January 18, 2012 • 27 mins
Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen was an expert skier, zoologist and artist: By combining these skills, he became one of Norway's earliest heroes. Listen in as Deblina and Sarah look at the life and times of Fridtjof Nansen in the second part of this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sair Dowdy and I'm Deblin to truck Reboarding and Deblina.
We're going to pick up where we left up last
time with the Norwegian explorer slash diplomat Ritchie Off Nonsen,
(00:24):
and we've already talked on the last episode a little
bit about nonsense upbringing and his pretty impressive scientific studies.
His first adventures there was this trek across Norway on skis,
followed by another trek across all of Greenland on skis,
but baby part one in two exactly crazy part one
and two. But where we left off last time was
(00:47):
aboard the from which was of course the ice ship
that Nonsen had commissioned specifically for this journey over the
North Pole. And in case you missed the last episode,
just to give you a little recap of his motivations,
he was operating under the observation that currents move east
to west over the Arctic Ocean, so he had helped
(01:08):
design this specially built ship that could withstand being frozen
in the middle of the ice pack and would be
purposely frozen into the ice pack, and then once they're
the plan was to sort of just ride the current
over the North Pole, or at least get really close
to it. And it worked, or at least the first
part of it worked. The From, which set off from
(01:30):
oslo In, withstood the ice and was comfy and cozy
to boot. It had a fully stocked library, as you
may remember, a windmill that generated light during those Arctic nights,
and a saloon. But after a couple of years at sea,
Nonson was ready to leave the From behind. He had
realized that the projected four to five year trip might
(01:51):
take something more like six to seven years, and also
it was clear that the ship wasn't going to travel
far enough north to actually hit the pole. If he
were to achieve that record, he'd have to make a
dash basically head out with kayaks, skis, sleds, dogs and
just one companion. But there's a crazy part three to
this whole scheme. He wouldn't just be able to dash
(02:14):
out and then return to the coziness of the ship
with its windmill and its library and everything. Leaving the
From meant that he'd never be able to return to
it because locating the ship in the middle of the
Arctic wilderness and catching up with it again too, because
of course the ship would be drifting all this time,
would be impossible. So instead he was going to have to,
(02:35):
after trying to make it to the pole, find solid
land and from there try to locate a settlement and
hazard ice flows and polar bears and temperatures in the
negative thirties along the way. No problem, right, sounds easy.
But first, nonsen he never sets off without a plan, right,
So his first concern was who was going to go.
(02:57):
It was going to be either Nonson or Captain Auto
swa Edrop. He decided quickly enough that square Drop was
going to be responsible for the trip, so he would
stay behind, and Nonson was going to be responsible for
the mission as a whole, so spare Drop would stay
with the from Nonson would go out on the ice,
he'd take along Yalmar Johansson, a famous gymnast who was
(03:20):
really good with the sled dogs and seemed like he
could hold up under the physical and mental strain that
they were going to say, it would be the major
qualification for your dash to the North Pole part. Indeed,
so we talked a little bit in the last episode
about how Nonson differed from many other explorers, how he
sort of considered the risks carefully. He observed nature the
(03:40):
whole getting purposely packed in the ice flow is one
good example of that, and observed natural conditions, and also
really learned from the people who lived in the north,
you know, adopting things like kayaks, uh, and knowing when
to turn back to But I read some of nonsense
account Farthest North, which is uh, some worry of this
whole journey, And there's a passage that I think really
(04:03):
emphasizes the care that he took, and it's it takes
place when he's telling the men about his plan to
make a dash for the pole, and this is what
he writes. I impressed on them, however, that while it
was unquestionably a fine thing to push on as far
as possible towards the north, it was no whit less
honorable and undertaking to bring the from safe and sound
(04:23):
right through the polar sea and out on the other side,
or if not the from at all events themselves, without
any loss of life. I mean, it sounds like not
the kind of speech you expect from the leader of
the polar expedition, who's usually like, let's do it, you know,
let's make it all the way, especially because you don't
think that the rest of the crew would be clamoring
(04:44):
to go exactly. I mean, I don't know if I
would be. Some of them were actually they really wanted
to go on the dash, but that he emphasized, uh,
try to stay alive guys. Seems like a really important
difference between him and a lot of his contemporaries. He
wasn't all motivational speeches, though. He also got really busy
getting together his supplies that he would need. In addition
(05:05):
to their regular scientific observations, the guys aboard the from
started preparing gear, started helping him get everything ready. This
included silk tents, sewing, sleeping bags. One person even copied
Johanson and Nonsense Journal and their research so that they
would have twice the chance the information would have twice
the chance, that is, of making it back to the
(05:26):
outside world. Nonsen, in the meantime, worked on building bamboo
frame kayaks, which were covered in canvas thirty six pounds
apiece and they really look kind of funny too. They're
they're not long and narrow like kayaks traditionally are because
they were afraid that something like that would get bumped
around so much they break their kayaks before they needed them.
But if you read far this north, this is kind
(05:48):
of the fun part of nonsense account, you know, getting
ready and all the preparations, and it's before the monotony
of the ice starts, where it's just cold day, one
cold day after another. Um At this point he's still
wondering if it will even get cold enough to warrant
bringing the wolf skin clothes he's considering, and he hosts
(06:09):
a big party to aboard the ship when it reaches
the highest recorded northern latitude. So there's sort of a
sense of anticipation and celebration at this point, but he's
also trying to psych himself up for what's coming around
New Year's Eve. He says, never before have I had
such strange feelings at the commencement of the new year.
(06:30):
It cannot fail to bring some momentous events and will
possibly become one of the most remarkable years in my life,
whether it leads me to success or destruction. Years come
and go unnoticed in this world of ice, and we
have no more knowledge here of what these years have
brought to humanity than we know of what the future
ones have in store. So heavy thoughts before embarking on
(06:52):
this journey, but it does take a few more months.
