a rather desperate individual. Cheeky and utterly sure of himself, he’ll seize any opportunity to snatch what is not his. Naturally a fight breaks out. A tangled knot of snarling and biting dogs skids across the snow before petering out near a tent. Yelping and retreat are followed by a licking of superficial wounds. Cowed by his mother’s savage refusal to share her supper, Madeiro decides to try his luck elsewhere. Oscar places a reassuring hand on Camilla’s head. She spins around and growls a low warning, her lips curled, teeth bared. Oscar takes a step back. This creature is no longer recognisable.

  ‘We must consider them enemies now,’ says Sverre.

  ‘And yet they carry on day after day doing exactly what we ask,’ Oscar says.

  ‘Not all of them.’ Sverre arches his eyebrows knowingly.

  Keen to point out that he’s not to blame for the lost dog, Oscar says, ‘The chief reckons the Major went off to die in peace.’

  ‘Hope he got some,’ Bjaaland calls over as he looks out across the plateau. He marvels at how such vastness can feel claustrophobic. Victory could not come too soon.

  The depot is marked using their trusted method of laying pieces of chopped-up sledging cases 5 kilometres to the east and west. They’ll continue making cairns every few kilometres just to be sure. Although they are all basking in the glory of having seized Shackleton’s record, celebrations have been rather circumspect. Amundsen feels their high spirits are far better employed in maintaining forward momentum. There is a fair chance that Captain Scott has also crossed
this symbolic line at 88 degrees, 23 minutes. They’ll need to reach the finish line first if they want to secure a world record that cannot be broken.

  ‘Next stop, 90 degrees!’ is Helmer’s rallying cry as they set off the next day but there’s still distance to cover and who knows what the weather has in store for them.

  The temperature hangs between minus 15 and minus 30, with a wind chill that lays waste to their faces. Amundsen, Oscar and Helmer spend the evenings examining the dreadful topography of sores and scabs with small mirrors they’ve brought along for the purpose. Helmer picks at the edges of his frostbitten nose and wonders if a beard wouldn’t offer better protection. He decides not to raise the issue; refusing to take part in Amundsen’s compulsory Saturday evening shaves might be interpreted by the increasingly tetchy chief as mutiny.

  ‘Count yourself lucky, Helmer,’ says Sverre archly. ‘If you were in the tropics, you’d be flyblown by now.’

  They’ve been navigating by dead reckoning using compass readings and the sledge-meter. When circumstances allow they make their observations using a sextant to establish the position of the sun, chronometers to pinpoint the exact time, and their navigational tables. It is a minor triumph when both methods are in agreement. They are so close. Perhaps two or three days away. It is a time of excitement and longing. Physical and mental fatigue also. The weeks at altitude are taking a toll.

  ‘You’ll get your breath back when we win,’ goads Amundsen. They’d all appreciate a fresh set of lungs but the chief is speaking of morale too.

  Will Scott be there? Every day each man silently studies the unbroken emptiness for signs of life. But day after day the southern horizon remains blank. Until the evening of 13 December.

  They’ve released the dogs, unloaded their provisions and are struggling against the wind to pitch the tent when Sverre says suddenly, ‘Anyone else see those black shapes?’

  The shapes are unmoving and probably some distance off, although it’s hard to tell with windblown snow causing such problems with depth of perception. Amundsen sees. The British camp? His heart skips a beat. ‘Bjaaland!’ he calls, his anxiety borne aloft on the spindrift whipped up by the southerly. ‘Take a look please.’

  Bjaaland straps his skis back on and sets off with the kind of explosive energy only a champion skier could muster so late in the day. However, a mere 20 metres into his mad dash, he stops. Eyes remain glued to him. Not a word is spoken – is this the fearful moment of discovery? The moment when their dreams turn to dust? With his signature loping gait, Bjaaland returns to camp. ‘Optical illusion,’ he says. ‘They’re dog turds.’

  There are barely 15 kilometres to go. The surface is so flat that they could, in all likelihood, see if a Union Jack was flapping in the distance, asserting its dominance over the South Pole. To point this out seems rather like tempting fate. They’ve all fallen back on little superstitions.

