The Last Viking

by Stephen Bown

  Whether Amundsen had a premonition of the public relations disaster that was brewing or whether he was pondering more personal matters, Ellsworth noted a certain melancholy in his partner as the steamship pressed south. “I saw Amundsen standing at the rail, his chin on his hand, looking at the receding coast of the land of his choice. I stepped beside him and observed that his eyes were moist.”

  “I suppose I will never see it again,” Amundsen said.

  No More Poles to Conquer

  My work is fulfilled. All the big problems are solved. The work that remains in Polar exploration is a matter of detail. Let others handle it.

  LARGE CROWDS WERE awaiting the famous-again explorers in Seattle. But Amundsen noted with dismay that many in the crowd were either waving Italian flags or flying Italian flags on their boats. The Italian community in Seattle was better at organizing a public turnout than the Norwegian community, and it had spread the word that the expedition had been an Italian one. At the gangplank of the ship Nobile, resplendent in his glittering military uniform, stepped forward to give the Fascist salute to the cheers of the Italian American congregation. When a little girl approached the explorers to present them with a bouquet of flowers, she handed it to the stylish and impressive-looking man in a shining uniform who had the small dog at his feet rather than to Amundsen or Ellsworth, who seemed like weary prospectors. Newspaper reporters noted that Amundsen “looked tired and worn,” sporting a bushy grey moustache and garbed in a prospector’s outfit he had purchased in Nome, instead of the stylish suits he usually wore when meeting reporters.

  After a short stay in Seattle, Amundsen, Riiser-Larsen, the other Norwegian crew and Ellsworth boarded an eastbound train in two reserved cars. When they pulled into New York’s Grand Central Station several days later, “the party was cheered” and Amundsen was “smothered under armfuls of roses until he looked like a moving flower bed.” Once again there were speeches and the singing of the American and Norwegian anthems. A police-escorted cavalcade led them through streets teeming with enthusiastic crowds. Amundsen was now described as looking “ten years younger”—clearly the adulation was counteracting the trials of the expedition. “He was clean-shaven. . . . He wore a smartly tailored double-breasted suit and looked very rosy and plump. He expressed some horror when he was told that he was putting on flesh.”

  Amundsen announced that “I never felt better in my life. I’m a free man now. I’ll never explore again.” He had accomplished all the goals he had set out for himself as a youth, he said, and “felt the relief and happiness of an emancipated slave.” He also proclaimed, “I’ll never lecture again. Riiser-Larsen can do that—I’ve lectured for twenty years. I don’t know what I’ll do with the rest of my life, but it will be what I feel like doing.” In a speech at a public luncheon, he claimed that Ellsworth would also have to keep exploring: “He’s a fine young man of courage and spirit. There may still be work worth while for him to do.” Part of Amundsen’s sudden feeling of freedom no doubt had to do with the accomplishment of a goal he had contemplated since adolescence, but it also stemmed from the finalization of his bankruptcy proceedings; his brother Leon had not publicly revealed that Amundsen had at one time signed over his properties to Kristine Bennett in his will—the secret of their affair was safe. Uranienborg, which was included in his estate, was sold to Herman Gade and Peter Christophersen with the provision that Amundsen could live there for the duration of his life. The proceeds went to pay off some of the debts.

  Among the crowd at the culminating luncheon, Amundsen noticed Richard E. Byrd, who had made the trip from Washington, D.C., to greet him. Amundsen heartily called out “Byrd!” and pushed through the crowd to shake his hand before introducing him to the throng, “his face all smiles.” He dragged Byrd onto the stage, happily sharing the spotlight with the other man who had purportedly flown over the North Pole. Then the nine Norwegians and Ellsworth boarded a steamer for Bergen, where they were received as heroes on July 12, pushed into gilded chairs and lofted off the gangplank and on to the celebrants’ shoulders. A few days later, in Oslo, they were escorted into the city by a flotilla of small boats and military airplanes flying in formation. The streets were crowded with thousands of well-wishers. A red-carpet reception awaited them, and the quiet and unassuming Ellsworth was proclaimed “a modern Viking.”

