Ski, Fram, and a passport for the stateless
Fridtjof Nansen (10 October 1861–13 May 1930) led the first crossing of Greenland’s interior on skis in 1888, then took Fram to a record 86°14′N in 1893–96. Later a diplomat and the League of Nations’ refugee chief, he won the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize and devised the Nansen passport.
He grew up at Store Frøen outside Christiania, skiing from the age of two on makeshift boards; at ten he defied his parents on the Huseby jump and buried himself waist-deep in snow. School came second to weeks spent living rough in the forest. He chose zoology in 1881 because it promised outdoor work, and in 1882 a professor sent him north on the sealer Viking. Aboard, he showed that sea ice forms at the surface rather than below it and that the Gulf Stream runs under a cold top layer. Trapped in ice off an unexplored stretch of Greenland, he began dreaming of crossing the icecap.
For six years he was a curator at the Bergen Museum, working alongside Gerhard Armauer Hansen, who had identified the leprosy bacillus. His studies of nerve cells in simple sea creatures argued that the cells were not fused together, making him Norway’s first champion of neuron theory, and his 1887 paper became his doctorate.
Earlier probes by Nordenskiöld and Peary had set out eastward from Disko Bay and turned back after about 160 kilometres. Nansen reversed the direction, landing on the empty east coast so the only way out was forward to the settled west. He planned for just six people hauling light sledges, with sleeping bags and stoves designed from scratch. Parliament refused money and one critic gave him ten-to-one odds of dying; a Danish businessman, Augustin Gamél, and student fundraising paid instead. The team included Otto Sverdrup and two Sami ski experts, Samuel Balto and Ole Ravna.
In 1905 he campaigned to end the union with Sweden and helped persuade Prince Carl of Denmark to take Norway’s throne. From 1921 he led the League’s refugee work, and his passport for stateless people was eventually accepted by more than 50 countries.
Source: Fridtjof Nansen