  The tent is silent but for the sibilant whisper of the Primus and the slurping sounds of men enjoying their supper. Food is certainly a comfort for their jangled nerves. After dinner Amundsen lies in his sleeping bag and considers all the things that might have gone wrong for them during the journey from their starting point at the foot of his garden on the Bunde Fjord. There are not many things he would change, if any. He considers his career, the steady progression since he was that fifteen-year-old boy reading of Sir John Franklin’s adventures. Whatever he has achieved has been the result of lifelong planning, painstaking preparation and the hardest kind of conscientious work. Teetering on the brink of success, Amundsen enters a strange mental state. Fear and doubt have been constant companions; dread and ambition powerful motivating forces that have driven him on with single-minded focus. To dismiss them outright, to replace them with joy and satisfaction does not feel quite right. Yes, he feels the relief of having almost achieved his aim, and a pleasurable sense of vindication at having planned his assault to perfection, but any delight in victory tomorrow must be tainted with an ill-defined melancholy, like a cloud passing over the sun on a summer’s day. The race is virtually over. He records the day’s weather and their position in his diary but cannot face writing any solemn words on this eve of making history. Tonight he will keep his own counsel.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The sun chases itself around the sky like a poor trapped honey bee, never deviating from its course, never dipping its radiant head. This could be the centre of the universe. Helmer knows how close they are. He urges the dogs on into a nasty headwind. In an unexpected break with routine, Amundsen has taken up his position further back in the team, perhaps deeming Helmer’s compass and the sledge-meter the only trustworthy judges in this delicate dance to an invisible finish line.

  Helmer has not spared the whip; its searing lick of pain has proved a necessary cruelty in this final stage of the journey. The dogs can sense the end, Helmer is sure of it. For days they have appeared slightly perturbed, their snouts raised in quiet investigation whenever gusts of wind come somersaulting at them from the pole. Then again, the animals have grown so attuned to the men’s moods that perhaps their behaviour merely mirrors their masters’ own furtive longing for the endless trek south to finally be over. He glances at the compass, again to the sledge-meter. If only I had this blasted wind at my back instead of full in the face, he thinks.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Amundsen’s skis glide to a standstill.

  ‘The dogs are skittish,’ Helmer says with an offhand tone that disguises true intent. ‘Do you mind going out in front? They’re all over the place.’

  Amundsen frowns. The dogs were positively flying ahead but he trusts Helmer’s judgement and it’s no strain to return to his role as frontrunner. If anything, it will be a challenge to keep ahead of the pack.

  Again they plunge forward on the featureless plain, this time with the assurance that their leader will be first among men. It is only right, thinks Helmer.

  Their most esteemed leader, a man of steel and will and obsession; Helmer follows in his tracks with a mixture of admiration, trust, and even love swelling in his chest as he considers the extent to which Amundsen has shaped his destiny. He is a man like no other, a personage of such depth and complexity that Helmer doubts he will ever get the full measure of Roald Amundsen.

  The wind is unyielding, gnawing at his aching, frostbitten face as it has for weeks, but the southerly gales are at the very limit of their powers. Helmer savours the sweet thrill of checking the sledge-meter one last time.

  ‘Halt!’ he calls.

  Amundsen stops. So this is it. The geographic South Pole. How odd to be standing on the spot where nothing but latitude matters, a vanishing point where all lines of longitude cease to exist. It is a realm of absolutes that lies far from the trivial considerations of man, from even notions of good and evil. They shake hands, exchanging smiles and animated sounds but no words. Their feelings are unique and complex, beyond language.

  Amundsen assumes a detached air as he takes in a 360-degree sweep. Such a forlorn place, this 90 degrees south, with a character so bland and unassuming as to make their effort and suffering to reach it seem utterly out of proportion.

  And where is Scott? His dreaded motor sledges? Not here yet, although there is no doubt in Amundsen’s mind that they will get here. Scott is determined and more than capable. Just not quick enough. Helmer extends the ski poles that have been lashed together to serve as a flagpole. Amundsen invites each man to grasp it in a symbolic gesture – they will plant the Norwegian flag together. It’s an expression of his gratitude, communicating succinctly his profound admiration for these heroic men. The story could have ended very differently.

  ‘Thus we plant thee, beloved flag, at the South Pole, and give to the plain on which it lies the name of King Haakon VII Plateau.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  ‘I miss trees,’ says Sverre after supper. ‘A hillside of green. You know, the way foliage moves in the breeze. I think that would be the most restful sight for my eyes
right now.’

  ‘I miss the smell of damp earth. On a spring morning,’ says Oscar, indulging his poetic side. ‘When you go for a walk through the forest and that smell sort of engulfs you.’ He’s spent the evening engraving every item in their possession with the date and the location: Sydpolen – the South Pole.

  Bjaaland smiles. ‘I want an apple. A crunchy one.’

  ‘I’d love to let everyone in the world know what we’ve just done,’ Helmer says. ‘Our families would be so proud to know where we’re celebrating tonight.’

  ‘Well, we’re not there yet.’ Amundsen raises his eyebrows. ‘We’ll need all day tomorrow to pinpoint the exact location of the pole. That means measuring the sun’s altitude at every hour from six in the morning until seven at night.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ says Helmer. ‘That cheeky bastard practically stays in the same spot all day and night.’

  Laughter fills the tent.

  Amundsen barely raises a smile. ‘That’s why our single observation is unreliable and therefore valueless. I want to take the first observation at midnight.’

  ‘Not sure I can help with that technical stuff,’ says Bjaaland, yawning. ‘My navigational skills are non-existent.’

  ‘Too technical for me too,’ says Sverre with a mocking smile.