The Last Viking

by Stephen Bown

  The next two years saw Amundsen travelling, fundraising, testing his equipment and continuing to study history and the science of magnetic observation. In the spring of 1902, he moved the Gjøa from Tromsø to Christiania for the final preparations, including making vast quantities of pemmican from dried meat and berry mixture. He knew that once he sailed for the Northwest Passage, anything he might need had to be aboard the ship in the right quantities—he couldn’t count on being able to resupply or reprovision for several years, and the lack of something vital could easily result in death. He took a short voyage north with Aksel Steen to test the magnetic measurement instruments that were being supplied by the German Marine Observatory, and he also ventured abroad to London, where he met the president of the Royal Geographical Society, Sir Clements Markham, and several retired Royal Navy officers who were veterans of cold-climate voyages, in order to hear any suggestions they might have.

  In the fall of 1902, Amundsen was back in Norway, where he officially passed his exams and received his master’s certificate, enabling him to be both the expedition leader and the captain of the ship, avoiding the infighting between sailors, scientists and explorers that he saw had plagued innumerable previous expeditions. Qualifying for his master’s certificate was one accomplishment Amundsen remained proud of throughout his life, always preferring the title “Captain” over any other. But his optimism and excitement about the expedition were tinged with disappointment and frustration. The modifications to the ship, the purchasing and stocking of supplies and the stockpiling of money to pay the salaries of his crew had burned through his funds and all the donations he had received.

  Around this time, Nansen persuaded King Oscar II of Sweden to contribute to the venture. Although the Swedish king’s gift was intended as a gesture of goodwill, Nansen had other hopes. He was a vocal and prominent advocate for Norwegian independence from Sweden, and his support of Amundsen was predicated not only on his interest in geographical exploration but also on increasing international recognition of and support for the Norwegian independence movement: if Amundsen was successful in claiming the geographical prize of the Northwest Passage, the reflected glory and international attention would go to Norway. Nansen believed that an increasing lexicon of great deeds done by native sons would go a long way toward boosting national pride and confidence in the country while elevating international awareness of Norway as a distinct culture with its own heroes and contributions to the world.

  Nansen, who had dealt with the publicity from his own past adventures, helped Amundsen negotiate international newspaper rights to his story. It was again a steep learning curve for Amundsen, who had never considered these activities—putting a public face on the expedition, generating advance interest, securing financial support and publication rights and paying creditors afterwards—to be part of his job as expedition leader, but he quickly realized that for a privately funded individual they were just as important as succeeding at the expedition itself.

  In the late fall of 1902 he travelled south to Christiania and gave his first public lecture, “My Journey,” at a meeting of the Norwegian Geographical Society. Despite the increasing publicity and public awareness of his audacious voyage, Amundsen kept his cards close to his chest, revealing his full intentions to no one. Harald Sverdrup, the oceanographer and meteorologist who joined Amundsen on several later expeditions, recalled: “There is, however, no doubt that his reluctance to discuss plans, which was often considered a special form of conceit, had deep roots and that by nature he was a lonely man who preferred action to words.” In this instance, Amundsen did not reveal that he was more interested in navigating the Northwest Passage than in locating the roving magnetic North Pole (which he suspected would turn out to be an unremarkable patch of snow surrounded by a vast wasteland of similar terrain). He understood that private investors would not support a sailing trip along a remote coastline, no matter how storied and famous; yet the general public would be interested in a tale of adventure and derring-do, not merely scientific discovery. By balancing these objectives—focusing on the magnetic North Pole to secure institutional support and on the Northwest Passage to entertain armchair adventurers—Amundsen sought to satisfy the establishment and to intrigue the public.

  In the end, he chose the need to interest a general audience over the constraints imposed by a government’s political and nationalist agenda. He came to realize that unless an explorer worked for the government, he was essentially an entertainer. Therefore, to become a successful explorer, he would have to become a successful entertainer. Still, he found fundraising to be the most tedious and disagreeable component of his preparation work, which never changed throughout his long career. Traipsing about the countryside with his cap out, begging for funds from well-connected and wealthy individuals, was something he always found undignified, even with Nansen’s aid and blessing. “This was ‘running the gauntlet’ in a fashion I would not willingly repeat,” he wrote in his book on the Northwest Passage. It was, however, entirely out of his control.

  Many of his closest friends and family were a great encouragement to Amundsen during this time. Nansen had been “indefatigable in this matter as in all others,” as were his three older brothers—once they overcame their initial reservations about him spending his entire inheritance to buy the Gjøa. “I have many bright and pleasant memories from those days,” Amundsen recalled, “of men who encouraged me and gave me all the support they could. I have also other memories—of those who thought they were infinitely wiser than their fellow-creatures, and had a right to criticise and condemn whatever others undertook or proposed to undertake.” Adding to his stress, his brother Gustav was at this time experiencing financial difficulties of his own, and Amundsen moved the power of attorney over his affairs to his brother Leon.

