III.

Nansen’s Expedition

The Fram launched in July 1893 from Vardö, Norway, with a crew of 13 men. Nansen and the ship’s captain, Otto Sverdrup, navigated along the Siberian coast to the New Siberian Islands. From there they entered the open Arctic Ocean and managed to get the ship stuck in the ice on September 22, 1893.

In March 1895, frustrated by the ship’s slower-than-expected progress, Nansen and one companion left the Fram with dogs, kayaks, and sledges to make a 640-km (400-mi) dash for the North Pole. (They turned back at latitude 86º 14’ north, short of latitude 90º at the pole but closer than anyone had gone before.) The remainder of the Fram crew continued on, and the ship reached a record-setting latitude of 85º 57’ north on October 16, 1895. 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.