CHAPTER XX
Nansen.—The man.—First Arctic experience.—Plans the crossing of Greenland.—Carries out his great undertaking.—Voyage on the Fram.—Drifting with the current.—Life aboard.—Nansen and Johannesen start for the Pole.—Difficulties of travel. The “Farthest North.”—The retreat.—A winter on the Franz Josef Land.—Attempt to reach Spitzbergen by kayak.—The meeting at Cape Flora with Frederick Jackson.—Home in the Windward.
The character of the explorer Nansen is best summarized in the brief paragraph explaining his plan for the first crossing of Greenland.
“My notion,” he says, “was that if a party of good ‘ski-lobers’ were equipped in a practical and sensible way, they must get across Greenland if they began from the right side, this latter point being of extreme importance. For if they were to start, as all other expeditions have done, from the west side, they were practically certain never to get across. They would have the same journey back again in order to reach home. So it struck me that the only sure road to success was to force a passage through the floe-belt, land on the desolate and ice-bound east coast, and thence cross over to the inhabited west coast. In this way one would burn all one’s ships behind one, there would be no need to urge one’s men on, as the east coast would attract no one back, while in front would lie the west coast with all the allurements and amenities of civilization. There was no choice of route, ‘forward’ being the only word. The order would be: ‘Death or the west coast of Greenland.’”
Between these lines one sees the fibre of this man, who deliberately stakes out his course and invites a race with Death to the goal of victory; who carefully curtails to the minimum the possibility of failure; who thoughtfully removes from weaker companions all temptations that might jeopardize his chances of success, and who carries through a plan scoffed at by the world as the impracticable scheme of a madman.
There is an indescribable charm about this bold Norwegian, “who was a terrible one for falling into brown studies,” as a child; of whom his masters wrote, “He is unstable, and in several subjects his progress is not nearly so satisfactory as might have been expected”; who combines a gentle, childlike disposition with an indomitable will, never doubting for an instant that he is right and the world wrong, and who steadfastly goes to work to prove his point. Born in 1861 near Christiania; educated in the university of his native city; fond of all the sciences; trained as a zoölogist; a natural athlete, an expert “skilober,” a good hunter, with the spirit for adventure, which is totally careless of all creature comforts, Fridtjof Nansen, at twenty-one, stood on the prow of the Viking, a Norwegian sealer, bound for Arctic seas, ready to meet a foe worthy of his mettle.
FIRST ARCTIC EXPERIENCE
This trip to East Greenland waters for the purpose of gathering zoölogical specimens was followed by his appointment the same year as curator in the Natural History Museum at Bergen.