Roald Amundsen

Roald Amundsen
Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen
Born	16 July 1872(1872-07-16) Borge, Østfold, Norway
Died	c. 18 June 1928(1928-06-18) (aged 55) unknown
Occupation	Explorer
Parents	Jens Amundsen, Hanna Sahlqvist
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Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈɾuːɑl ˈɑmʉnsən]; 16 July 1872 – c. 18 June 1928) was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He led the first Antarctic expedition to reach the South Pole between 1910 and 1912. He was the first person to reach both the North and South Poles.^[1][2] He is also known as the first to traverse the Northwest Passage. He disappeared in June 1928 while taking part in a rescue mission. Amundsen, along with Douglas Mawson, Robert Falcon Scott, and Ernest Shackleton, was a key expedition leader during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

Early life

Roald Amundsen as a young boy in Christiania, 1875

Amundsen was born to a family of Norwegian shipowners and captains in Borge, between the towns Fredrikstad and Sarpsborg. His father was Jens Amundsen. He was the fourth son in the family. His mother chose to keep him out of the maritime industry of the family and pressured him to become a doctor, a promise that Amundsen kept until his mother died when he was aged 21, whereupon he quit university for a life at sea.^[3] Amundsen had hidden a lifelong desire inspired by Fridtjof Nansen's crossing of Greenland in 1888 and the doomed Franklin expedition. As a result, he decided on a life of intense exploration.^{[citation needed]}

Polar treks

Belgian Antarctic Expedition (1897–99)

Portraits of Roald Amundsen

He was a member of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition (1897–99) as first mate. This expedition, led by Adrien de Gerlache using the ship the Belgica, became the first expedition to winter in Antarctica.^[4] The Belgica, whether by mistake or design, became locked in the sea ice at 70°30'S off Alexander Island, west of the Antarctic Peninsula. The crew then endured a winter for which the expedition was poorly prepared. By Amundsen's own estimation, the doctor for the expedition, American Frederick Cook, probably saved the crew from scurvy by hunting for animals and feeding the crew fresh meat, an important lesson for Amundsen's future expeditions.

Northwest Passage (1903–1906)

"Belgica" frozen in the ice, 1898

In 1903, Amundsen led the first expedition to successfully traverse Canada's Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (something explorers had been attempting since the days of Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, and Henry Hudson), with six others in a 47-ton steel seal-hunting vessel, Gjøa. Amundsen had the ship outfitted with a small gasoline engine.^[5] They travelled via Baffin Bay, Lancaster and Peel Sounds, and James Ross, Simpson and Rae Straits and spent two winters near King William Island in what is today Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, Canada.^[4][5]

During this time Amundsen learned from the local Netsilik people about Arctic survival skills that would later prove useful. For example, he learned to use sled dogs and to wear animal skins in lieu of heavy, woolen parkas. After a third winter trapped in the ice, Amundsen was able to navigate a passage into the Beaufort Sea after which he cleared into the Bering Strait, thus having successfully navigated the Northwest Passage.^[3] Continuing to the south of Victoria Island, the ship cleared the Canadian Arctic Archipelago on August 17, 1905, but had to stop for the winter before going on to Nome on the Alaska Territory's Pacific coast. Five hundred miles (800 km) away, Eagle City, Alaska, had a telegraph station; Amundsen travelled there (and back) overland to wire a success message (collect) on December 5, 1905. Nome was reached in 1906. Because the water along the route was as shallow as 3 ft (0.91 m), a larger ship could not have made the voyage.^{[citation needed]}

It was at this time that Amundsen received news that Norway had formally become independent of Sweden and had a new king. Amundsen sent the new King Haakon VII news that it "was a great achievement for Norway". He said he hoped to do more and signed it "Your loyal subject, Roald Amundsen."^{[citation needed]}

South Pole expedition (1910–12)

Amundsen's crew at the South Pole

Roald Amundsen and his crew looking at the Norwegian flag

After crossing the Northwest Passage, Amundsen made plans to go to the North Pole and explore the North Polar Basin. Amundsen had problems and hesitation raising funds for the departure and upon hearing in 1909 that first Frederick Cook and then Robert Peary claimed the Pole, he decided to reroute to Antarctica.^[6] However, he did not make these plans known and misled both the Englishman, Robert F. Scott and the Norwegians.^[6] Using the ship Fram ("Forward"), earlier used by Fridtjof Nansen, he left Norway for the south, leaving Oslo on June 3, 1910.^[6][7] At Madeira, Amundsen alerted his men that they would be heading to Antarctica in addition to sending a telegram to Scott notifying him simply: "BEG TO INFORM YOU FRAM PROCEEDING ANTARCTIC--AMUNDSEN."^[6] The expedition arrived at the eastern edge of the Ross Ice Shelf (then known as "the Great Ice Barrier") at a large inlet called the Bay of Whales on January 14, 1911 where Amundsen located his base camp and named it Framheim. Further, Amundsen eschewed the heavy wool clothing worn on earlier Antarctic attempts in favour of Eskimo-style skins.^[3]