He has two false starts because they are so concerned
about having their equipment and supply to just be flawless.
But they finally left the From for good March fourteenth eight,
and they had twenty eight dogs with them, those two
bulky kayaks but lightweight kayaks, three fleds, and for a
(07:13):
very short time a few extra companions who just sort
of tagged along for a little while to wish them
wish them off well. Things got off to a difficult
start though. There were not as many level patches of
ice as they were hoping there would be these ridges,
and when they came across a ridge it would mean
they'd have to drag the sleds over the uneven surface
(07:34):
and then constantly disentangle all of the dog harnesses too,
And the dogs weren't behaving very well because they had
of course also been stuck aboard the From for months
and months and not getting all the exercises that exercise
that this tyle Library and Entertainment, the Windmill didn't do
it for the dogs, so they weren't too far in
(07:55):
when they had to kill the first dog, though it
was what Nonson called some of the most disagreeable work
they had to do on their entire journey. When they
killed the dog, they fed it to the others because
they needed something to feed the dogs anyway. They were
starting to run low and provisions and um, we'll talk
about this a little more, but his account of dealing
(08:15):
with the dogs and gradually having to kill them is
pretty heartbreaking and um it was one of the more
disturbing parts of his trip. It seems so Nonson and
Johansen themselves that would get so tired from this dash
to the poll that sometimes they'd fall asleep while they
were on their skis, but they still did maintain this
(08:37):
kind of routine. They would stop for the day and
Johansen would tend to the dogs, feed them, make sure
they were all, you know, tied up put away. Nonson meanwhile,
would pitch the tent and get dinner going, and then
they would just crawl into their sleeping bags while dinner
was cooking and thaw out. Nonson describes their clothes just
(08:59):
from the um I guess from sweat combined with little
drops of moisture getting stuck in their clothes would turn
them into quote complete suits of ice armor, which I
don't know that sounds really really uncomfortable because nonsense account
also expresses how they look forward to dinner. All day long.
They had three meals pemmican with dried potatoes, fish meal,
(09:22):
flour and butter, and pea bean or lentil soup. And
as a kind of nightcap, they'd have some white powder
in boiling water. In the morning they'd have breakfast, some
which sometimes included chocolate sounds better than fish meal, and
they would journal before they headed out. And they had
a plan too for going about this race to the pole.
(09:42):
Originally Nonsen planned to reach the pole or go for
fifty days before turning around, but by early April he
was starting to reconsider, starting to think they were going
to have to turn back earlier than that. So in
April eighth they decided they were going to have to
turn back, and they celebrated achieving at that point the
(10:02):
northernmost record. It was only two miles from the pole.
They had a big banquet, maybe a little extra chocolate
or way powder, or something, and Johanssen wrote that he
should have liked it if we could have got further.
It has our consolation that we have done what we could,
and that we have even lifted a little more of
(10:23):
the veil which conceals this part of our planet. So
kind of an understatement for disappointment. I mean, it doesn't
sound too bad. They must have been upset that they
couldn't actually get there. I was disappointed to what I
got to this point in the story because I really
thought that they were going to make it. But it
turned out to be a really smart decision for them
to turn around. Their new southern goal Franz Joseph Lynn
(10:45):
was six hundred miles away, and they had to get
there before the ice broke up, so they get stuck
on the ice. It was a race, so the turnaround
was easy. At first they had nice even ice to
travel on, but things got rough as the men were
driven off course by open handels and ice ridges. They
kept a break neck pace, though sometimes they went for
thirty six hour stretches at a time, and by mid
(11:08):
May there were only twelve of the twenty eight dogs
still alive. By June, there were only six left Nonson
at one point writes about how hard it was to
kill a dog that had actually been born aboard the
from um so when you know, a dog he had raised.
And the men themselves were at this point reduced to
eating a gruel made with the dog's blood and just
(11:31):
barely barely scraping by. They really didn't know if they
were going to make it. Um Nonsen writes about how
horribly he felt for treating the exhausted dog, you know,
just trying to make them keep going, because it was
a matter of life or death for the men. At
this point, he wrote, it is the sad part of
expeditions of this kind that one systematically kills all better
(11:51):
feelings until only hard hearted egoism remains. So by late June,
the slushy ice meant that the men had to start
using their kayak X, carrying the two surviving dogs on
top of their kayaks, so every time they hit solid
ice again they had to haul the kayaks up and
start over on foot. When they stopped for the night,
there was the risk that they'd drift north again or
(12:12):
a flow would open up by their tent, which you
wouldn't want at all, No, because your tent could go
in the water, and the I use drifting north again too.
That erases any progress that you make during the day.
Rock Bottom was probably when Johansen was attacked by a
polar bear. You would expect that means that was the
end of Johansen. He miraculously survived the attack. The polar
(12:34):
bear hit his face and kind of must have grazed
it um and jumped on top of him before Nonsen
shot it um. Finally, to another Rocko attom moment, the
men had to kill the last two dogs. They shot
each other's. They hadn't use bullets on the dogs until
this point, but they didn't have the heart to to
(12:54):
do it anyway for these last survivors. Finally they reached
land after a whole summer of looking for it. They
hit an island and started to hop their way south,
hunting bears along the way. They actually got a taste
for polar bear cubs during this time and walruses. They
did not get a taste for walruses. That the statement
(13:16):
kind of ran together. They got a taste for polar
bear cubs, but they hunted both polar bear cubs and
walruses to be clear, but you can't island hot through
an arctic winter, so they had to make a camp.
