The Last Viking

by Stephen Bown

  The adventurers nostalgically named the ramshackle camp that was taking shape on the ice ridge “Framheim.” The carpenters began work on the prefabricated house, assembling components that had been marked and coded like pieces in a large three-dimensional puzzle. This also involved digging more than a metre into the ice “for stability and insulation.” All this work, done at “a dizzy speed,” was substantially completed within two weeks, by January 28. The result was a bizarre-looking wooden house, but “what a snug, cosy, and cleanly impression it gave us when we entered the door,” Amundsen wrote. Framheim was surrounded by tents, dogs and mounds of cased provisions and equipment, each case boldly numbered to correspond to a list that identified the case’s contents.

  Amundsen had calculated that they had several months to become fully established at their base and to run three expeditions to deposit supplies at depots along his proposed route to the South Pole. Everything needed to be completed by the end of April, before the onset of the perpetual dark of winter, in order to be ready for the dash to the South Pole when spring returned in September or October 1911.

  Several hundred kilometres away, at the western edge of the ice wall, at McMurdo Sound, Scott and the British Antarctic Expedition were busy with similar activities: unloading their ship and preparing for their expedition. Amundsen had never met Scott or any of his men, and although they were both camped in on the Ross Ice Shelf, they would never meet. Amundsen proceeded with his own plans without any further knowledge or communication of Scott’s plans, and he would hear nothing of the fate of the British Antarctic Expedition until nearly two years later, long after he had toured the world giving lectures and published his book on the race. Before departing England, Scott had written in a letter his famous boast that “I don’t hold that anyone but an Englishman should get to the S. Pole.” It is worth noting, however, that in contrast to Amundsen, who had been preparing for a polar expedition for about two years, Scott had done little other than test his motor sledges. He had never lived in the Arctic, and did not ski or know how to drive sled dogs; in fact, he had rarely dealt with snow.

  Amundsen suspected that Scott would essentially follow in Shackleton’s footsteps from McMurdo Sound to the pole—the conventional approach, mostly pioneered already, its dangers, advantages and disadvantages already known. He had studied Shackleton’s account of his polar trip, which was published in early 1910, and had learned much from it, especially much about what not to do, how not to proceed. Shackleton’s hair-raising tale is a litany of near-disasters: food was scarce, the supply depots too far apart, the equipment not quite suited to the task. Interestingly, Shackleton himself noted afterward that if only he had used skis instead of walking, hauling sledges across the continent in man-harnesses, he would have made it to the South Pole.

  Oddly, Shackleton’s admission that his failure to reach the South Pole was mostly a failure of equipment and planning didn’t affect the plans of his countryman Scott. Amundsen rightly concluded that one minor delay or malfunction in Shackleton’s expedition—from an unexpected storm, for example—would probably have doomed them all. As an intellectual man of action, Amundsen had been working on logistics and obsessing over the details of his equipment for two years, ever since he had returned from the Northwest Passage: how much food, and of what type, would each man need per kilometre travelled? How far apart should the food and supply depots be placed for optimum efficiency? What type of skis would work best in the conditions of Antarctica? What bindings, what clothing, what sleds, what food for the dogs?

  He had spent countless hours in his study, doing the paperwork, sketching various scenarios, adding the figures, all the while attempting to account for erratic weather and other potential delays. Amundsen had enough imagination and experience to take into account all the possible setbacks that he might encounter. By studying the successes and failures of previous expeditions, scrutinizing their use of equipment and drawing heavily on his own Arctic experiences, he gained expertise and confidence. If the devil is truly in the details, as the saying goes, then Amundsen could indeed have been said to be besting the devil; every conceivable detail had been pondered, multiple calculations performed and solutions decided upon. He had left little to chance.

  During his years of preparation, Amundsen had been perfecting his polar travel gear, clothing and equipment to adapt the traditional designs and materials of the Netsilingmiut to modern materials for his specific purpose of speedy ski and dog travel in Antarctica. During the Norwegian winters, he had been testing and comparing designs and materials for nearly everything he would need on a polar trip. He had concluded, for example, that clothing made of reindeer hide, sealskin and other loose skins with built-in hoods trapped heat far better than any other design; footwear made extra large, in the Inuit style, and insulated with dry natural materials kept the feet from freezing.