Using skis and dog sleds for transportation Amundsen and his men created supply depots at 80°, 81° and 82° South on the Barrier, along a line directly south to the Pole.^[3] Amundsen also planned to kill some of his dogs on the way and use them as a source for fresh meat. A premature attempt, which included Hjalmar Johansen, Kristian Prestrud and Jørgen Stubberud, set out on September 8, 1911, but had to be abandoned due to extreme temperatures. The painful retreat caused a tempering quarrel within the group, with the result that Johansen and others were sent to explore King Edward VII Land.

A second attempt with a team, consisting of Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, Oscar Wisting, and Amundsen himself, departed on October 19, 1911. They took four sledges and 52 dogs. Using a route along the previously unknown Axel Heiberg Glacier they arrived at the edge of the Polar Plateau on November 21 after a four-day climb. On December 14, 1911, the team of five, with 16 dogs, arrived at the Pole (90°00' S). They arrived 35 days before Scott’s group. Amundsen named their South Pole camp Polheim, “Home on the Pole.” Amundsen renamed the Antarctic Plateau as King Haakon VII’s Plateau. They left a small tent and letter stating their accomplishment, in case they did not return safely to Framheim. The team returned to Framheim on January 25, 1912, with 11 dogs. Amundsen’s success was publicly announced on March 7, 1912, when he arrived at Hobart, Australia.

Amundsen’s expedition benefited from careful preparation, good equipment, appropriate clothing, a simple primary task (Amundsen did no surveying on his route south and is known to have taken only two photographs), an understanding of dogs and their handling, and the effective use of skis. In contrast to the misfortunes of Scott’s team, Amundsen’s trek proved rather smooth and uneventful.

In Amundsen’s own words:

"I may say that this is the greatest factor -- the way in which the expedition is equipped -- the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who has everything in order -- luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck."

—from The South Pole, by Roald Amundsen.

Amundsen wrote about the expedition in The South Pole: an account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the "Fram", 1910–12, published in 1912.

Northeast Passage (1916–1919)

Amundsen was allowed to use Fridtjof Nansen's Fram under the South Pole expedition, but in 1916 he contracted his own polar ship. The ship was launched in 1917 and named "Matilda". It was used for sailing through the Northeast Passage. Amundsen led an expedition from 1918 to 1920. With this expedition were Oscar Wisting and Helmer Hanssen, they were both also with Amundsen to the South Pole. In addition, Henrik Lindstrøm was included as a cook, but he suffered a stroke and was so physically reduced that he could not participate. The aim of the expedition was to explore the unknown areas of the Arctic Ocean, strongly inspired by Fridtjof Nansen's expedition earlier with Fram. The plan was that they were going to sail along the coast of Siberia and go into the ice farther to the north and east than Nansen did. In contrast to Amundsen's earlier expeditions, this expedition had a clear academic profile, with geophysicist Harald Ulrik Sverdrup. The voyage was to the north-easterly direction over the Kara Sea, off Cape Chelyuskin put Maud stuck in the ice. The ship remained frozen for nearly a year, even though the ship came into operation in ice. In September 1919 the ship came loose from the ice, but froze again after eleven days longer between east and Vrangeløya New Siberian Islands, in just 70 ° north.

Amundsen participated little in the work outdoors, such as sleigh rides and hunting, because he had been subjected to numerous accidents. He had a broken arm and had been attacked by polar bears. Hanssen and Wisting, along with two others, embarked on an expedition by dog sled to Nome in Alaska despite the fact that it was one thousand kilometers there. Because of the bad ice in the Bering Strait, it could not be crossed. They were, however, able to send a telegram from Anadyr.

The Polarship "Maud" in June, 1918

After two winters frozen in the ice without one had achieved the goal of drifting ice over the North Pole Amundsen himself decided to go to Nome to repair the ship and buy provisions. There were several of the crew ashore, including Hanssen, who after Amundsen's opinion of it broke the contract and consequently he was not raising money.