So they used a sled runner to heck out a
little ditch and build a small stone hut with moss
lining and a walrus skin roof, and they modified their
sleeping bags to fit to and stored up on walrus
(13:39):
blubber and use that for fuel. So they lived in
what they called a den for the next nine months.
That's really hard for for me to wrap my mind around.
It's one thing to be aboard the ship that's frozen
in at least has the library and the little newspaper.
But to be in this hut for nine months, it
found very very bleak. But it also doesn't sound like
(14:04):
what you might expect. You might think that they would, um,
sort of go lord of the flies, start hating each other,
start bickering constantly, maybe go a little bit crazy. They
really maintained their sanity and their camaraderie to they had
this almanac with them. For a little bit of entertainment.
They would eat bear broth and bear steaks and blubber cakes,
(14:27):
which were a special treat. And um, this, I guess
this sort of show is how Nonsen still maintain his sanity,
but it's also a sad marker if this is the
best you can do. He wrote about celebrating Christmas by
changing his underpants and then using the old pair as
a bath sponge, and that was, you know, a real
(14:49):
celebratory way to mark the holiday for him. Shows you
what state they were at by this point. But by
mid May it was warm enough finally to leave that
hut and head south like in so months of hut living,
though meant that they were out of shape and pretty slow,
so they couldn't travel necessarily at the same pace that
they had before. At one point they almost lost their kayaks,
(15:10):
which at that point was their main method of transportation.
They would have been out of luck. And then by
June they were gearing up for an open water kayak
journey to Spitzbergen, and they were hoping that by doing
that they might find a ship along the way. But
on June sevent eight, ninety six, Nonson heard barking. By
pure chance, they had managed to run into the British
(15:31):
expedition of Frederick G. Jackson, and this is kind of
how their meeting went down. Jackson said, aren't you Nonson?
Nonson answered yes, I am, and then Jackson replies by jove,
I am glad to see you. Where have you come
from now? So Jackson's careful at this point though, even
while they're having this exchange not to mention the From
(15:52):
around Nonson and Johansson. He figures that they must have
been the only two survivors from some disaster. But miraculously,
only days after Nonson and Johansson returned to Norway, the
From and her complete crew arrived as well, having come
clear of the ice pack finally at almost the exact
same time. Pretty amazing, and it must have been especially
(16:15):
amazing to Notason, considering how long he thought that it
might take the From to get through. So this time,
with this whole reunited From crew back in Norway, Nonson
became an international celebrity. We talked about after his Greenland trip.
He was a pretty big deal back home, but this
time he's an international celebrity, and he started teaching oceanography
(16:37):
at the University of Oslo. He wrote Farthest North, the
one we've been quoting from a bit, and did this
huge lecture tour to support it, and just by the bye,
it kind of seems like farthest north is still like
a boy's handbook for young adventures in Norway almost. I
don't know if you could maybe kind of like into
the Wild or something like that. I don't know if
(17:00):
it's a false comparison, but something a lot of kids
in Norway still read today. Uh nonsense. Prominence though in
his country, came at a really great time for national politics,
because the country was ready to finally become independent from
Sweden and needed some kind of national hero like this guy. Yeah.
(17:20):
Nonson was actually part of the secret delegation sent to
Copenhagen in nineteen o five to feel out the Danish
Prince carl On whether he was interested in becoming King
of Norway. The country achieved independence in nineteen o five,
and Nonson became its first ambassador to Great Britain, but
he didn't take his family with him. Ava by this
point had five kids with him, and she stayed behind um.
(17:42):
He always intended on returning to a Norway in a
short time, and when he finally returned to Norway in
nineteen o seven, his wife died suddenly of pneumonia. Their
relationship had actually been strained for some time. All that
living apart probably added a lot to it, but it's
safe to assume that there are two things we can
know about them, and that is that she very likely
(18:03):
helped keep him alive out on the ice. He wrote
of her a lot in his diary, and he had
promised her that he'd come back alive, and he was
intent on keeping that promise also without her. The home
life that he envisioned, five kids living together in this
big house didn't really happen until his children were grown
and married and he was old. Yah, his kids ended
(18:23):
up living more with relatives and friends while he embarked
on this really ambitious post explorer career, and he didn't
end up remarrying until nineteen nineteen. But so moving on
to that post explorer career, we alluded to it a
little bit in the beginning, and it's really impressive how
(18:45):
broad its scope. So it all starts though with World
War One. Nonson accepted that further polar explorations were going
to be an impossibility, so he got to work ending
the Allied Blackade against neutral Norway. He wanted at least
vital supplies like food and things to be able to
come through, so out of this whole thing he came
(19:06):
out of the war as the president of the Norwegian
Union for the League of Nations. He was a huge
League of Nations supporter, and this is where Nonson's great
humanitarian career kind of kicked off. And it's a bit
strange that he got so involved in this world of
tricky post war negotiating, considering that he was by training
(19:27):
a scientist, and he he was interested in returning to
his science after so many years as a diplomat and
as an explorer. But he was also such a star
at this point that people from all over Europe were
willing to hear him out. You know, he was the
one guy who everybody was okay talking to. In he
(19:47):
went to work repatriating prisoners of war, people who had
waited for years for someone to help them get home again.
So who was going to be paying for this? Who
was going to be helping them? So when Notson was
appointed to the League of Sations High Commissioner or appointed
as the League of Nations High Commissioner, i should say,
for prisoners of war, Nonson helped return four hundred and
fifty thousand prisoners of war from twenty six countries, keeping
(20:10):
the cost to only about one pound per prisoner. During
his travels for the Pow job, he saw that many
in Europe were starving, especially in the Soviet Union. So
Nonson started to raise money for a relief, but he
found it difficult to get governmental support for the Soviets
governments weren't interested in, you know, by helping out the
(20:32):
starving people by extension, helping out the Soviet government. Nonson
turned to private donors instead, appealing to humanity over politics.
