The Last Viking

by Stephen Bown

  Although Amundsen kept a journal of the voyage, he did not publish his account of the expedition; that was the commander’s prerogative, and de Gerlache, as the official commander, published a book in Europe. Cook, as an American physician, published his book in the United States. When Amundsen wrote about the adventure in his memoirs three decades later, he omitted de Gerlache’s name—so great was his antipathy to his commander after the quarrel that occurred near the end of the expedition.

  In his journal and memoirs, Amundsen generously gives Cook credit for initiating the scurvy cure and for rousing the men into sawing through the ice, creating a path to their freedom. Throughout his career, Amundsen freely gave credit where credit was due. Conversely, when someone failed to live up to his expectations he could be ruthless and defiant. He would not accept criticism from individuals he did not respect, or from those whom he felt had no knowledge or experience upon which to base their critique. From now on, Amundsen hand-selected the members of each crew and, apart from a few notable exceptions, enjoyed remarkable harmony and cohesiveness among them in the astonishing feats of exploration that would define his life.

  Amundsen took no pay for the Belgica voyage, but he had no expenses either, so he returned to Norway in the same financial state as when he departed. He did, however, earn one important thing on the two-and-a-half-year expedition: the first of his many nicknames. One of his shipmates, the Polish meteorologist Antoine Dobrowlski, after enumerating what he considered the main accomplishments of the Belgica voyage years later, wrote that “our voyage was the first school of that extraordinary explorer, the Napoleon of the Polar regions; Amundsen.”

  An Extraordinary Plan

  I have many bright and pleasant memories from those days, of men who encouraged me and gave me all the support they could. I have also other memories—of those who thought they . . . had a right to criticise and condemn whatever others undertook or proposed to undertake.

  DESPITE ITS ACCOMPLISHMENT of overwintering for the “first Antarctic night,” the Belgica expedition attracted little fame. Amundsen returned quietly to his home in Christiania, moving on to the next phase of his career: planning his own expedition. He completed a final stint in the army and then sought an audience with Fridtjof Nansen, who was then, as Amundsen put it, “the Grand Old man of Arctic exploration in Norway. I knew that a word from him would be priceless to me in enlisting aid in my enterprise; on the other hand, a word of disparagement from him would be fatal.”

  Nansen would go on to become one of the founders of the League of Nations and also its high commissioner for refugees. In the 1890s, he was entertaining the possibility of leading his own expedition to Antarctica, and he welcomed the young man’s offer to discuss his recent voyage to the southern continent. “I went, therefore, to see him and laid before him my plans and hopes and asked his benediction,” Amundsen wrote. “This he graciously gave; and he even went further—he offered to commend me to the good offices of people who might help me.”

  What these people might help him with was still very much a private matter, but on the Belgica expedition one of the objectives highlighted by de Gerlache—an objective that proved impossible—was to locate the magnetic South Pole. Amundsen began to imagine combining his quest to sail the fabled Northwest Passage with the more prosaic and scientifically noteworthy objective of locating the magnetic North Pole. “My plans matured,” he wrote after his first Antarctic voyage. “I wished to unite my childhood dreams about the North West Passage with the, in itself, far more important objective: to determine the magnetic North Pole’s present position.”

  Encouraged by Nansen’s support and encouragement, and inspired by his own developing plans, Amundsen continued wrestling with the less exciting technical hurdles that blocked his dream of sailing the Northwest Passage: completing the final hours of ship time to obtain his captain’s licence, which would enable him to command a ship in international waters, and then passing an exam. He signed on to the Oscar, a small ship that was part of the family business, then stationed in Cartagena, Spain. Amundsen being who he was, rather than take some comfortable or practical method of reaching southern Spain, decided to cycle there with his brother Leon. Leon was in Norway, but he was planning to return to his wine-shipping business in southern France.