  During this time, Amundsen had been interviewing and selecting his crew, the men who would spend years together with him under dangerous, isolated and monotonous conditions. He wanted only the best, and fortunately he was a natural judge of character with an innate sense of how to build a team that would work well together. He searched widely and remained open to many possibilities before he settled on his team. He had the pick of the crop because he offered to pay well, more than a man could earn on other voyages. In the spirit of the best leaders, Amundsen went to great lengths to ensure that his men were well taken care of, even if this meant financial hardship and stress for himself. Harald Sverdrup recalled that Amundsen placed one characteristic in a potential crew member above all others: resourcefulness. “When preparations were still in progress, he might ask a question about a difficult task or give a man an impossible assignment. If he got the answer ‘it can’t be done’ he was through with the man then and there.”

  A photo of Amundsen surrounded by his six polar pirates appears in the first edition of his official book detailing their adventure, The North West Passage: Being a Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship Gjøa, 1903–1907. All seven of the adventurers sport moustaches and appear in starched collars. Their serious, formal expressions are partly the product of the primitive photography techniques of the early twentieth century and partly a device for portraying the respectability they wished to convey to the world as professional explorers and as Norway’s cultural ambassadors. Two of the men had come to Amundsen’s attention through his friendship with Zapffe—first mate Anton Lund and second mate Helmer Hanssen, both northerners, both married and slightly older than Amundsen, and both with extensive experience on commercial whaling and sealing voyages in arctic waters. Lund, thirty-nine years old, first went to sea when he was twelve, and he was an experienced harpooner. Hanssen, who had briefly met Amundsen years earlier, before the Belgica sailed, would go on to become one of Amundsen’s staunchest allies, joining him on many adventures.

  As first lieutenant, Amundsen selected Godfred Hansen, a lieutenant in the Danish navy, whose sense of humour and thorough grounding in the theoretical aspects of sailing and command were s
kills that Amundsen valued to round out the practical experience of the other crew members. Hansen had made four voyages to Iceland and the Faeroes with the navy and had a keen interest in polar exploration. He also had many other skills; Amundsen described him as a “navigator, astronomer, geologist and photographer.” His leave of absence from the navy was secured through the intercession and goodwill of Nansen. The expedition’s engineer and meteorologist was Peter Ristvedt, a young and energetic mariner who had met Amundsen when they did their military service together and who had sailed with the captain on the trial voyage of the Gjøa in 1901. Gustav Juel Wiik, the second engineer, had been trained at the magnetic observatory in Potsdam and was to help with the measurements of the magnetic North Pole. He was also a gunner in the Norwegian navy, had a philosophical and scientific disposition, and at barely twenty-five years of age was the youngest member of the expedition. The final member of the expedition was the cook and general roustabout Adolf Henrik Lindstrøm, a jolly and practical man only recently returned from nearly four years sailing on the Fram with Otto Sverdrup in the islands of the Arctic Archipelago. A heavy drinker, fondly known as “the Polar Cook,” he was perpetually cheerful, a trait that proved immeasurably valuable throughout the long polar winters.

  Amundsen did not hire anyone with specific medical training. He didn’t trust doctors aboard an expedition ship, feeling they might split his authority and endanger the expedition because of their priest-like role of administering to the sick. A doctor’s opinions in favour of the perceived interest of the individual, Amundsen believed, could run counter to the best interests of the group. This was a response to his formative youthful experiences aboard the Belgica, and it’s hard not to observe that in addressing the problems that surfaced on that poorly planned and badly led voyage, Amundsen went too far in the opposite direction. All was being planned to prevent problems arising with leadership and cohesion. But in eliminating one obvious problem, he perhaps laid open the possibility for others to arise—on the Belgica it was Cook, a doctor and the man who Amundsen respected the most, who was the greatest source of leadership and practical advice.

  Amundsen also arranged a special meeting with Sverdrup to discuss the Gjøa expedition and to gain insights and advice from the older man about his recent experience in the Arctic. Amundsen was particularly interested in Sverdrup’s thoughts on the use of dogs and sleds in Arctic travel. “Ah, the dogs,” Sverdrup wrote. “[I]t is they who give a polar journey its character; without them travel would indeed be grim.” Amundsen should use not just any dogs, he cautioned, but huskies, which were particularly bred for cold climates, harsh conditions and travel on snow and ice. Amundsen recalled hearing a similar opinion on Arctic dogs from Cook while on the Belgica expedition, and he no doubt remembered the unpleasant experience of man-hauling sledges across the icy Antarctic wastes. It would be preferable if dogs did the hauling. Arctic peoples had been using dogs for just this purpose for generations.

  Even at this early stage in his career, Amundsen would learn from anyone if he thought it would benefit him or give him an edge toward success, and local and direct experience always held the greatest weight. He had never used dogs or sleds before, but he knew that his chance of locating the magnetic North Pole would be possible only if he harnessed the speed and extra hauling capacity of dogs and sleds to cover greater distances at a faster pace. Sverdrup not only passed along this most invaluable advice, he also offered to give Amundsen his dog team, which was not doing well in the warm climate of southern Norway. “Poor creatures!” Amundsen wrote. “It would have been better to let them remain in ice and snow than to drag them here, where they suffer sorely, especially this spring, which was unusually warm. They were now tied up along the rail and looked wretched in the rain—the greatest infliction to an Arctic dog. To get here they had made one voyage in the drenching rain, and now they had to endure another to get back. But, at any rate, back they were going, poor things—to their home.”

