Farthest North - Softcover

Nansen, Fridtjof

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0426124901 ISBN 13: 9780426124900

Publisher: Tandem, 1975

Synopsis

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: surprising when we remember the sums of money that have been lavished on the equipment of some of these expeditions. The fact is, they have generally been in such a hurry to set out that there has been no time to COLIN ARCHER devote to a more careful equipment. In many cases, indeed, preparations were not begun until a few months before the expedition sailed. The present expedition,however, could not be equipped in so short a time, and if the voyage itself took three years, the preparations took no less time, while the scheme was conceived thrice three years earlier. Plan after plan did Archer make of the projected ship; one model after another was prepared and abandoned. Fresh improvements were constantly being suggested. The form we finally adhered to may seem to many people by no means beautiful; but that it is well adapted to the ends in view I think our expedition has fully proved. What was especially aimed at was, as mentioned on page 29, to give the ship such sides that it could readily be hoisted up during ice-pressure without being crushed between the floes. Greely, Nares, etc., etc., are certainly right in saying that this is nothing new. I relied here simply on the sad experiences of earlier expeditions. What, however, may be said to be new is the fact that we not only realized that the ship ought to have such a form, but that we gave it that form, as well as the necessary strength for resisting great ice-pressure, and that this was the guiding idea in the whole work of construction. Colin Archer is quite right in what he says in an article in the Norsk Tidsskrift for Soveesen, 1892: "When one bears in mind what is, so to speak, the fundamental idea of Dr. Nansen's plan in his North Pole Expedition . . . it will readily be seen that a ship which is to be bui...

About this title

Review:

The Modern Library has unearthed a classic. The long out-of-print Farthest North, one of the first titles in the library's Exploration series, recounts Dr. Fridtjof Nansen's epic 1893 pursuit of the North Pole. Like Jon Krakauer, the series' editor, Nansen was the chronicler of one his age's most sensational adventures. But he was also much more: statesman and explorer, scientist and sex symbol, Nansen's singular character and remarkable spirit demand attention and respect. It's hard to fathom how a story with such an alluring hero was forgotten in the first place.

The good doctor entered the limelight after his landmark first crossing of Greenland in 1888. Shortly after, he concocted a brilliant (or lunatic, depending on whom you asked) scheme to conquer the pole. He and a small crew would freeze a specially designed boat in the ice and drift with the Arctic current, which he believed would carry him from the coast of Siberia northwest to the pole. In mid-voyage, he realized that the current would not carry him far enough. Undaunted, he and a companion set out across the ice with a dogsled. Nansen was left for dead, but when he stumbled upon another exploration team more than a year later--having reached farther north than anyone before him--he returned to Norway an international sensation.

This book, the chronicle of that journey, was hurriedly written to capitalize on that sensation. Penned in only two months, it lacks literary polish, but Nansen's eye for detail and indomitable spirit shine through. Because he wrote while still thawing from his adventures, his story has an exciting immediacy, one that the passing of a century has done little to diminish. As a historical document, as an epic adventure, and as a revival of a worthy hero long forgotten, Farthest North is a tale well worth remembering. --Andrew Nieland

From the Back Cover:

"Nansen was the Chuck Yeager of polar exploration."
--The New York Times Book Review

In 1893 Fridtjof Nansen set sail for the North Pole in the Fram, a ship specially designed to be frozen into the polar ice cap, withstand its crush-ing pressures, and travel north with the sea's drift. Experts said that such a ship couldn't be built and that the mission was tantamount to suicide. Farthest North, first published in 1897 to great popular appeal, is the stirring first-person account of the Fram and her historic voyage. Nansen tells of his expedition's struggle against snowdrifts, ice floes, polar bears, scurvy, gnawing hunger, and the seemingly endless polar night that transformed the Fram into a "cold prison of loneliness." Once it became clear that the Fram could drift no farther, Nansen and crew member Hjalmar Johansen set out on a harrowing fifteen-month sledge journey to reach their destination by foot, which required them to share a sleeping bag of rotting reindeer fur and to feed the weaker sled dogs to the stronger ones. In the end, they traveled 146 miles farther north than any Westerner had gone before, representing the greatest single gain in polar exploration in four centuries. Farthest North is an unforgettable story that marks the beginning of the modern age of exploration and is a must-read for the armchair adventurer.

Born in Norway in 1861, Fridtjof Nansen was a renowned explorer, author, artist, athlete, oceanographer, and statesman. In 1922 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He died, a national hero, in 1930.

Jon Krakauer is the author of Into Thin Air, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Into the Wild. His work has appeared in many magazines, including Outside, Smithsonian, and National Geographic. He chose the books in the Modern Library Exploration series for their literary merit and historical significance---and because he found them such a pleasure to read.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tandem
• Publication date: 1975
• ISBN 10: 0426124901
• ISBN 13: 9780426124900
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320