Nansen by another

Following my reading of Nansen's best selling book about his Greenland expedition noticed at reference 1, I have now re-read my library chuck-out - reference 2 - of the bigger story by someone else, one Roland Huntford, of Lithuanian extraction, mainly a historian of the heroic era of polar travel, and himself, it seems, a controversial figure in his own right. This Lithuanian extraction may be responsible for his dislike - to say the least of it - of all things Soviet. See reference 3. I also come away from this book with the feeling, quite possibly well wide of the mark, that he rather disliked his subject, while respecting his various achievements.

550 pages of text organised into five parts: Beginnings, Greenland, Fram (for which see reference 4), Diplomat and, lastly, the League. That is to say Nansen's involvement with the work of the League of Nations after the First World War. Pretty readable, except towards the end when I got rather lost in the labyrinthine diplomacy of the inter-war period - which seems to have been badly warped by an obsession with the Bolshevik menace.

Nansen comes across as a very strange bird, perhaps a necessary qualification for someone prepared to shut himself for years on the Fram expedition, including being even more shut up in a hand made hut for a winter in the Arctic wastes. Part of this was his difficult relationship with the various women in his life - including two wives, the first having died in middle age - and with his own children.

As a young person, a skier of note, at a time when skiing was not the sport it now is, and a student of the nervous systems of marine invertebrates. Very much part of the identification of the neuron as an independent entity, now right at the centre of neurology.

He then moved onto polar travel and became famous for his crossing of the Greenland ice sheet 1888/9 and for his attempt on the North Pole in Fram 1893/6. The idea here being that the custom built Fram, now in the museum at reference 4, would get locked into the ice somewhere north of what was then Russia and the ice would then carry him across the Pole. This did not work out, but he did achieve a furthest north, and he did make an epic journey across the Arctic wastes with skis, sledges and dogs - and just one companion. Thus revolutionising polar travel and consigning the giant expeditions of the likes of Franklin to the dustbin of history. The dogs were eventually all eaten, with fresh protein coming after that in the form of polar bear (good) and walrus (bad). So none of the scurvy which was later to afflict Scott's fatal expedition to the South Pole.

On the Huntford account, Nansen made up for his considerable shortcomings as a leader by sheer strength of body and force of personality. On the other hand, he seemed to have the right touch with royals, aristocrats, the rich and older ladies, doing fine on those fronts for the rest of his life. He was also the elder statesman of polar travel, an essential port of call for wannabee polar explorers for many years after his exploits.

And somehow, having discovered that the Arctic Ocean was deep not shallow, he also found the time to be part of the new science of oceanography and to take a serious interest in the geology of the polar regions.

The next phase was diplomacy, with Nansen having the fame and contacts to be helpful during Norway's escape from Swedish tutelage, around 1905. An escape which, in the end, went off peacefully. The then Great Powers were rather nervous about this, not knowing where it would all lead. What about the Finns, the Hungarians, the Croats and the Irish, all keen to escape their tutelages? Could the Europe they knew cope with all this change?

The last phase was his work in and around the Red Cross and the League of Nations. Work in which his shortcomings were visible enough, but somehow he still managed to do some good work. Famine in Russia during the civil war, repatriation of prisoners of war to Russia and Germany, Nansen passports for Russian refugees who did not want to go back, ethnic cleansing of Greeks from Turkey and (the rather fewer) Muslims from Greece and, lastly, taking an interest in the plight of the Armenians.

An interesting chap. 

With my big take away being the similarities between the Scandinavian counties (and associated islands) and the British Isles (and associated islands). Both being places inhabited by a small number of related but different nations, nations which despite many links and much exchange, did not settle down to unity or even a federation. So the Scandinavians settled down to four countries, five if we include Iceland, six if we include Greenland, still more with the various archipelagos - while the British settled down to two countries going on three. With anomalous add-ons in the form of the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland. The fact the Scandinavia is part of continental Europe probably has something to do with it. Someone ought to do a comparative study.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/12/nansen.html.

Reference 2: Nansen - Roland Huntford - 1997

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Huntford.

Reference 4: https://frammuseum.no/. The source of the snap above, taken during the crossing of Greenland.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Noel-Baker. Another odd cove, very much mixed up with Nansen in his League of Nations days. Another athlete turned diplomat, the only man to ever achieve both an Olympic medal and a Nobel prize. Nansen, despite his athleticism, only managed the second of these. Skiing was not an Olympic sport in his day.