Overview

Like a modern Viking 32-year-old Nansen set sail from Norway in 1893 to reach the North Pole. Experts warned him that his voyage was tantamount to suicide. Compact and nimble, his ship the Fram had been specially built to withstand the relentless, devastating pressure of the polar ice cap. At the right moment, he intended to strike out into the polar desert and finish the final leg by sledge.Nansen's vivid memoir became an international phenomenon when, having been given up for dead, he emerged three years later. His epic struggle against snowdrifts, ice floes, polar bears, scurvy, gnawing hunger and the loneliness of the polar night would inspire young explorers such as Scott and Amundsen a generation later to make new conquests. This first unabridged edition since 1897 includes photographs not previously published.

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9781783342457

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'Nansen was the last of the Nordic gods... Tall, blond, and ridiculously handsome... The First Crossing Of Greenland is a... thrilling account of his earliest adventure... It was a hideous journey... Hair froze fast to headgear, beards solidified so that the lips could not be opened to speak... Polar exploration tends to attract more testosterone than talent... One man towers over the other ice-encrusted sledgers: Fridtjof Nansen, colossus of the glaciers... Of all the frozen beards... only Nansen communicated a sense of the true subjugation of the ego that endeavour can bring. Failure, he acknowledged, would mean ""only disappointed human hopes, nothing more"".' Sara Wheeler, Guardian; 'Seminal... demythologised the polar environment and revolutionised modern polar travel with the introduction of skis.' Roland Huntford, The Times; 'Nansen defied that conventional wisdom, which dictated explorers proceed from the known to the unknown to maintain a line of retreat, by sailing first to the largely uncharted eastern coast of Greenland.' Times Higher Education; 'The visionary Norse explorer.' Jon Krakauer

"'Nansen was the last of the Nordic gods... Tall, blond, and ridiculously handsome... The First Crossing Of Greenland is a... thrilling account of his earliest adventure... It was a hideous journey... Hair froze fast to headgear, beards solidified so that the lips could not be opened to speak... Polar exploration tends to attract more testosterone than talent... One man towers over the other ice-encrusted sledgers: Fridtjof Nansen, colossus of the glaciers... Of all the frozen beards... only Nansen communicated a sense of the true subjugation of the ego that endeavour can bring. Failure, he acknowledged, would mean ""only disappointed human hopes, nothing more"".' Sara Wheeler, Guardian 'Seminal... demythologised the polar environment and revolutionised modern polar travel with the introduction of skis.' Roland Huntford, The Times 'Nansen defied that conventional wisdom, which dictated explorers proceed from the known to the unknown to maintain a line of retreat, by sailing first to the largely uncharted eastern coast of Greenland.' Times Higher Education 'The visionary Norse explorer.' Jon Krakauer"

Author Information

Fridtjof Nansen was the very first Arctic explorer, scientist, Nobel Prize winner and celebrity who engineered the peaceful secession of Norway from Sweden. The daring adventure story in Farthest North was the spark of inspiration for the world-famous Arctic explorers who came after him - Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen among them.

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