He was kind of like, these are just people who
need help regardless, don't have any politics. So he raised
enough money and gathered enough supplies to save and estimated
seven to twenty two million people according to his Nobel
(20:54):
Prize biography. Then in nineteen one, he used his experience
repatrioting POWs to start helping settle stateless refugees. So all
these people left after World War One with maybe not
a country or a country they couldn't return to. And
the first step was creating identities for a lot of
people who had lost their papers, you know, running away
(21:17):
from their country or in some kind of wartime trauma,
and we're just stuck in limbo, no papers, nowhere they
could go. So he formed something called Nonson passports, which
were eventually issued and recognized by fifty two governments, something
I thought was pretty remarkable, and they helped hundreds of
(21:37):
thousands of people resettle, including some pretty famous names like
Igor Stravinsky and Anna Pavlovo. We talked about both of
them in our Right of Spring episode uh Sergei, Rachmaninov,
Mark Chical, So a lot of big names and then
a lot of other people too who were just stuck
with nowhere to go in the Greek government asked Nonson
(21:59):
to figure out an unsub hordable influx of Greek refugees
from Asia Minor after the Greek's defeat by the Turks.
So with the League of Nations approval, Nonson arranged a
swap of one million, two hundred fifty thousand Greek Turks
for five hundred thousand Turkish Greeks with compensation to start
new lives. And I think that was kind of a controvert.
I mean, it sounds controversial. It's easy to imagine, like
(22:21):
will switch our ethnic Greeks for your ethnic Turks, and
people will move from place that they've lived for maybe generations.
But it seemed to work in this case, and Nonson
ended up getting a lot of credit for it in
the end. Then, on December tenth nWo, Nonson won the
Nobel Peace Prize. His biographer Roland Huntford wrote that quote,
(22:43):
Nonson is among the few really worthy winners of the
Peace Prize, although he is probably the one who spent
the shortest time earning it. A Danish publisher actually ended
up doubling the prize money that Nonson got, and Nonson
spent it on Greek refugees and on to model farms
in the Ukraine and by the Volga, so he brought
them their first tractors in the area. It was a
(23:04):
big deal. And then by the late nineteen twenties knots
and began experiencing heart problems and on May thirteenth, nineteen thirty,
he died of a heart attack at home. He's buried
or he was buried May seventeen, on Norway's Constitution Day.
And I think it is important to mention that amidst
all of this nonsen of fandom sort of you know,
(23:26):
people who were willing from people from a lot of
different countries who are willing to work with him and
listen to him. He did have his critics. He was
accused by a lot of people of being a Russia
worshiper because he was trying to help people who were
starving there, and some folks interpreted that as him working
with the Soviets, and he did get some criticism for
(23:46):
that when he won the Nobel Prize. It was something
he worked hard to deny, you know, say that was
not his motive, but it was still out there. But
he did have a certain agenda. He had certain goals,
and I think appeal to people is best translated by
this quote that you have here on your outline. He says,
it is within us all. It is our mysterious longing
(24:08):
to accomplish something, to fill life with something more than
a daily journey from home to the office and from
the office home again. It is our ever present longing
to surmount difficulties and dangers, to see that which is hidden,
and seek the places lying away from the beaten track.
It is the call of the unknown, the longing for
the land beyond, the divine power deeply rooted within the
(24:31):
soul of man. It is this spirit which drove the
first hunters to new places, and the incentive for perhaps
our greatest deeds the force of human thought, which spreads
its wings and flies where freedom knows no bounds. Spirit
of adventure absolutely, and I think people of any time
can relate to this. I think so and wanting to
(24:53):
do something bigger with your life. And I think that
maybe the most interesting point of Nonsense life is he
is famous for being an explorer, but he ultimately did
do something bigger with his life than achieve a polar
record or something like that. A remarkable feat of endurance.
He went on to actually really help a lot of people,
(25:14):
and he did that by not dying out there on
the ice. But there's although I love this um how
he says home to the office and from the office
home again, it doesn't seem like for him ifice. Maybe
he worked in the lab for a few years, but no,
he certainly wasn't in a cube for any of his days.
There's a lot of ways to learn more about Nonsense today.
(25:36):
He is a really celebrated figure in Norway. There's the
fram Museum which is in Oslo, and then the fritchi
Off Nonsen Institute, which focuses on environmental politics and bio diversity,
those kinds of things. Or if you are actually an explorer.
Somebody can who can handle this, You can learn about
him by getting out there on the ice, and it
(25:57):
seems that a lot of people do just that. I
read a recent story about a Norwegian living in Maine
who had cross Greenland on skis, and he said that quote,
if you're Norwegian, you love to walk in the footsteps
of your country's explorers. And then there was another story
recently in National Geographic that featured two Norwegian adventurers who
(26:18):
were retracing Nonson and Johansson's polar trip using para sales
fortunately instead of dogs, but realizing that it was still
a really difficult journey and they knew where they were
going this time. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's
anything I would take on probably at any point. I don't.
Polar exploration has no real appeal for me. No, but
(26:42):
it doesn't make for a really good story and a
really great podcast. So I think that's one that was
frequently requested as well, was it not? It was? And
really all sorts of these Polar Explorer episodes are very
frequently suggested, So let us know what once you really
really want to hear about, or they don't have to
be exploring ac regions that can be um any part
(27:04):
of the world. Just let us know where History podcast
at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter
at miss in history, and we're on Facebook. Those are
two really great ways to reach out to it. And
if you think you know a lot about one of
the topics we discussed on this podcast, which is dogs
and sleds, we have an awesome idd or odd quiz
on our website and you can check it out by
visiting our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.