The third winter was Maud frozen in western Bering Strait, before returning to Seattle for repairs in 1921. Amundsen now returned to Norway, spurred by a need to put his finances in order. He brought with him two indigenous girls, the adopted four-year-old Kakonita and her companion Camilla. When he went bankrupt two years later, however, they were dispatched to Camilla's father in Russia.^[8]

Amundsen returned to Maud, which now lay in Nome, in June 1922. He moved the focus from naval expeditions to aerial expeditions, and therefore took her to fly on board the ship. The expedition was divided into two, one part was to survive the winter to get ready for an increment to fly over the pole. This part led Amundsen. Maud, under the command of Wisting should implement the original plan to drive over the North Pole in the ice. The ship drifted in the ice for three years east of the New Siberian Islands, before it was finally seized by Amundsen's creditors to provide coverage for the debt he had incurred.

The attempt to fly over the Pole failed, too. There were two test flights, but the plane was then destroyed by the last test that you had to give up. To raise revenue to cover the debt he had incurred had Amundsen in 1924, traveling around the United States on a lecture tour. Although the North Pole was not reached and the expedition set like that failed, had the scientific studies greater success. In those periods when the ship was frozen Sverdrup conducted ethnographic studies of the natives, in addition to geophysical studies, which really was his field of study.

Later life

Captain Roald Amundsen at the wheel during the North Pole expedition, c. 1920

In 1918, Amundsen began an expedition with a new ship Maud, which was to last until 1925. Maud sailed West to East through the Northeast Passage, now called the Northern Route (1918–1920). Amundsen planned to freeze the Maud into the polar ice cap and drift towards the North Pole (as Nansen had done with the Fram), but in this he was not successful. However, the scientific results of the expedition, mainly the work of Harald Sverdrup, were of considerable value. Many of these carefully collected scientific data had been lost during the ill-fated journey of Peter Tessem and Paul Knutsen, two crew members sent on a mission by Amundsen, but they were later retrieved by Russian scientist Nikolay Urvantsev as they lay abandoned on the Kara Sea shores.^[9]

In 1923, Amundsen and Oskar Omdal, of the Royal Norwegian Navy, attempted to fly from Wainwright, Alaska to Spitsbergen across the North Pole. Their aircraft was damaged, and they abandoned the journey.

In 1925, accompanied by Lincoln Ellsworth, pilot Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen, and three other team members, Amundsen took two Dornier Do J flying boats, the N-24 and N-25 to 87° 44' north. It was the northernmost latitude reached by plane up to that time. The planes landed a few miles apart without radio contact, yet the crews managed to reunite. One of the aircraft, the N-24 was damaged. Amundsen and his crew worked for over three weeks to clean up an airstrip to take off from ice. They shoveled 600 tons of ice while consuming only one pound (400 g) of daily food rations. In the end, six crew members were packed into the N-25. In a remarkable feat, Riiser-Larsen took off, and they barely became airborne over the cracking ice. They returned triumphant when everyone thought they had been lost forever.

In 1926, Amundsen and fifteen other men (including Ellsworth, Riiser-Larsen, Oscar Wisting, and the Italian air crew led by aeronautical engineer Umberto Nobile) made the first crossing of the Arctic in the airship Norge designed by Nobile. They left Spitsbergen on 11 May 1926, and they landed in Alaska two days later. The three previous claims to have arrived at the North Pole – by Frederick Cook in 1908; Robert Peary in 1909; and Richard Evelyn Byrd in 1926 (just a few days before the Norge) – are all disputed, as being either of dubious accuracy or outright fraud.^[10][11] If their claims are false, the crew of the Norge would be the first verified explorers to have reached the North Pole. If the Norge expedition was actually the first to the North Pole, Amundsen and Oscar Wisting would therefore be the first persons to attain each geographical pole, by ground or by air, as the case may be.

Disappearance and death

Amundsen monument in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, Norway

Amundsen disappeared on June 18, 1928 while flying on a rescue mission with Norwegian pilot Leif Dietrichson, French pilot René Guilbaud, and three more Frenchmen, looking for missing members of Nobile's crew, whose new airship Italia had crashed while returning from the North Pole. Afterwards, a wing-float and bottom gasoline tank from the French Latham 47 flying boat he was in, improvised into a replacement wing-float, was found near the Tromsø coast. It is believed that the plane crashed in fog in the Barents Sea, and that Amundsen was killed in the crash, or died shortly afterwards. His body was never found. The search for Amundsen was called off in September by the Norwegian Government. In 2003 it was suggested that the plane went down northwest of Bear Island.^{[citation needed]}

