Store Fröen.
It needed unyielding strength and indomitable courage to carry out such an undertaking, but these were qualifications which the burgomaster possessed, and had at an early age learned to employ. When but sixteen he had set out from Flensborg on an expedition to the White Sea in a vessel belonging to his uncle, and had then alone traversed a great portion of Russia. Four years later he commanded an expedition to the Arctic Ocean, and subsequently entered the service of the Iceland Company as captain of one of their ships.
When forty years of age he was made an alderman of Copenhagen, and in 1654 became its chief burgomaster. During the siege of that city in the war with Charles the Tenth (Gustavus), he was one of its most resolute and intrepid defenders; and so when the power of the Danish nobility was to be overthrown, it was he who took the chief part in the movement.
This man, who was neither cowed by the inherited tyranny of the nobles, nor daunted by the terrors of war or the mighty forces of nature, was named Hans Nansen; and it is from him, on his father’s side, that Fridtjof Nansen descended.
Our hero’s mother is a niece of Count Wedel Jarlsberg, the Statholder[2] of Norway,—the man who in 1814 risked life and fortune to provide Norway with grain from Denmark, and who did his share toward procuring a free and equable union with Sweden.
Fridtjof Nansen grew up at Store Fröen, and it was not long before the strongly marked features of his race became apparent in the fair, shock-haired lad with the large, dark-blue, dreamy eyes.
Whatever was worthy of note, he must thoroughly master; whatever was impossible for others, he must do himself. He would bathe in the Frogner River in spring and autumn in the coldest pools; fish bare-legged with self-made tackle in the swiftest foss;[3] contrive and improve on everything pertaining to tools and implements, and examine and take to pieces all the mechanical contrivances that came in his way; often succeeding, frequently failing, but never giving in.
Once, when only three years old, he was nearly burned to death. He had been meddling with the copper fire in the brewhouse, and was standing in the courtyard busied with a little wheelbarrow. All at once his clothes were on fire, for a spark, it seems, had lighted on them, and from exposure to the air, burst out into flames. Out rushed the housekeeper to the rescue. Meanwhile Fridtjof stood hammering away at his barrow, utterly indifferent to the danger he was in, while the housekeeper was extinguishing the fire. “It was quite enough for one person to see to that sort of thing,” he thought.