(27:31):
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Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sair Dowdy and I'm Deblin to truck Reboarding and Deblina.
We're going to pick up where we left up last
time with the Norwegian explorer slash diplomat Ritchie Off Nonsen,
(00:24):
and we've already talked on the last episode a little
bit about nonsense upbringing and his pretty impressive scientific studies.
His first adventures there was this trek across Norway on skis,
followed by another trek across all of Greenland on skis,
but baby part one in two exactly crazy part one
and two. But where we left off last time was
(00:47):
aboard the from which was of course the ice ship
that Nonsen had commissioned specifically for this journey over the
North Pole. And in case you missed the last episode,
just to give you a little recap of his motivations,
he was operating under the observation that currents move east
to west over the Arctic Ocean, so he had helped
(01:08):
design this specially built ship that could withstand being frozen
in the middle of the ice pack and would be
purposely frozen into the ice pack, and then once they're
the plan was to sort of just ride the current
over the North Pole, or at least get really close
to it. And it worked, or at least the first
part of it worked. The From, which set off from
(01:30):
oslo In, withstood the ice and was comfy and cozy
to boot. It had a fully stocked library, as you
may remember, a windmill that generated light during those Arctic nights,
and a saloon. But after a couple of years at sea,
Nonson was ready to leave the From behind. He had
realized that the projected four to five year trip might
(01:51):
take something more like six to seven years, and also
it was clear that the ship wasn't going to travel
far enough north to actually hit the pole. If he
were to achieve that record, he'd have to make a
dash basically head out with kayaks, skis, sleds, dogs and
just one companion. But there's a crazy part three to
this whole scheme. He wouldn't just be able to dash
(02:14):
out and then return to the coziness of the ship
with its windmill and its library and everything. Leaving the
From meant that he'd never be able to return to
it because locating the ship in the middle of the
Arctic wilderness and catching up with it again too, because
of course the ship would be drifting all this time,
would be impossible. So instead he was going to have to,
(02:35):
after trying to make it to the pole, find solid
land and from there try to locate a settlement and
hazard ice flows and polar bears and temperatures in the
negative thirties along the way. No problem, right, sounds easy.
But first, nonsen he never sets off without a plan, right,
So his first concern was who was going to go.
(02:57):
It was going to be either Nonson or Captain Auto
swa Edrop. He decided quickly enough that square Drop was
going to be responsible for the trip, so he would
stay behind, and Nonson was going to be responsible for
the mission as a whole, so spare Drop would stay
with the from Nonson would go out on the ice,
he'd take along Yalmar Johansson, a famous gymnast who was
(03:20):
really good with the sled dogs and seemed like he
could hold up under the physical and mental strain that
they were going to say, it would be the major
qualification for your dash to the North Pole part. Indeed,
so we talked a little bit in the last episode
about how Nonson differed from many other explorers, how he
sort of considered the risks carefully. He observed nature the
(03:40):
whole getting purposely packed in the ice flow is one
good example of that, and observed natural conditions, and also
really learned from the people who lived in the north,
you know, adopting things like kayaks, uh, and knowing when
to turn back to But I read some of nonsense
account Farthest North, which is uh, some worry of this
whole journey, And there's a passage that I think really
(04:03):
emphasizes the care that he took, and it's it takes
place when he's telling the men about his plan to
make a dash for the pole, and this is what
he writes. I impressed on them, however, that while it
was unquestionably a fine thing to push on as far
as possible towards the north, it was no whit less
honorable and undertaking to bring the from safe and sound
(04:23):
right through the polar sea and out on the other side,
or if not the from at all events themselves, without
any loss of life. I mean, it sounds like not
the kind of speech you expect from the leader of
the polar expedition, who's usually like, let's do it, you know,
let's make it all the way, especially because you don't
think that the rest of the crew would be clamoring
(04:44):
to go exactly. I mean, I don't know if I
would be. Some of them were actually they really wanted
to go on the dash, but that he emphasized, uh,
try to stay alive guys. Seems like a really important
difference between him and a lot of his contemporaries. He
wasn't all motivational speeches, though. He also got really busy
getting together his supplies that he would need. In addition
(05:05):
to their regular scientific observations, the guys aboard the from
started preparing gear, started helping him get everything ready. This
included silk tents, sewing, sleeping bags. One person even copied
Johanson and Nonsense Journal and their research so that they
would have twice the chance the information would have twice
the chance, that is, of making it back to the
(05:26):
outside world. Nonsen, in the meantime, worked on building bamboo
frame kayaks, which were covered in canvas thirty six pounds
apiece and they really look kind of funny too. They're
they're not long and narrow like kayaks traditionally are because
they were afraid that something like that would get bumped
around so much they break their kayaks before they needed them.
But if you read far this north, this is kind
(05:48):
of the fun part of nonsense account, you know, getting
ready and all the preparations, and it's before the monotony
of the ice starts, where it's just cold day, one
cold day after another. Um At this point he's still
wondering if it will even get cold enough to warrant
bringing the wolf skin clothes he's considering, and he hosts
(06:09):
a big party to aboard the ship when it reaches
the highest recorded northern latitude. So there's sort of a
sense of anticipation and celebration at this point, but he's
also trying to psych himself up for what's coming around
New Year's Eve. He says, never before have I had
such strange feelings at the commencement of the new year.
(06:30):
It cannot fail to bring some momentous events and will
possibly become one of the most remarkable years in my life,
whether it leads me to success or destruction. Years come
and go unnoticed in this world of ice, and we
have no more knowledge here of what these years have
brought to humanity than we know of what the future
ones have in store. So heavy thoughts before embarking on
(06:52):
this journey, but it does take a few more months.