  A few months before the planned departure of the Gjøa on its historic voyage, Amundsen ran out of money to pay for the remaining supplies. He had long ago exhausted his access to additional credit. In fact, apart from the ship, its vast stores of supplies and provisions and the trust accounts holding the men’s salaries, he was bankrupt. When creditors got wind of his predicament, several began agitating for the immediate repayment of the moneys they had advanced, in effect backing out of their agreement to support the expedition. Amundsen put them off as best as he could, but when the bailiffs were called he approached his men and explained his predicament—and then received their support to sail before they could be apprehended and their grand undertaking derailed. They cast off during a storm at midnight, just ahead of the creditors.

  “The strain of the last days, getting everything in order, the anxiety lest something might yet prevent us getting away, and the desperate efforts to procure the money still wanting—all this had greatly affected me both in mind and body. But now it was all over, and no one can describe the untold relief we felt when the craft began to move.” The Northwest Passage beckoned, and the thirty-one-year-old Amundsen looked like he had aged a decade: his hair had turned white, his face was lined and his scalp showed some new baldness. The Last Viking set off on his first great undertaking. “The great adventure for which my whole life had been a preparation was under way!” he wrote. “The Northwest Passage—that baffling mystery to all the navigators of the past—was at last to be ours!”

  Where Franklin Died

  The voyage of the Gjøa was far more like a holiday trip of comrades than the prelude to a serious struggle lasting years.

  SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, Sir John Ross, William Parry, John Rae, Robert McClure, Martin Frobisher, John Davis, Henry Hudson, William Baffin, John Rae: their names are sprinkled over the distinguishing features of maps of northern Canada, identifying prominent bays, channels, inlets, islands and lakes. These famous heroes make up the pantheon of brave, or foolhardy, explorers who tried to discover an ocean route around the top of North America and into the Pacific Ocean to gain access to the spices of Indonesia that for several centuries were worth nearly their weight in gold. So valuable would this waterway be that maps from past centuries depict the hopes and dreams of countless generations of merchants and monarchs rather than geographical reality. Lacking direct evidence, chart-makers embellished their maps, depicting an enormous snake-like channel rounding the North American continent, even a vast inland sea occupying the western United States and Canada. If only this fantastic channel or this inland sea could be located, untold riches would be forthcoming. So, obstinate mariners battered their ships against the barren shores of innumerable Arctic islands in a futile attempt to reach the Orient. Many died—stranded, starving and scurvy-ridden—in pursuit of this prize.

  The Arctic Archipelago sprawls over a vast area occupying 1.4 million square kilometres and consists of more than 36,000 islands of all shapes imaginable, ranging in size from rocks to large landmasses—ninety-four of them, including Baffin Island, Ellesmere Island, Banks Island and Victoria Island, are classified as major islands. Combined with the deeply indented Arctic shoreline, the chaotic mass of islands presents a bewildering maze to sailing ships, one that is not equalled anywhere in the world. A snow-free summer can be shorter than two months and an ice-free sailing season even less (or perhaps not at all, in some regions); winter temperatures can fall as low as –50°C (–58°F). The conditions of this extreme climate make it easy to see why the discovery of a predictable and safe sea route through the archipelago had baffled passage-seekers for centuries. The land is mostly barren tundra, with occasional desolate mountain ranges; it offers little in the way of resources useful to European mariners for repairing ships, such as trees, and to the unknowledgeable it offers little food or other useful material for survival. Most of the region was and is uninhabited, apart from certain southern coastal regions that host a scattered population of hardy Inuit. Through ingenious technological adaptat
ions these people had roamed the land for thousands of years. To survive, they needed a very specific set of technical skills and detailed local knowledge. Ignoring or discounting this knowledge had cost European explorers the destruction of dozens of ships and the deaths of countless sailors. The notable exception to the costly, large-scale expeditions that had proved disastrous in the Arctic were the journeys of the Scottish medical doctor and explorer John Rae. A proponent of small exploration parties and native survival techniques, Rae discovered the fate of the Franklin expedition half a century earlier and provided Amundsen with inspiration and a model for his own expeditions.

  The many scientific voyages of the late eighteenth century, including several inland explorations north and west of Hudson Bay, laid to rest many of the myths that had led past mariners astray. In 1778, James Cook explored the North Pacific Ocean as far up the western coast of North America as the Bering Strait, where he was able to see North America and Asia simultaneously, but he was unable to penetrate north of that strait. Between 1791 and 1795, George Vancouver explored and charted the western shores of Canada and Alaska, finally ending the common but erroneous belief in a great inland sea. His charting of the Pacific coast produced an accurate geographical outline of western North America; the only region of the continent that remained obscure was the heart of the Arctic Archipelago in the far north.