  Cycling was not then a common activity in Europe, and the sight of two tall blond men pedalling south through the European countryside surely raised some eyebrows. It was an uneventful journey and Amundsen was soon at sea on a two-month voyage bound for Pensacola, Florida. He brought with him a large collection of books on polar travel and exploration—everything from Sir John Franklin’s decades-old books to British naval officer James Clark Ross’s account of reaching the magnetic North Pole in 1831 to the British explorer Frederick Jackson’s more recent A Thousand Days in the Arctic, concerning his recent expedition to Franz Josef Land, northeast of Spitsbergen, in the late 1890s.

  When he returned from this commercial voyage, well-read and finally with enough sea time to be a certified ship’s captain anywhere in the world, Amundsen set out to burnish his scientific credentials. “My expedition must have a scientific purpose as well as the purpose of exploration,” he noted. “Otherwise I should not be taken seriously and would not get backing.” Amundsen was eager to accomplish heroic deeds, but who would pay for them? He went to visit Dr. Aksel Steen at the Meteorological Institute in Christiania and presented his case, emphasizing the magnetic North Pole and adding the navigation of the Northwest Passage as an interesting side project. The doctor was impressed and urged the young man to learn how to take the necessary measurements. He gave Amundsen a letter to take with him to Hamburg, introducing him to Professor Georg Neumayer, director of the German Marine Observatory.

  In the seaport of Hamburg, Amundsen “hired a cheap room in the poor part of the city—my funds were low,” he sheepishly related. Despite his letter of introduction, he was not overly optimistic about the reception he would receive from the distinguished professor, since he was “an undistinguished stranger.” Nevertheless, “with beating heart, I presented myself at his outer office and handed in my card of introduction” to Neumeyer’s assistant. Amundsen was then ushered into the presence of “a man of probably seventy years, whose white hair, benign, clean-shaven face, and gentle eyes presented a most striking resemblance to the famous musician, Franz Liszt.” The young Norwegian introduced himself and stammered an erratic overview of his desire to go on a voyage and collect scientific data to justify the adventure. In his memoirs, Amundsen relates how he feared to aspire to something so prominent and prestigious.

  “Young man, you have something more on your mind than this!” Neumayer exclaimed kindly. “Tell me what it is.” Amundsen then admitted he wanted to conquer the Northwest Passage. “Ah,” Neumayer responded, “there is still more.” Neumayer waited while Amundsen overcame his reticence and blurted out that his scheme was indeed more grand, that he aspired to no less than the accurate measurement and observations of the magnetic North Pole to settle the longstanding controversy over whether it was mobile or static. The old man rose slowly to his feet, approached Amundsen and quietly embraced him. “Young man,” Neumayer said, “if you do that, you will be the benefactor of mankind for ages to come. This is the great adventure.”

  For the next three months, Amundsen immersed himself in the study of magnetic science and the methods for taking magnetic observations at the institute. Neumayer gave him much personal instruction and attention, which Amundsen repaid by being the first student to arrive in the observatory in the morning and the last to leave at night. Amundsen was very serious in his studies, and the professor, impressed with his diligence, insisted on dining with him regularly at a luxurious hotel where the restaurant was “a fairyland of savoury delights, and its menu a Lucullian feast.” The professor also introduced Amundsen to other visiting scientists and luminaries, “thereby providing me, not only with a much appreciated meal, but with the stimulation of con
tact with active minds and intellects of achievement. Never shall I cease to be grateful to this kindly old soul who so greatly encouraged and helped me.” It is worth noting that Amundsen was turned down for similar training at the British Observatory at Kew and recalled this perceived slight when writing his memoirs nearly three decades later.

  Back in Christiania in November 1900, Amundsen prepared for another meeting with Nansen, in which he would outline the details of his proposed expedition and the dual but linked objectives of navigating the Northwest Passage and locating the magnetic North Pole. Nansen had given him encouragement the previous year, and now Amundsen was returning to get his mentor’s solid support for a specific objective. “I think it is Mark Twain who tells of a man who was so small that he had to go twice through the door before he could be seen. But this man’s insignificance was nothing compared to what I felt on the morning I stood in Nansen’s villa at Lysaker and knocked at the door to his study.” Amundsen soon stood before the man who had “for years loomed before me as something almost superhuman: the man who had achieved exploits which stirred every fibre of my being.”