  Umberto Nobile was supposed to travel on to Japan to help with an airship installation there, but he had received new orders from Mussolini: he was remain in the United States to undertake a tour of the “Italian colonies.” He would promote his own and Italy’s role—and, naturally, Mussolini’s role—in the successful and famous polar endeavour. Mussolini also promoted him to the rank of general. Nobile and his men toured thirteen major cities in the United States. This was a breach of the spirit of the contract Amundsen and Ellsworth had drawn up with Nobile, whom they viewed as their employee. But Nobile was engaged in state propaganda and was impervious to any attempts by Amundsen or Ellsworth to control him. Although Amundsen had always promoted his country of origin, he remained a private individual in all his expeditions, making his living by selling the spectacle of his thrilling accomplishments to the public. Nobile and his five Italian crew were agents of their government, and as such may not even have had the right to enter into civil contracts that might obligate them to act against the will of their commanding officers.

  In November 1926, after some months in Norway spent working on the draft of First Flight Across the Polar Sea, Amundsen sailed back to New York to begin his lecture tour of the United States—only to find that Nobile was doing his own tour, presenting the whole affair in a light most favourable to Mussolini and Fascist Italy. During the next several months, the quarrel between the Norwegian and the Italian contingents intensified. Nobile made a series of outrageous claims: that he had conceived of using a dirigible to cross the Polar Sea himself in 1925, before being approached by Amundsen: “While this Italian project was ripening, Amundsen asked to meet me. . . . In fact, to Italy full credit must be given for the technical organization of the entire flight from Rome to Alaska. It was made entirely through our own initiative and under our responsibility.” Nobile graciously thanked Ellsworth for contributing financing to “his” expedition. In an interview with the New York Times on December 6, he declared that “I was the commander of the Norge and everybody on it, including Amundsen, was under my orders.”

  Nobile also claimed that the Norwegian crew did little besides sleep, while the Italians did all the work. All of these statements were of course blatant falsehoods. How could Amundsen and Ellsworth not be infuriated by them? These nasty personal attacks were clearly inspired by far more than the explorers’ brief time together on the airship; they were in a competition for public attention and the storyline of the adventure. Amundsen and Ellsworth wanted this for themselves, both to recoup their costs and for personal reasons. Nobile wanted it to assuage his wounded pride and for the greater glory of the Fascist state; now that the expedition was a success, Mussolini promoted it as an example of Italy’s new and powerful position as a world leader in technical and scientific matters. If Nobile had been instructed by Mussolini to make his outrageous pronouncements, he certainly could not have refused. Eventually, the publicity-shy Ellsworth joined the public quarrel, pointing out that Riiser-Larsen did more flying than Nobile and that Nobile hadn’t done any of the navigation—so vital on a featureless expanse of frozen water. Nobile immediately attacked Ellsworth, claiming in the New York Times that the American, who had performed a fair amount of the navigation as well as the general conceptualization of the entire enterprise, “was merely a passenger whom I took on board at Spitsbergen and left at Teller.”

  In Italy, the voyage of the Norge was elevated into a propagandistic story of two great peoples and their national temperaments—Norwegian discipline and willpower melded with Italian creativity and inventiveness—united in the conquest of the last geographical prize on the planet, a symbol of Norwegian
co-operation with the “New Italy.” Yet neither Amundsen nor Ellsworth wanted the Italian state as their partner. Amundsen himself became increasingly nationalistic in the wake of his public fight with Nobile, wrapping himself in his nationality as never before, dedicating First Crossing of the Polar Sea to “The Norwegian Flag.” Resisting Mussolini, who would later reveal the vicious and aggressive nature of Italian nationalism, brought out Amundsen’s own tribalism. This intense nationalism was increasingly becoming the spirit of the age.

  The quarrel with Nobile was in part related to Amundsen’s and Ellsworth’s quarrel with the Norwegian Aero Club, whom they charged with mismanagement, including failing to sell film rights to an American company and giving additional rights to Nobile. Amundsen’s quarrel with the club had begun the year before, when it had turned down a significant offer from First National Pictures for the film rights to his and Ellsworth’s polar flight. He later remarked that “anybody with the slightest knowledge of the motion picture business realizes that the great market is the United States, and that the value of news pictures diminishes in geometrical ratio with the passage of time between the events portrayed and the day they are exhibited in theatres.” This “stupid error” cost the expedition, by Amundsen’s estimate, about $42,000—a huge sum in those days.