  He had custom-designed the expedition’s snow goggles and skis. The skis were designed to be very long, almost 3 metres, to span crevasses and to distribute weight in order to avoid breaking through the snow crust. They were made of hickory, a wood Amundsen concluded was best for cold temperatures. Although these skis were very hard to turn and control, this was a problem only for a small part of the expedition. During the many months on the Fram sailing south from Madeira, Bjaaland had adjusted and perfected the design of the skis to prevent warping and to shave weight. The ski champion also worked on perfecting the custom bindings and the ice crampons, and on making the sledge frames lighter with a special strapping mechanism that also made loading and unloading easier.

  Amundsen had also had the expedition’s food prepared specifically for his crew’s needs, including vast quantities of pemmican made with oats and peas. “If one is tired and slack,” he mused, “it may easily happen that one puts off for tomorrow what ought to be done today; especially when it is bitter and cold.” Light and simple were his benchmarks, “and that plays a not unimportant role on a long journey.”

  Amundsen was obsessive and finicky to an extent that under other circumstances would seem ridiculous. He had the expedition’s paraffin tins specially soldered to prevent them from leaking, a problem he first encountered while navigating the Northwest Passage. He felt he could not trust this sort of detailed work to a commercial outfitter working to meet standard specifications—conditions in Antarctica, he knew, were unusually harsh and would create unusual problems. His life, and the lives of his men, might depend on his obsessive attention to detail. The men, for the most part, trusted his leadership and worked toward these unusual goals without complaint. They all had their roles in meeting the ultimate objective: it was a team effort, with Amundsen as the first among equals. In the main cabin of the Fram, Amundsen had hung a great map of Antarctica on which the planned route to the South Pole had been sketched in, as well as an outline of his plan. It was labelled: “For everybody’s use.”

  Amundsen’s plan for reaching the South Pole was simple and clear: “Our method of attacking the Pole was to make repeated trips from the permanent camp southward, setting up shelters and making caches of provisions one after the other at several days’ travel apart, so that we should be able to make the return trip from the Pole without having to carry all our supplies there and back.” He organized these initial forays also to perfect the working of the dog teams and the men’s ski techniques, for this was the centrepiece of his South Pole plan: the combined effort of dog teams hauling sleds, with men skiing alongside—a unique combination that would ensure the efficiency and speed needed to cover such an enormous distance through dangerous, uncharted and extreme terrain.

  The use of dogs and skiers, first tested and proven successful by Fridtjof Nansen in Greenland, was later perfected by Otto Sverdrup on the second Fram expedition. Sverdrup, who gave Amundsen his first set of dogs, those he took to the Northwest Passage, boldly stated that “Polar exploration has two natural requirements: skis and dogs.” A loaded dog sled and a moderately paced cross-country skier travel
at about the same speed. A runner is too slow and tires sooner than a skier, and if men ride on the sleds they get too cold, the dogs tire more quickly with the added weight and fewer supplies can be carried. In proper terrain, dog teams and skiers eat up the miles, saving energy and carrying a large quantity of equipment and supplies.