Both in 2004 and in late August 2009 an unsuccessful search was made by the Royal Norwegian Navy for the wreckage of Amundsen's plane, using the unmanned submarine Hugin 1000. The search focused on a 40-square-mile (100 km²) area of the sea floor, and was documented by the German production company ContextTV.^[12][13]

Legacy

A number of places have been named after him:

• The Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station is named jointly with his rival.
• Amundsen Sea, off the coast of Antarctica.
• Amundsen Glacier, in Antarctica.
• Amundsen Bay, in Antarctica.
• Mount Amundsen, in Antarctica.
• Amundsen Gulf, in the Arctic Ocean, off the coast of the Northwest Territories in Canada (separating Banks Island and the western parts of Victoria Island from the mainland).
• A large crater covering the Moon's south pole is named Amundsen.

Several ships are named after him:

• The Canadian Coast Guard named an icebreaker CCGS Amundsen, whose mission is to perform scientific research in the waters of the Arctic.
• The Royal Norwegian Navy is building a class of Aegis frigates, the second of which, is the HNoMS Roald Amundsen (completed 2006).
• The German brig Roald Amundsen.

Other tributes include:

• Writer Roald Dahl was named after Amundsen.
• Nobel Laureate, Chemist and Poet Roald Hoffmann was named after Amundsen.
• The Amundsen Trail and Amundsen Circle, Oakwood, Staten Island, New York
• Amundsen High School, Chicago, Illinois
• Roald Amundsen appears as a Great Explorer in the 2008 strategy video game Civilization Revolution.^[14]

Works by Amundsen

• Nordvestpassagen, 2-vols, 1907. Translated as The North-West Passage: Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the ship "Gjøa" 1903-1907, 1908.
• Sydpolen, 2-vols, 1912. Translated as The South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the "Fram," 1910-1912, translated by A. G. Chater, 1912.
• Nordostpassagen. Maudfærden langs Asiens kyst 1918–1920. H. U. Sverdrups ophold blandt tsjuktsjerne. Godfred Hansens depotekspedition 1919–1920. Gyldendal, Kristiania 1921.
• Gjennem luften til 88° Nord (by Roald Amundsen, Lincoln Ellsworth and other members of the expedition, 1925). Translated as Our Polar Flight: The Amundsen-Ellsworth Polar Flight, 1925; also as My Polar Flight, 1925.
• Den første flukt over polhavet, with Lincoln Ellsworth and others, 1926. Translated as The First Flight Across the Polar Sea, 1927; also as The First Crossing of the Polar Sea, 1927.
• Mitt liv som polarforsker, 1927. Translated as My Life as an Explorer, 1927.

Bibliography

• Roald Amundsen's Belgica Diary. The first Scientific Expedition to the Antarctic by Hugo Decleir, Bluntisham Books, Erskine Press.
• The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen's Race to the South Pole by Roland Huntford, 1979.
• Roald Amundsen, a full biography by Tor Bomann-Larsen, 2006, ISBN 0750943432
• Scott and Amundsen - Duel in the Ice by Rainer-K. Langner, Haus Publishing, London, 2007, ISBN 9781905791088

See also

• Comparison of the Amundsen and Scott Expeditions
• The Last Place on Earth a TV series based on the book, Scott and Amundsen, by Roland Huntford
• List of Antarctic expeditions
• Arctic exploration
• List of polar explorers
• History of Antarctica

Notes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Roald Amundsen

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Roald Amundsen

• The Fram Museum (Frammuseet)
• Map of Amundsen's and Scott's South Pole journeys at The Fram Museum (Frammuseet)
• Arctic Passage at PBS' Nova site has photographs, maps, excerpts from Amundsen's autobiography and an interview with Roland Huntford.
• Roald Amundsen article at south-pole.com
• 70South - information on Roald Amundsen
• Short biography from Norwegian Foreign Ministry
• DIO vol.10 2000 Amundsen's unparalleled record of polar firsts, including evidence that he was 1st to each geographical pole.
• The Last Place On Earth 1985 serial depicting the race between Amundsen (played by Sverre Anker Ousdal) and Scott.
• Roald Amundsen At Find A Grave
• The Red Tent Sean Connery plays Amundsen
• Villemont Roald Amundsen Legacy at VILLEMONT
• [1] Search for Amundsen's crashed plane

Works by Amundsen

• Works by Roald Amundsen at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)
• Works by Roald Amundsen at Internet Archive and Google Books (scanned books original versions color illustrated)
• Works by Roald Amundsen via LibriVox (audiobooks)
• The South Pole Arthur G. Chater's 1912 translation (HTML)
• Works by or about Roald Amundsen in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

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