  Nansen had a reputation for being stern and brusque, and was known for his attention to hierarchy and formality. As Amundsen wrote many years later, Nansen was perhaps “too kingly” toward his men, unchallenged as the world’s foremost polar scientist. The older man was, however, an adventurer in addition to being a scientist, and he supported Amundsen enthusiastically right from the start, perhaps inspired by Amundsen’s youthful enthusiasm and energy. “From that moment,” Amundsen recalled, “I date the actual realization of the Gjøa expedition.” The idea of relocating the position of the magnetic North Pole, and the adventure involved in doing it, was enough to secure the famous patriot’s blessing. Without that support, Amundsen’s life as a famous explorer might have ended before it even began.

  Of the many lessons Amundsen had learned from the Belgica voyage and from his discussions and meetings with Cook and Nansen, a few were vital: (1) that a small, light-travelling group could be successful where a large, overly burdened one would fail; (2) that skiing was the best way to travel in polar environments and that a small, select band of tough, equally skilled skiers could prove successful where a large and varied group was more likely to disintegrate and fail (a group is only as fast as its slowest member, and therefore all its members need to be equally conditioned and skilled); (3) that the most effective means of travel in polar environments was not man-hauling large sledges but rather using dog teams to haul light sleds; and (4) that the best clothing would be based on designs used by the people native to those wind-lashed polar landscapes. So, when conceiving his expedition, Amundsen opted for simplicity—the absence of superfluous people, overly ambitious plans or complicated equipment. An expedition on a smaller scale also had the advantage of being more affordable, which was particularly important for an individual planning a privately financed adventure. He also came to a conclusion that was more common in the military: if an expedition leader provided no line of retreat, then the only way out was to follow the plan. Nansen, for example, when crossing Greenland, had his party dropped on the uninhabited east coast to work their way toward the settlement on the west—success and survival for him and his men lay in pushing forward, never to retreat.

  Perhaps most importantly, on the Belgica Amundsen had learned a lot about poor management, poor organization and poor equipment. A hero, in his mind, was not someone who suffered disaster after disaster, heroically pulling through with great endurance, but rather one who focused his intelligence and skills to avoid disaster, thus succeeding by good planning and crafty decision making. Amundsen was not preparing for heroic disasters—he planned to succeed with as little potential for disaster as possible, even if this meant years of preparation. As he would demonstrate throughout most of his life, Amundsen had an innate sense of when he was ready for an undertaking; in 1900, he felt he wasn’t prepared to tackle the Northwest Passage quite yet.

  He also didn’t have a ship, so he travelled north to one of the remotest places in Norway. The town of Tromsø is surrounded by deep fjords, and at the time, it was accessible only by sea. Tromsø was effectively the gateway to the Polar Sea and home to the Norwegian sealing industry. Here Amundsen wanted to seek out any additional information that might help him on a polar voyage, from people who routinely sailed in Arctic waters. He also wanted to purchase his ship here; a vessel that was seaworthy in these conditions. He settled in Tromsø for a few months and, in a classic example of his single-mindedness, interacted only with people whom he felt had knowledge that could help him. He had them over for coffee in his small room, listening intently and respectfully to the sometimes tall tales of the veteran sealers and ship captains. In January 1901, after learning from these practical northern mariners, Amundsen began negotiating for a ship. He asked his brother Gustav, who was then managing his finances, to send a large chunk of his inheritance to Tromsø.

  The ship Amundsen had his eyes on was a forty-seven-tonne fishing smack, small but sturdy, designed for coastal and northern waters. Amundsen noted that the ship was twenty-nine years old, the same age as he was; it was named Gjøa, after the previous owner’s wife. The little sail-powered vessel, he noted, “had ample opportunities of proving herself an uncommonly well-built boat.” A small ship could sneak through the ice floes rather than crush against them. And he preferred a small ship because, as the north was harsh and unforgiving, it would be impossible to live off the land if there were too many people to feed.

