Otto Sverdrup

I

Introduction

Otto Sverdrup (1854-1930), Norwegian sea captain and Arctic explorer, who participated in notable feats of polar exploration.

Otto Neumann Knoph Sverdrup was born on his parents’ farm near Bindalen in northern Norway, and grew up learning to ski, hunt, and fish. In 1871 he went to sea, and seven years later passed his exams to become a ship’s mate. In 1884, by which time he was a master, his composed manner enabled him to help save his crew when their ship was wrecked off the coast of Scotland.

II

First Crossing of Greenland

In 1888 Norwegian explorer and scientist Fridtjof Nansen chose Sverdrup and four other men to participate in an expedition to cross Greenland from east to west. Icy conditions forced them to land some 320 km (200 mi) south of their intended starting point on Greenland’s east coast. They began crossing on August 15, 1888, several weeks later than planned, and encountered severe cold and snowstorms. Nansen had designed the man-drawn sledges used for the crossing, and the design would remain standard in polar exploration for many decades. Toward the end of the journey, Sverdrup and the others tried out a new sledge-sailing technique; by rigging up sails to their sledges, they were able to use the strong winds to increase their speed.

On September 26 the expedition reached the west coast of Greenland in a triumphant first crossing of the island. At that point, Sverdrup oversaw the construction of small boats, using available willow branches and sailcloth, that the party used to sail south along the coast to Godthåb (now Nuuk), the capital of Greenland. The successful expedition had demonstrated that the Greenland ice cap extended in an unbroken sheet across the island.

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III

First Expedition on the Fram

As soon as they returned to Norway, Nansen and Sverdrup began plans for another polar expedition. Nansen wanted to test his theory that the permanent ice of the Arctic Ocean drifts with currents from east to west. For the task, he had a new ship designed and built specifically to withstand the crushing forces of polar pack ice. The ship, named Fram (Norwegian for “Forward”), launched in September 1893 with Sverdrup as its captain. Sverdrup purposefully stuck the ship in the Arctic ice near the New Siberian Islands, and it began to slowly drift westward with the ice floes (floating ice sheets).

After Nansen left the ship in March 1895 to continue toward the North Pole by sledge, having abandoned the idea that the Fram would reach that far north, Sverdrup was left in charge of the drifting ship. The Fram reached a record-setting latitude of 85º 57’ north on October 16, 1895. In a remarkable feat of ice navigation by ship, Sverdrup spent the last four weeks of the voyage cutting and blasting a path for some 290 km (180 mi) to reach open water. The Fram emerged from the permanent ice unscathed on August 13, 1896, near the Svalbard archipelago (then known as Spitsbergen), having proved Nansen’s theory of polar ice drift.

IV

Second Expedition on the Fram

Upon returning to Norway, Sverdrup declared that he was ready to “turn right round and set off on a new polar expedition” with the Fram. An expedition was planned under the sponsorship of the consul Axel Heiberg and the brewing firm of Ringes Brothers. The aim of the journey was to explore the Nares Strait, which separates Greenland from Ellesmere Island, and if possible to circumnavigate Greenland to see how far north it extended. (Some believed it might reach the North Pole.) Setting out in June 1898, the expedition found Nares Strait choked solid with ice and spent the winter in Cape Sabine, on Pim Island off the eastern coast of Ellesmere Island. The following summer Sverdrup and his team sailed to Ellesmere’s southwestern corner, where they again found their way blocked by pack ice at a strait that Sverdrup named Hell Gate.

Retreating to Harbour Fiord on Ellesmere’s southern coast, Sverdrup led sledging parties north during the winter of 1899-1900. The team became the first Europeans to see the large island that Sverdrup named Axel Heiberg Island after his sponsor. They also named Norwegian Bay, Eureka Sound, and Nansen Sound, which separated the new island from Ellesmere Island. In the summer of 1900 Sverdrup attempted to sail through Hell Gate but again failed, finding harbor in Goose Fiord. In the following winter his expedition surveyed in detail the western coasts of Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg islands, including the immense Greely Fiord, which they named in honor of Adolphus Washington Greely.

The expedition also discovered three additional islands to the west of Axel Heiberg Island. Sverdrup named the first two Amund Ringnes Island and Ellef Ringnes Island after his sponsors, and the third, King Christian Island after King Christian IX of Denmark. Together with Axel Heiberg Island and a number of smaller islands, the archipelago came to be collectively known as the Sverdrup Islands. After the Fram expedition, Norway claimed the islands. (Canada bought out Norway’s interest in them in 1930.)

In the summer of 1901 Sverdrup attempted to return home, but the ice was too thick and the group had to make winter quarters again, still in Goose Fiord. Sverdrup led a mapping expedition to the unexplored northern coast of Devon Island, to the south of Ellesmere Island, and follow-up surveys were carried out on the previous year’s discoveries. In July 1902 Sverdrup managed to free the Fram, and the expedition returned home to much acclaim that September. The following year Sverdrup was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society. He published an account of the expedition under the title New Land (1903).