#fritdjof nansen

[roaldamundsen]

my five girlfriends and yes they smoke weed

[eleanor-talrice]

 1897 Fritdjof and Eva Nansen

[goldenpolar]

Engraving of the USS Jeannette trapped in ice. This was the ship that inspired Nansen to build Fram. Sailing from San Francisco in the 1870s, the expedition was an attempt by the United States to reach the north pole. The ship, however, became trapped in the ice off the coast of Siberia and crushed. Debris from the wreck was later found along the coast of Greenland, a fact that fueled Nansen's theories on a north polar current. Fram was built to test these theories by being strong enough to be trapped in the ice without severe damage and drift through these currents.

[goldenpolar]

Fritdjof Nansen and his wife Eva. The reason for the Google Doodle is October 10th is Nansen’ s birthday. I think with the current political climate the interest Google has is in his later work with refugees, but before that he crossed Greenland’s ice cap, attempted a North Polar drift (in which a ship is deliberately locked in the ice and put at the mercy of the currents) and made an attempt on the North Pole. If anyone has only read of Scott and Amundsen, you’ll know Fram was Nansen’s ship which was loaned to Amundsen under the pretense of Arctic rather than Antarctic exploration. Nansen was left in the dark about Amundsen’s intended assault on the South Pole. In the introduction he wrote for Amundsen’s book Sydpolen, Nansen hides a veiled threat that Amundsen had better complete the promised drift. This would be attempted in Amundsen’s ship Maud, with less than spectacular results.