I felt in a strange mood as I sat up the last night writing letters and telegrams. We had bidden farewell to our excellent pilot, Johan Hågensen, who had piloted us from Bergen, and now we were only the thirteen members of the expedition, together with my secretary, Christofersen, who had accompanied us so far, and was to go on with us as far as Yugor Strait. Everything was so calm and still, save for the scraping of the pen that was sending off a farewell to friends at home.
All the men were asleep below.
The last telegram was written, and I sent my secretary ashore with it. It was 3 o’clock in the morning when he returned, and I called Sverdrup up, and one or two others. We weighed anchor, and stood out of the harbor in the silence of the morning. The town still lay wrapped in sleep; everything looked so peaceful and lovely all around, with the exception of a little stir of awakening toil on board one single steamer in the harbor. A sleepy fisherman stuck his head up out of the half-deck of his ten-oared boat, and stared at us as we steamed past the breakwater; and on the revenue cutter outside there was a man fishing in that early morning light.
This last impression of Norway was just the right one for us to carry away with us. Such beneficent peace and calm; such a rest for the thoughts; no hubbub and turmoil of people with their hurrahs and salutes. The masts in the harbor, the house-roofs, and chimneys stood out against the cool morning sky. Just then the sun broke through the mist and smiled over the shore—rugged, bare, and weather-worn in the hazy morning, but still lovely—dotted here and there with tiny houses and boats, and all Norway lay behind it....
While the Fram was slowly and quietly working her way out to sea, towards our distant goal, I stood and watched the land gradually fading away on the horizon. I wonder what will happen to her and to us before we again see Norway rising up over the sea?
But a fog soon came on and obscured everything.
And through fog, nothing but fog, we steamed away for four days without stopping, until, when I came on deck on the morning of the 25th of July, behold clear weather! The sun was shining in a cloudless sky, the bright blue sea was heaving with a gentle swell. Again it was good to be a living being, and to drink in the peacefulness of the sea in long draughts. Towards noon we sighted Goose Land on Novaya Zemlya, and stood in towards it. Guns and cartridges were got ready, and we looked forward with joyful anticipation to roast goose and other game; but we had gone but a short distance when the gray woolly fog from the southeast came up and enveloped us. Again we were shut off from the world around us. It was scarcely prudent to make for land, so we set our course eastward towards Yugor Strait; but a head-wind soon compelled us to beat up under steam and sail, which we went on doing for a couple of days, plunged in a world of fog. Ugh! that endless, stubborn fog of the Arctic Sea! When it lowers its curtain, and shuts out the blue above and the blue below, and everything becomes a damp gray mist, day in and day out, then all the vigor and elasticity of the soul is needed to save one from being stifled in its clammy embrace. Fog, and nothing but fog, wherever we turn our eyes. It condenses on the rigging and drips down on every tiniest spot on deck. It lodges on your clothes, and finally wets you through and through. It settles down on the mind and spirits, and everything becomes one uniform gray.
First drift-ice. July 28, 1893
(By Otto Sinding)