  As soon as the Fram had arrived in Antarctica, Amundsen had informed the men of their roles in the coming adventure, in either the Polar Party or the Ship Party, based mostly on their skills and temperaments. Nine men under the command of Nilsen would “navigate the Fram out of the ice,” sail to Buenos Aires for re-provisioning and return to retrieve their comrades. The shore party, also consisting of nine men, would remain on Antarctica and ski to the pole. Although several were disappointed to not be included in the Polar Party, Amundsen was firm in his choices. The only consolation he offered was that the Ship Party would receive additional pay. Among the men Amundsen selected for the Polar Party were several who had dog-driving and skiing skills. Helmer Hanssen, who had been on the Gjøa expedition, was the best dog driver, having learned his skills from the Inuit. Sverre Hassel, a former customs officer, also a skilled dog driver, had sailed with Sverdrup aboard the second Fram expedition. Hjalmar Johansen, a former world champion gymnast and captain in the Norwegian army, had been Nansen’s companion on his attempt to reach the North Pole during the Fram’s first voyage. Oscar Wisting, a young gunner in the Norwegian navy, was also selected for the Polar Party, because of his general competence in working in cold weather and his steady demeanour. Kristian Prestrud, a lieutenant in the Norwegian navy, was also the first mate on the Fram. The final member of the Polar Party was Olav Bjaaland, for whom the race to the South Pole was like a ski race, only on a larger scale. The Polar Party’s cook was the indefatigable Adolf Lindstrøm, who was also, incidentally, the first person to sail completely around the American continent. All these quietly competent men were around the same age as Amundsen, in their late thirties and early forties.

  Their leader was pleased to note that the dogs, the key to his whole plan, had weathered the voyage well—in fact, their numbers had increased during the months at sea. “One of the most difficult problems of the expedition was solved,” he wrote: “that of conveying our draught animals in sound condition to the field of operations.” The 97 dogs with which they had begun the voyage had now increased to 116, and all were ready for the rigours of “the final march to the South,” he noted, a little smugly.

  Before we sailed there was no lack of all kinds of prophecies of the evil that would befall us with our dogs. We heard a number of these predictions; presumably a great many more were whispered about, but did not reach our ears. The unfortunate beasts were to fare terribly badly. The heat of the tropics would make short work of the greater part of them. If any were left, they would have but a miserable respite before being washed overboard or drowned in the seas that would come on deck in the west wind belt. To keep them alive with a few bites of dried fish was an impossibility, etc.

  It is in writing about the expedition’s hundred dogs that Amundsen’s book takes on its most poetic tones, just as he celebrated the dogs in his account of the Northwest Passage. He muses philosophically about their motivations, waxes poetic about their personal attributes and personalities. “If we had any watchword at this time it was: ‘Dogs first, and dogs all the time.’” In some cases the dogs are more alive than the men, and Amundsen revels in the details of their antics. He and his men gave them names such as The Corpse, The Scalp and The Pimp, and referred to them as “our children.” Amundsen wrote about the dogs nearly as often as he wrote about his crew, using them as metaphors to introduce philosophical musings. In one of these unexpectedly lucid and insightful observations he commented, “What a commotion at feeding time. It was like a howl from the depths of Hell. What love these animals conceive for those who look after them. Of course it is cupboard love—but so it is often the case with our own love; look carefully, and you’ll see!”

  On February 4, as the final provisions were being hauled up to the campsite by dogsled, Amundsen prepared to lead a small group of men on a ski reconnaissance of the region. But before they set off, a sailing ship unexpectedly cruised into the Bay of Whales. The lookout “rubbed his eyes, pinched his leg, and tried other means of convincing himself that he was asleep, but it was no good.” The vessel was the Terra Nova, Scott’s ship, out from McMurdo Sound under the command of Lieutenant Victor Campbell to explore the nearby King Edward VII Land, along the ice wall. The two groups were equally astonished to encounter each other in the vast expanse. Amundsen and several men, who had spied the ship from their inland base, came rushing down to meet the British, urging the dogsleds to great speed in an effort to impress the Englishmen, who had never imagined that dogs could run so fast before a sledge.

  As the two groups dined together and toured each other’s ships, each found something to fear in the plans of the other. The English were impressed not only by the speed of the dogs but with the efficiency and cleanliness of the Fram and the inland base camp. The Norwegians were appalled at conditions aboard the Terra Nova. They were told of the unsanitary conditions created by the ponies, which had been housed above the mess room during the voyage from England, allowing their excrement to form a foul “mustard” on their dining table. On the other hand, the lunch served aboard the Terra Nova contained far more luxurious food than the Norwegians had eaten for months. It was news of the motor sledges, though, that worried Amundsen: Campbell told him that they had already been landed at McMurdo Sound, yet offered no more information. Amundsen did note, with relief, that the Terra Nova had no wireless communication equipment aboard and that therefore he would not be at a disadvantage in getting the news out first after the race—Scott would have to sail to a port before communicating the news, just as he would. “We made a strange discovery after this visit,” he wrote. “Nearly all of us caught cold. It did not last long, only a few hours and then it was over. The form it took was sneezing and cold in the head.”