  Amundsen and Ellsworth publicly resigned their memberships when they discovered that the club was sponsoring and endorsing Nobile’s lecture tour of the United States. Rolf Thommessen, the Aero Club’s president, claimed he had to endorse Nobile’s lecture tour because Ellsworth and Amundsen refused to give the Italian equal credit for the expedition and would not allow Nobile to contribute to the official book of the expedition. Thommessen was in fact an admirer of Mussolini, which may explain his willingness to alter the terms of the contract between the Aero Club and Nobile. He ran sympathetic portraits of the Italian dictator in his newspapers, and contrasted positive portraits of Nobile’s competence with denigrating comments about Amundsen’s leadership. The fact remains that there is no way that Nobile or the Norge could have flown anywhere near the North Pole or Alaska, or even have left Italy, if not for the lofty dreams of Amundsen and Ellsworth.

  The Aero Club held the world copyright to the newspaper and magazine articles produced by Ellsworth and Amundsen except in the United States, where these rights were held by the New York Times and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. The Aero Club’s actions were obviously contrary to what Amundsen and Ellsworth had intended—why would they invest time and money in a venture to which a paid employee would then be given the rights to the fame and financial rewards? Amundsen vented his frustration with the club’s senior members when he wrote that they “caused us troubles so numerous as to outweigh any services they rendered us. Indeed, most of the misunderstandings that have arisen in the public mind about the facts of the flight of 1926 are traceable directly to the mismanagement and weakness and vacillation of the Aero Club of Norway.” Because the club was endorsing Nobile’s right to tour, Amundsen refused to turn over to it the proceeds either from book sales or from his and Ellsworth’s American lectures from the fall of 1926 and the spring of 1927, according to the financial arrangements of the enterprise. Eventually the matter went to court.

  Amundsen considered Nobile’s lecture tour to be not only the theft of money that belonged to the expedition but also the grossest of betrayals. Amundsen had had plenty of personal and professional disagreements and quarrels over the years, but he had kept silent so long as others did the same. It was his conviction that personal acrimony was tolerated so long as the rules were obeyed—all expedition members, including Amundsen as the leader, had an obligation to the expedition first; dirty laundry was to be kept private. But when this rule was broken by Nobile, Amundsen responded in kind. This did not have the intended effect. One American reporter wrote in the New York Times: “When the polar explorers landed in Teller there was honour and glory enough to go around, but if this quarrel continues there will be neither honour nor glory for anyone.”

  Amundsen was now fifty-four years old and tiring of the strenuous life he had chosen for himself many decades earlier. “My work is fulfilled,” he claimed in one interview. “All the big problems are solved. The work that remains in Polar exploration is a matter of detail. Let others handle it.” He pointed out that Riiser-Larsen and Ellsworth might lead their own expedition the following year. At a private dinner in Washington, D.C., he, Ellsworth and Byrd decided to form the Polar Legion, a club with a very select membership: it would be open only to leaders of expeditions that had reached either of the two poles. Because these requirements included only three living people—the three explorers sitting at the dinner table—they voted to posthumously induct Peary and Scott into the august ranks, and sent off the notification to their respective widows. “The Club is not likely ever to be crowded,” Amundsen wrote, “though possibly Magellan may have thought the same thing about the Circumnavigators’ Club, which now has a numerous membership.”

  Despite the acrimony of his public dispute with Nobile and the bitterness they felt over lost revenue and time, Ellsworth wrote fondly of the time he spent with Amundsen on their lecture tour of the United States. He noted that on one occasion Amundsen had turned to him and proclaimed: “Do you know I have adopted many of your ways. I have learned to smoke my pipe in bed of evenings and have written Montreal for fifty pounds of that French-Canadian tobacco you smoke and I only eat two meals a day now. I never have the tight feeling around the belt any more.” Amundsen was still having fun in America, where, ensconced in his room at the Waldorf-Astoria, he felt he could relax and mingle socially, with periodic forays to deliver lectures and attend ceremonies. He again joked with a reporter that he might now be ready to contemplate marriage, although to whom he did not say, and he offered no further details.