  Amundsen hired a small crew and set off on a summer voyage to test the Gjøa and to take some scientific measurements for Nansen. Cruising the waters between Norway and Greenland for six months, he tested the ship in all weather conditions. “The Gjøa performed splendidly under all conditions,” he reported. He also commented that he was glad to see that northern Norwegians were not afraid of eating seal meat, which he knew was going to be a staple food on his voyage. He needed a cook who could make use of one of the most abundant northern food sources and a crew who would eat it, to stave off scurvy. On this first voyage, Amundsen broke even, barely covering his costs with the sale of seal pelts and a couple of walrus and polar bear skins.

  During these first months at sea, he did note deficiencies in the Gjøa’s design, as far as his purposes were concerned. In Arctic waters, he knew the little ship would be working its way through pack ice and close to rocky, uncharted shores. It would require some modifications at the Tromsø shipyard, including iron reinforcements to the hull, supplementary petroleum tanks and a small engine, a thirteen-horsepower motor that could be “connected to everything that could possibly be driven with its aid.” Years later, he commented that “our successful navigation of the North West Passage was very largely due to our excellent little engine.”

  In his memoirs, published two decades after the event, Amundsen wrote, “The winter and spring of 1902–1903 I spent in feverish preparation for my great adventure of the North West Passage. I besieged every possible source of funds—the learned societies and the private patrons of science. The rest of my time was spent in selecting and ordering supplies.” The process was considerably more complicated and time-consuming than he admitted or remembered in his memoirs. It was from his base in Tromsø in 1900 that he began not only the search for a crew interested in a multi-year voyage of great uncertainty and danger but also the list of things necessary to outfit a ship for a voyage that might last three or more years. It was a daunting task for a single person, particularly since he was lacking the funds to provide even the most basic equipment and supplies.

  As fortune would have it, in spite of Amundsen’s habitual secretiveness during his months in Tromsø, there was a person who found his furtive planning and work on the Gjøa too unusual to ignore. Fritz Zapffe was an active skier, mountain scrambler and climber then working as a pharmacist in Tromsø. He was also a correspondent for a Christiania newspaper, Morgenbladet. Amundsen was initially reticent
about answering any questions about his destination or the modifications to his ship. But Zapffe persevered, and finally Amundsen admitted that he was indeed planning something but didn’t want anyone to know about it. He told Zapffe that he wanted people to know about his undertaking only when he had achieved something significant, something worthy of attention.

  Amundsen was reluctant to toot his own horn, to publicly brag or strut; he believed that he deserved recognition only after he was successful. Zapffe tactfully pointed out that any success would depend on raising the funds to finance his expedition. For a private citizen, advance publicity might be the only way to get additional financial support. People or advertisers could donate or lend money only if they knew about this exciting new adventure and rallied around it—there could be no public support for a secret. Although Zapffe’s point appears obvious, Amundsen had absolutely no exposure to or experience with publicity or fundraising. Fortunately, he took Zapffe’s advice to heart and never made the same mistake.

  Zapffe, who became one of Amundsen’s life-long friends and supported many of his adventures with logistical assistance over the years, wrote a front-page story about the planned conquest of the Northwest Passage. Despite Amundsen’s initial misgivings about getting publicity before he had done anything, the article led to a surge in financial support. Zapffe also helped Amundsen’s endeavour in other ways: through his knowledge of outdoor equipment and his local contacts, he was able to help with the design and manufacture of key pieces of equipment and clothing. He advised Amundsen to consider Arctic clothes designed by the Sami, the indigenous reindeer-herding nomads of Norway’s north, and arranged for him to acquire reindeer-hide boots, overcoats and sleeping bags. Amundsen was quick to recognize the superiority of the local clothing and gear. It made a strong impression on him, particularly when combined with what he had learned from Cook in Antarctica and his experience there with inferior clothing and equipment unsuited to the rigours of a polar environment. Through Zapffe, Amundsen was able to source equipment and clothing that were far superior to anything he could purchase in the outfitting shops of southern cities.