He has two false starts because they are so concerned
about having their equipment and supply to just be flawless.
But they finally left the From for good March fourteenth eight,
and they had twenty eight dogs with them, those two
bulky kayaks but lightweight kayaks, three fleds, and for a
(07:13):
very short time a few extra companions who just sort
of tagged along for a little while to wish them
wish them off well. Things got off to a difficult
start though. There were not as many level patches of
ice as they were hoping there would be these ridges,
and when they came across a ridge it would mean
they'd have to drag the sleds over the uneven surface
(07:34):
and then constantly disentangle all of the dog harnesses too,
And the dogs weren't behaving very well because they had
of course also been stuck aboard the From for months
and months and not getting all the exercises that exercise
that this tyle Library and Entertainment, the Windmill didn't do
it for the dogs, so they weren't too far in
(07:55):
when they had to kill the first dog, though it
was what Nonson called some of the most disagreeable work
they had to do on their entire journey. When they
killed the dog, they fed it to the others because
they needed something to feed the dogs anyway. They were
starting to run low and provisions and um, we'll talk
about this a little more, but his account of dealing
(08:15):
with the dogs and gradually having to kill them is
pretty heartbreaking and um it was one of the more
disturbing parts of his trip. It seems so Nonson and
Johansen themselves that would get so tired from this dash
to the poll that sometimes they'd fall asleep while they
were on their skis, but they still did maintain this
(08:37):
kind of routine. They would stop for the day and
Johansen would tend to the dogs, feed them, make sure
they were all, you know, tied up put away. Nonson meanwhile,
would pitch the tent and get dinner going, and then
they would just crawl into their sleeping bags while dinner
was cooking and thaw out. Nonson describes their clothes just
(08:59):
from the um I guess from sweat combined with little
drops of moisture getting stuck in their clothes would turn
them into quote complete suits of ice armor, which I
don't know that sounds really really uncomfortable because nonsense account
also expresses how they look forward to dinner. All day long.
They had three meals pemmican with dried potatoes, fish meal,
(09:22):
flour and butter, and pea bean or lentil soup. And
as a kind of nightcap, they'd have some white powder
in boiling water. In the morning they'd have breakfast, some
which sometimes included chocolate sounds better than fish meal, and
they would journal before they headed out. And they had
a plan too for going about this race to the pole.
(09:42):
Originally Nonsen planned to reach the pole or go for
fifty days before turning around, but by early April he
was starting to reconsider, starting to think they were going
to have to turn back earlier than that. So in
April eighth they decided they were going to have to
turn back, and they celebrated achieving at that point the
(10:02):
northernmost record. It was only two miles from the pole.
They had a big banquet, maybe a little extra chocolate
or way powder, or something, and Johanssen wrote that he
should have liked it if we could have got further.
It has our consolation that we have done what we could,
and that we have even lifted a little more of
(10:23):
the veil which conceals this part of our planet. So
kind of an understatement for disappointment. I mean, it doesn't
sound too bad. They must have been upset that they
couldn't actually get there. I was disappointed to what I
got to this point in the story because I really
thought that they were going to make it. But it
turned out to be a really smart decision for them
to turn around. Their new southern goal Franz Joseph Lynn
(10:45):
was six hundred miles away, and they had to get
there before the ice broke up, so they get stuck
on the ice. It was a race, so the turnaround
was easy. At first they had nice even ice to
travel on, but things got rough as the men were
driven off course by open handels and ice ridges. They
kept a break neck pace, though sometimes they went for
thirty six hour stretches at a time, and by mid
(11:08):
May there were only twelve of the twenty eight dogs
still alive. By June, there were only six left Nonson
at one point writes about how hard it was to
kill a dog that had actually been born aboard the
from um so when you know, a dog he had raised.
And the men themselves were at this point reduced to
eating a gruel made with the dog's blood and just
(11:31):
barely barely scraping by. They really didn't know if they
were going to make it. Um Nonsen writes about how
horribly he felt for treating the exhausted dog, you know,
just trying to make them keep going, because it was
a matter of life or death for the men. At
this point, he wrote, it is the sad part of
expeditions of this kind that one systematically kills all better
(11:51):
feelings until only hard hearted egoism remains. So by late June,
the slushy ice meant that the men had to start
using their kayak X, carrying the two surviving dogs on
top of their kayaks, so every time they hit solid
ice again they had to haul the kayaks up and
start over on foot. When they stopped for the night,
there was the risk that they'd drift north again or
(12:12):
a flow would open up by their tent, which you
wouldn't want at all, No, because your tent could go
in the water, and the I use drifting north again too.
That erases any progress that you make during the day.
Rock Bottom was probably when Johansen was attacked by a
polar bear. You would expect that means that was the
end of Johansen. He miraculously survived the attack. The polar
(12:34):
bear hit his face and kind of must have grazed
it um and jumped on top of him before Nonsen
shot it um. Finally, to another Rocko attom moment, the
men had to kill the last two dogs. They shot
each other's. They hadn't use bullets on the dogs until
this point, but they didn't have the heart to to
(12:54):
do it anyway for these last survivors. Finally they reached
land after a whole summer of looking for it. They
hit an island and started to hop their way south,
hunting bears along the way. They actually got a taste
for polar bear cubs during this time and walruses. They
did not get a taste for walruses. That the statement
(13:16):
kind of ran together. They got a taste for polar
bear cubs, but they hunted both polar bear cubs and
walruses to be clear, but you can't island hot through
an arctic winter, so they had to make a camp.
So they used a sled runner to heck out a
little ditch and build a small stone hut with moss
lining and a walrus skin roof, and they modified their
sleeping bags to fit to and stored up on walrus
(13:39):
blubber and use that for fuel. So they lived in
what they called a den for the next nine months.
