First Crossing of Greenland - Fridtjof Nansen

First Crossing of Greenland (eBook)

Fridtjof Nansen (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2001 | 1. Auflage
256 Seiten
Gibson Square (Verlag)
978-1-78334-045-3 (ISBN)

After the successful publication of his biography (1998) and his brilliant polar journal Farthest North (2000), Fridtjof Nansen has in the past years recaptured his reputation as 'a modern Viking' (Daily Mail) which he enjoyed a century ago. This book is an abridgement of the two volumes of journals he edited of his daring crossing of the icy, treacherous snow plains of Greenland. At the time, before his famous arctic journey, no one had ever succeeded in penetrating the depths of Greenland. His ideas for crossing, upwards with dogs which would be eaten on the way, and downwards by skiing, were received with scathing contempt as contemporary thinking favoured large expeditions with numerous servants for survival.

Introduction

In the summer of 1882 I was on board the Viking, a Norwegian sealer, which was caught in the ice off that part of the east coast of Greenland which is still unexplored, or, more precisely, somewhere in the neighbourhood of lat. 66° 50’ N. For more than three weeks we were absolutely fixed, and every day, to the terror of the crew, we drifted nearer to the rocky coast. Behind the fields of floating ice lay peaks and glaciers glittering in the day-light, and at evening and through the night, when the sun sank lowest and set the heavens in a blaze behind them, the wild beauty of the scene was raised to its highest. Many times a day from the maintop were my glasses turned westwards, and it is not to be wondered at that a young man’s fancy was drawn irresistibly to the charms and mysteries of this unknown world. Unceasingly did I ponder over plans for reaching this coast, which so many had sought in vain, and I came to the conclusion that it must be possible to reach it, if not by forcing a ship through the ice, which was the method tried hitherto, then by crossing the floes on foot and dragging one’s boat with one. One day, indeed, I incontinently proposed to make the attempt and walk over the ice to shore alone, but this scheme came to nothing because the captain conceived that he could not in the circumstances allow any one to leave the ship for a length of time.

On my return I was asked to write an article in the Danish Geografisk Tidskrift, and in this I expressed it as my opinion that it would be possible to reach the east coast of Greenland without any very great difficulty if the expedition forced their way as far as practicable into the ice on board a Norwegian sealer, and then left the ship and passed over the floes to shore. I will not say that I had not at this time some notion more or less visionary of penetrating from the coast into the interior, but it was not till a later occasion that the idea took a definite form.

One autumn evening in the following year – I remember it still as if it were only yesterday – I was sitting and listening indifferently as the day’s paper was being read. Suddenly my attention was roused by a telegram which told us that the explorer Nordenskiöld had come back safe from his expedition to the interior of Greenland, that he had found no oasis, but only endless snowfields, on which his Lapps were said to have covered, on their ski,1 an extraordinary long distance in an astonishingly short time. The idea flashed upon me at once of an expedition crossing Greenland on ski from coast to coast.

My idea, put briefly, was that if a party of good skiers were equipped in a practical and sensible way they must get across Greenland, if they began from the east side – this latter point being of extreme importance. For if they were to start, as all other expeditions have done, from the west side, they were practically certain never to get across. They would have all the flesh-pots of Egypt behind them, and in front the unexplored desert of ice and the east coast, which is little better. And furthermore, if they did get across, they would have the same journey back again in order to reach home. So it struck me that the only sure road to success was to force a passage through the floe-belt, land on the desolate and ice-bound east coast, and thence cross over to the inhabited west coast. In this way one would burn all one’s ships behind one, there would be no need to urge one’s men on, as the east coast would attract no one back, while in front would lie the west coast with all the allurements and amenities of civilisation. There was no choice of routes, “forward” being the only word. The order would be: “Death or the west coast of Greenland.”