  In June 1927, he sailed across the Pacific for a tour of Japan, departing from Vancouver, British Columbia, on the steamship Empress of Asia. He was treated grandly during his ten well-attended lectures there over the course of three weeks. Then he moved on to a tour of Russia that eventually brought him back to Norway by September 6, “a very tired man,” just a month before the publication of his incendiary memoir, My Life as an Explorer. With the publication of this book, his façade was cracked. In place of a near-invincible risk-taker who seemingly could compel himself to victory through sheer force of will, was a vulnerable man who complained and pointed fingers. Here was a seeming joker who wrote in a tone that was alternately superficial, mocking and tediously earnest. He referred to himself as a pirate who deliberately fled his creditors. Here was a man whose dash to the South Pole was mere sport, accomplished by deceiving his investors, without any legitimate scientific motive, a man who publicly quarrelled with one of his partners, rehashing all their dirty laundry for the world to see. This was not The Last of the Vikings, the Norwegian national hero and famous polar pioneer who had pushed away the mists of obscurity from the map’s remaining major geographical mysteries for the good of humankind, but a weary, aging adventurer making light of his own accomplishments and motives. Was the public now to believe that it had been taken in by this charlatan, a character who was merely fabricating stories for his own amusement and to make a quick buck?

  The book seemed to have been slapped together in a hurry; indeed, it was hastily scrawled out by Amundsen in the final months of 1926, in his room at the Waldorf-Astoria, without the benefit of a coauthor, ghostwriter or editor to fill in the technical details, an arrangement that had enhanced his previous books and articles. He wrote My Life as an Explorer from memory rather than making any effort to provide useful documentation of his life’s adventures. He omits all details of a personal nature, and the details of some of his earlier adventures are vague and imprecise. When detailing his Antarctic expedition in the Belgica, Amundsen does not even bother to mention his commander’s name, either because he forgot how to spell it and couldn’t be bothered to look it up after thirty years, or because he consid
ered Adrien de Gerlache to be inconsequential in this brief overview of his life. The chronology is sparse and inaccurate, and the names of people not of personal interest to him are missing—but not necessarily deliberately so.

  Amundsen’s motive in writing the memoir was to defend himself against the bad press and charges stemming from his expedition with Nobile, and to counter those charges with his own presentation of events. The usually indulgent New York Times commented in its review of the book that “the reader’s sympathy cannot fail to go out to Roald Amundsen in this controversy, but it may still be said that the space given to the feud, about a third of the book, is disproportionate.” Another large portion of the memoir defends his actions in racing Scott to the South Pole, and yet another significant portion is devoted to an attack on his brother’s handling of his financial affairs, blaming his bankruptcy on Leon. The fact that the book was published in this state, with so much vitriol, reveals little about Amundsen’s character in a general sense (at the time he did feel and believe all the things he wrote about his ill-treatment in Britain and the betrayal by Nobile and the Norwegian Aero Club), but it does reveal something about the extent to which he was let down by his publisher, who should have waited for the author’s temper to cool and offered him the chance to rewrite it the following year.

  But the memoir isn’t entirely without merit. The part of his autobiography that isn’t concerned with his recent quarrels definitely falls into the category of the unvarnished. Amundsen was old enough to have the confidence to speak his mind, and free enough that he no longer needed to bow to tradition. In many ways, he was just saying “to hell with it,” this is how things were: Everyone wanted to bask in the glory of his success after the fact, but no one wanted to support him at first. His early expeditions would never have been possible if he hadn’t taken drastic, quasi-illegal, measures. Why should he go on pretending it was otherwise, decades after the fact? The memoir is that of an older man reflecting, a brooding rumination on all the injustices of his life, his chance to set the record straight before it was too late. Amundsen was magnanimous in victory, but at this time in his life he was not celebrating a victory; rather, he was struggling with a sense of defeat and an awareness of the diminishing possibility of his rising again. An American reporter who visited him at Uranienborg in September 1927 noted that Amundsen “said wistfully, as if regretting that he could not begin his career over again . . . ‘There is nothing left for me to do.’” There were no more poles to conquer. What was he to do with the years that lay ahead?