That's really hard for for me to wrap my mind around.
It's one thing to be aboard the ship that's frozen
in at least has the library and the little newspaper.
But to be in this hut for nine months, it
found very very bleak. But it also doesn't sound like
(14:04):
what you might expect. You might think that they would, um,
sort of go lord of the flies, start hating each other,
start bickering constantly, maybe go a little bit crazy. They
really maintained their sanity and their camaraderie to they had
this almanac with them. For a little bit of entertainment.
They would eat bear broth and bear steaks and blubber cakes,
(14:27):
which were a special treat. And um, this, I guess
this sort of show is how Nonsen still maintain his sanity,
but it's also a sad marker if this is the
best you can do. He wrote about celebrating Christmas by
changing his underpants and then using the old pair as
a bath sponge, and that was, you know, a real
(14:49):
celebratory way to mark the holiday for him. Shows you
what state they were at by this point. But by
mid May it was warm enough finally to leave that
hut and head south like in so months of hut living,
though meant that they were out of shape and pretty slow,
so they couldn't travel necessarily at the same pace that
they had before. At one point they almost lost their kayaks,
(15:10):
which at that point was their main method of transportation.
They would have been out of luck. And then by
June they were gearing up for an open water kayak
journey to Spitzbergen, and they were hoping that by doing
that they might find a ship along the way. But
on June sevent eight, ninety six, Nonson heard barking. By
pure chance, they had managed to run into the British
(15:31):
expedition of Frederick G. Jackson, and this is kind of
how their meeting went down. Jackson said, aren't you Nonson?
Nonson answered yes, I am, and then Jackson replies by jove,
I am glad to see you. Where have you come
from now? So Jackson's careful at this point though, even
while they're having this exchange not to mention the From
(15:52):
around Nonson and Johansson. He figures that they must have
been the only two survivors from some disaster. But miraculously,
only days after Nonson and Johansson returned to Norway, the
From and her complete crew arrived as well, having come
clear of the ice pack finally at almost the exact
same time. Pretty amazing, and it must have been especially
(16:15):
amazing to Notason, considering how long he thought that it
might take the From to get through. So this time,
with this whole reunited From crew back in Norway, Nonson
became an international celebrity. We talked about after his Greenland trip.
He was a pretty big deal back home, but this
time he's an international celebrity, and he started teaching oceanography
(16:37):
at the University of Oslo. He wrote Farthest North, the
one we've been quoting from a bit, and did this
huge lecture tour to support it, and just by the bye,
it kind of seems like farthest north is still like
a boy's handbook for young adventures in Norway almost. I
don't know if you could maybe kind of like into
the Wild or something like that. I don't know if
(17:00):
it's a false comparison, but something a lot of kids
in Norway still read today. Uh nonsense. Prominence though in
his country, came at a really great time for national politics,
because the country was ready to finally become independent from
Sweden and needed some kind of national hero like this guy. Yeah.
(17:20):
Nonson was actually part of the secret delegation sent to
Copenhagen in nineteen o five to feel out the Danish
Prince carl On whether he was interested in becoming King
of Norway. The country achieved independence in nineteen o five,
and Nonson became its first ambassador to Great Britain, but
he didn't take his family with him. Ava by this
point had five kids with him, and she stayed behind um.
(17:42):
He always intended on returning to a Norway in a
short time, and when he finally returned to Norway in
nineteen o seven, his wife died suddenly of pneumonia. Their
relationship had actually been strained for some time. All that
living apart probably added a lot to it, but it's
safe to assume that there are two things we can
know about them, and that is that she very likely
(18:03):
helped keep him alive out on the ice. He wrote
of her a lot in his diary, and he had
promised her that he'd come back alive, and he was
intent on keeping that promise also without her. The home
life that he envisioned, five kids living together in this
big house didn't really happen until his children were grown
and married and he was old. Yah, his kids ended
(18:23):
up living more with relatives and friends while he embarked
on this really ambitious post explorer career, and he didn't
end up remarrying until nineteen nineteen. But so moving on
to that post explorer career, we alluded to it a
little bit in the beginning, and it's really impressive how
(18:45):
broad its scope. So it all starts though with World
War One. Nonson accepted that further polar explorations were going
to be an impossibility, so he got to work ending
the Allied Blackade against neutral Norway. He wanted at least
vital supplies like food and things to be able to
come through, so out of this whole thing he came
(19:06):
out of the war as the president of the Norwegian
Union for the League of Nations. He was a huge
League of Nations supporter, and this is where Nonson's great
humanitarian career kind of kicked off. And it's a bit
strange that he got so involved in this world of
tricky post war negotiating, considering that he was by training
(19:27):
a scientist, and he he was interested in returning to
his science after so many years as a diplomat and
as an explorer. But he was also such a star
at this point that people from all over Europe were
willing to hear him out. You know, he was the
one guy who everybody was okay talking to. In he
(19:47):
went to work repatriating prisoners of war, people who had
waited for years for someone to help them get home again.
So who was going to be paying for this? Who
was going to be helping them? So when Notson was
appointed to the League of Sations High Commissioner or appointed
as the League of Nations High Commissioner, i should say,
for prisoners of war, Nonson helped return four hundred and
fifty thousand prisoners of war from twenty six countries, keeping
(20:10):
the cost to only about one pound per prisoner. During
his travels for the Pow job, he saw that many
in Europe were starving, especially in the Soviet Union. So
Nonson started to raise money for a relief, but he
found it difficult to get governmental support for the Soviets
governments weren't interested in, you know, by helping out the
(20:32):
starving people by extension, helping out the Soviet government. Nonson
turned to private donors instead, appealing to humanity over politics.