  On February 10, with the Terra Nova gone, Amundsen resumed his plans and set off from Framheim with three men, three fully laden sledges and eighteen dogs. The weather was calm and the skies slightly overcast, “ahead of us the vast, endless snow plain; behind us the Bay of Whales with the great prominent icecaps.” The Fram lay peacefully in the bay, but Amundsen knew that he might not return from this first foray before the ship departed for the season. Once the men got all the heavy loads onto the ice shelf on February 11, they said their goodbyes. The Fram needed to escape the ice before winter set in, sail to Buenos Aires for a refit and repairs, perform some oceanographic measurements of the polar seas and then return through the pack ice. The shore party would be stranded in Antarctica until early 1912.

  The first foray lasted only six days, but it covered about 170 kilometres across “the smooth, flat snow plain” hauling about 550 kilograms to the first depot. Amundsen was pleased to find that “the dogs pull magnificently, and the going on the barrier is ideal. Cannot understand what the English mean when they say dogs cannot be used here.” When the party returned to Framheim, the Fram was gone and the “bay looked dreary and desolate. Seals and penguins had taken over the place.”

  During the next few weeks all members of the Polar Party, with the exception of Lindstrøm the cook, made two additional forays across the ice plain, depositing food and equipment caches weighing approximately 3,400 kilograms in three depots along the route they planned to take to the South Pole. They also put into the snow two-and-a-half-metre posts with numbered black flags to mark the route and keep them from getting lost in a featureless white plain during conditions of blowing snow and blizzards. Amundsen wanted to avoid any life-threatening mistakes on the return from the pole, when he and his men would be exhausted. It was again the experience from the Northwest Passage that led Amundsen to implement his flag-marking system. For each depot there were twenty numbered flags, with half a mile between each flag. The flags wer
e placed at right angles to the depot rather than along the travel route so that if the explorers veered off course they would intersect the line of flags and know by the number where they were in relation to the depot. “The plan proved to be absolutely reliable, and even in the densest fog we succeeded in finding our depots,” Amundsen recalled with some pride.

  The skis, dogs and sledges were all working better than Amundsen had hoped, and the expedition found the travelling easier than was the case in the Northwest Passage. The ski boots caused problems and needed adjustments, and the small two-man tents were resewn to accommodate four or five men. The dogs, though generally healthy and in good spirits, had on the Fram grown unaccustomed to harsh winter conditions and heavy work. The initial sledging journeys had left their paws bloody, and the dogs were losing weight. In order to preserve them for the race to the pole the following spring, Amundsen shortened the distance between depots, although the third depot was still placed at 82 degrees south, within 800 kilometres of the South Pole. Laying the depots and marking the route had perfected the men’s skiing techniques and the dog-sledding skills they would need in their assault on the South Pole the following spring.

  By the end of their depot work, the men were exhausted and suffering from frostbitten fingers and cracked faces. Eight dogs had died. “The lowest temperature observed on these depot trips was –50°F (–46°C). Considering that it was still summer when this temperature was observed, it was a serious warning to us that we must have our equipment in good order,” Amundsen wrote with characteristic understatement. He himself was unable to complete the third depot expedition because he was suffering from a rectal complaint, probably hemorrhoids, that made skiing and walking excruciatingly painful. Instead he remained at Framheim with the jocular Lindstrøm, to clean and prepare the camp for the winter. The camp now included ten huge tents to house the dogs, with a 2-metre pit dug beneath them to give the dogs a feeling of more space and reduce the hoarfrost that was “so annoying to the dogs.” Each tent had twelve dogs and a man assigned to tend to their needs.