Badass Of The Day - Fridtjof Nansen

On July 21, 1893, Fridtjof Nansen left his homeland of Norway on a ship called the Fram, meaning "forward," on a mission to explore the Arctic circle. At that time, Nansen was already an experienced adventurer, having written a book on the year he spent in Greenland.

The expedition's goal was to intentionally lodge the ship in the ice (the ship was reinforced) to explore the currents of the Arctic ice sheets. Accordingly, the Fram was decked out to allow the crew of 13 to stay warm, with insulation of felt, reindeer hair, cork shavings and tar. There was even a windmill to run electric lamps. They left with enough food for five years. As expected, the Fram became locked in the ice and followed the currents. He took pictures:

Early in the second year of the trip, it became apparent that the boat would not reach the North Pole, which had yet to be conquered. Accordingly, Nansen and a companion, Hjalmar Johansen, tried to reach the pole on three sleds with 28 dogs, in March 1895. They quickly ran into trouble, running out of supplies and butchering the weaker dogs to feed the stronger ones (gross).

Since Nansen has promised his wife that he would come home alive, they turned around just 226 miles south of the Pole, yet the highest that any human had ever made in 400 years of exploration. Since the ship was too far away, the two tried to go back to reach a distant island. They spent four months trying to make it to shipping lanes, killing off all the dogs and even eating a porridge made of canine blood.

They reached the island in August 1895, but realized they would have to spend the winter in the Arctic circle. They dug a hovel out of the ice and spent 9 months surviving on polar bear meat fried in walrus blubber, sharing a greasy sleeping bag. They were finally rescued at the next thaw, when they came across another explorer on his way to try to reach the pole (he didn't make it), who knew that Nansen might be in the area.

Nansen and Johansen returned home as heroes on August 13, 1896, more than three years after they left and just one week before the Fram returned home safely from its own trip. The Fram's trip was a striking success, remarkably without a single man lost, as it realized, for the first time, that there was no land in the Arctic and that it was, in fact, an ocean. Nansen became a celebrity, as well as an ambassador, and became something of a ladies man in his later years, after his wife passed away. He passed away in 1930, at the age of 69. The Fram is displayed prominently in Oslo, and children are read bedtime stories of his adventures.

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