He was kind of like, these are just people who
need help regardless, don't have any politics. So he raised
enough money and gathered enough supplies to save and estimated
seven to twenty two million people according to his Nobel
(20:54):
Prize biography. Then in nineteen one, he used his experience
repatrioting POWs to start helping settle stateless refugees. So all
these people left after World War One with maybe not
a country or a country they couldn't return to. And
the first step was creating identities for a lot of
people who had lost their papers, you know, running away
(21:17):
from their country or in some kind of wartime trauma,
and we're just stuck in limbo, no papers, nowhere they
could go. So he formed something called Nonson passports, which
were eventually issued and recognized by fifty two governments, something
I thought was pretty remarkable, and they helped hundreds of
(21:37):
thousands of people resettle, including some pretty famous names like
Igor Stravinsky and Anna Pavlovo. We talked about both of
them in our Right of Spring episode uh Sergei, Rachmaninov,
Mark Chical, So a lot of big names and then
a lot of other people too who were just stuck
with nowhere to go in the Greek government asked Nonson
(21:59):
to figure out an unsub hordable influx of Greek refugees
from Asia Minor after the Greek's defeat by the Turks.
So with the League of Nations approval, Nonson arranged a
swap of one million, two hundred fifty thousand Greek Turks
for five hundred thousand Turkish Greeks with compensation to start
new lives. And I think that was kind of a controvert.
I mean, it sounds controversial. It's easy to imagine, like
(22:21):
will switch our ethnic Greeks for your ethnic Turks, and
people will move from place that they've lived for maybe generations.
But it seemed to work in this case, and Nonson
ended up getting a lot of credit for it in
the end. Then, on December tenth nWo, Nonson won the
Nobel Peace Prize. His biographer Roland Huntford wrote that quote,
(22:43):
Nonson is among the few really worthy winners of the
Peace Prize, although he is probably the one who spent
the shortest time earning it. A Danish publisher actually ended
up doubling the prize money that Nonson got, and Nonson
spent it on Greek refugees and on to model farms
in the Ukraine and by the Volga, so he brought
them their first tractors in the area. It was a
(23:04):
big deal. And then by the late nineteen twenties knots
and began experiencing heart problems and on May thirteenth, nineteen thirty,
he died of a heart attack at home. He's buried
or he was buried May seventeen, on Norway's Constitution Day.
And I think it is important to mention that amidst
all of this nonsen of fandom sort of you know,
(23:26):
people who were willing from people from a lot of
different countries who are willing to work with him and
listen to him. He did have his critics. He was
accused by a lot of people of being a Russia
worshiper because he was trying to help people who were
starving there, and some folks interpreted that as him working
with the Soviets, and he did get some criticism for
(23:46):
that when he won the Nobel Prize. It was something
he worked hard to deny, you know, say that was
not his motive, but it was still out there. But
he did have a certain agenda. He had certain goals,
and I think appeal to people is best translated by
this quote that you have here on your outline. He says,
it is within us all. It is our mysterious longing
(24:08):
to accomplish something, to fill life with something more than
a daily journey from home to the office and from
the office home again. It is our ever present longing
to surmount difficulties and dangers, to see that which is hidden,
and seek the places lying away from the beaten track.
It is the call of the unknown, the longing for
the land beyond, the divine power deeply rooted within the
(24:31):
soul of man. It is this spirit which drove the
first hunters to new places, and the incentive for perhaps
our greatest deeds the force of human thought, which spreads
its wings and flies where freedom knows no bounds. Spirit
of adventure absolutely, and I think people of any time
can relate to this. I think so and wanting to
(24:53):
do something bigger with your life. And I think that
maybe the most interesting point of Nonsense life is he
is famous for being an explorer, but he ultimately did
do something bigger with his life than achieve a polar
record or something like that. A remarkable feat of endurance.
He went on to actually really help a lot of people,
(25:14):
and he did that by not dying out there on
the ice. But there's although I love this um how
he says home to the office and from the office
home again, it doesn't seem like for him ifice. Maybe
he worked in the lab for a few years, but no,
he certainly wasn't in a cube for any of his days.
There's a lot of ways to learn more about Nonsense today.
(25:36):
He is a really celebrated figure in Norway. There's the
fram Museum which is in Oslo, and then the fritchi
Off Nonsen Institute, which focuses on environmental politics and bio diversity,
those kinds of things. Or if you are actually an explorer.
Somebody can who can handle this, You can learn about
him by getting out there on the ice, and it
(25:57):
seems that a lot of people do just that. I
read a recent story about a Norwegian living in Maine
who had cross Greenland on skis, and he said that quote,
if you're Norwegian, you love to walk in the footsteps
of your country's explorers. And then there was another story
recently in National Geographic that featured two Norwegian adventurers who
(26:18):
were retracing Nonson and Johansson's polar trip using para sales
fortunately instead of dogs, but realizing that it was still
a really difficult journey and they knew where they were
going this time. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's
anything I would take on probably at any point. I don't.
Polar exploration has no real appeal for me. No, but
(26:42):
it doesn't make for a really good story and a
really great podcast. So I think that's one that was
frequently requested as well, was it not? It was? And
really all sorts of these Polar Explorer episodes are very
frequently suggested, So let us know what once you really
really want to hear about, or they don't have to
be exploring ac regions that can be um any part
(27:04):
of the world. Just let us know where History podcast
at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter
at miss in history, and we're on Facebook. Those are
two really great ways to reach out to it. And
if you think you know a lot about one of
the topics we discussed on this podcast, which is dogs
and sleds, we have an awesome idd or odd quiz
on our website and you can check it out by
visiting our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.
(27:31):
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join how stupp Work staff as we
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