Not till the autumn of 1887 did I resolve to give my serious attention to the scheme. My original idea had been to carry out the expedition with private means, but, as I was strongly urged on more than one side to apply to the Norwegian University for the necessary funds, in order to give the expedition a more public and national character, I sent to the authorities an application for a grant of 5000 kroner. My application received the warmest support from the University Council, and was passed on to the Government for their consideration, and in order that the proposal might be laid by them before the Storthing (National Assembly). The Government, however, answered that they could not see their way to give the scheme their support, and one of the newspapers even went so far as to maintain that there could be no conceivable reason why the Norwegian people should pay so large a sum as 5000 kr. in order to give a private individual a holiday trip to Greenland. Most people who heard of the scheme considered it simple madness, asked what was to be got in the interior of Greenland, and were convinced that I was either not quite right in the head or was simply tired of life. Luckily it was not necessary for me to procure help from Government, Storthing, or any one else.

At this time I received an offer from a gentleman in Copenhagen to provide the sum for which I had applied to Government. This was Augustin Gamél, who had already contributed to the cause of Arctic research by the equipment of the “Dijmphna” expedition. This offer, coming as it did from a foreigner, and one quite unacquainted with me personally, and in aid of an expedition which was generally considered to be the scheme of a madman, seemed to me so truly generous that I could not for a moment hesitate to accept it.

I first published my plan in January 1888 in the Norwegian magazine Naturen, in an article entitled “Greenland’s Inland Ice.” Having given some account of the earlier attempts to penetrate to the interior of Greenland, I continued:

With three or four of the best and strongest skiers I can lay my hands on, I mean to leave Iceland in the beginning of June on board a Norwegian sealer, make for the east coast of Greenland, and try in about lat. 66° N. to get as near to the shore as possible. If our vessel is not able to reach the shore – though the sealers, who have often been close in under this unexplored coast, do not consider such a thing improbable – the expedition will leave the ship at the farthest point that can be reached, and will pass over the ice to land. In the summer of 1884, for instance, there was extremely little ice, and the seal were taken almost close under the shore. For the purpose of crossing the open water which will probably be found near the coast, a light boat will be dragged on runners over the ice.

That such a crossing of the ice is possible, I feel I can assert with confidence from my previous experience. When I was in these regions in 1882 on board the Viking, and we were caught in the ice, and drifted for twenty-four days along the very coast where I now intend to land, I had numerous opportunities while out shooting and for other purposes of becoming familiar with the nature of the ice and conditions of snow, and besides, we were often obliged by sudden ‘nips,’ or jamming of the ice, to drag our boats over the floes for considerable distances. I therefore think there is every probability of our being able to reach land in this way. After having examined the coast as far as the time at our disposal will allow, we shall begin the crossing of the Inland ice at the first opportunity. If we reach land to the north of Cape Dan, we shall begin the ascent from the end of one of the fjords close by; if we land farther south, we shall push up to the end of Sermilikfjord before we take to the ice. Once upon the ice, we shall set our course for Christianshaab, on Disco Bay, and try to reach our destination as soon as possible. The distance from the point on the east coast where I intend to land in Disco Bay is about 670 kilometres or 420 miles. If we calculate that we shall be able to cover on a daily average from fifteen to twenty miles, which is exceedingly little for a skier, the crossing will not take more than a month, and if we carry with us provisions for double that time there seems to be every probability of our success. The provisions will have to be hauled on sledges of one kind or another, and besides skis we shall also take ‘truger,’ the Norwegian counterpart of the Canadian snowshoe; which may serve our purpose better when the snow is wet and soft. We shall also, of course, take the instruments necessary for observations.

It is no surprise that several more or less energetic protests against a plan of this kind appeared in the newspapers, but they were one and all distinguished by an astonishing ignorance of the various conditions of, and the possibility of passage over, extensive tracts of ice and snow.

In this connection I cannot deny myself the pleasure of reproducing some portions of a lecture delivered in Copenhagen by a young Danish traveller in Greenland, and printed in the Danish magazine Ny jord for February 1888. “Other plans,” the lecturer says, “have never passed beyond the stage of paper, like the proposals to cross the Inland ice in balloons, which were brought forward at the end of the last ...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	1.10.2001
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
	Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik
	Reisen ► Reiseberichte
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte
	Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geografie / Kartografie
ISBN-10	1-78334-045-2 / 1783340452
ISBN-13	978-1-78334-045-3 / 9781783340453

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