Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen was born in Hvidsten, southeast Norway, July 16, 1872, and he died June 18, 1928, when his plane disappeared into the sea off Bjørnøya, Svalbard. He made his career and his name within polar exploration and logistics, and he is assessed today as one of the most successful of polar travellers.
Amundsen stated that he decided to become a polar explorer when reading Sir John Franklin’s books at the age of 15. At 17 he was in the crowd that turned out to honour Fridtjof Nansen on his return from the first crossing of Greenland, and this experience sharpened his resolve. His mother wanted him to become a doctor, and it was only after her death in 1893 that he could devote his time to his own choice of career.
In addition to the hard physical training in which he had already engaged, including skiing and swim- ming, he worked on an Arctic sealer in 1894. Expedi- tions to the Arctic or Antarctic at that time usually included a voyage by ship, and Amundsen read enough reports to understand that there could be problems when the expedition leader had to relate to AMSTERDAM ISLAND (IˆLE AMSTERDAM)
a ship’s captain. He therefore took his first mate’s and captain’s certificates in order to secure full control of his future expeditions.
In the summer of 1896, he was chosen as an unpaid able seaman and ski expert for the Belgian Antarctic Expedition on the Belgica. Appropriate participants were not easy to find, and Amundsen was promoted to second mate before departure. During the expedi- tion he gained his first significant experience in the polar regions, with expedition doctor Frederick Cook as his mentor. They tested various types of equip- ment, such as sleeping bags, tents, and sledges, and they proved the effect of seals and penguins as a protection and cure for scurvy. Amundsen learned about survival techniques and leadership, and took his first ski trip on the Antarctic continent.
Amundsen was no scientist; he sought geographi- cal conquests. However, he understood that sponsors and the public wanted scientific fac¸ades for expedi- tions, and he therefore equipped his own first expedi- tion to determine the current position of the North Magnetic Pole. However, the real goal was the first complete navigation of the Northwest Passage, which was accomplished 1903–1906 on the Gjøa. During the expedition’s almost two-year stay on King William Island, Amundsen learned from the Inuit many details with regard to successful polar travel, includ- ing dogsled driving, clothing, food, and igloo-building techniques.
The North Pole was Amundsen’s next great polar goal, and he declared his second expedition to be a repeat and extension of Nansen’s drift over the Arctic Basin in the Fram. News that both Frederick Cook and Robert E. Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole took away Amundsen’s inducement to go north, and his attention turned to another great goal—the South Pole. He kept his change of plans secret until the last moment, thereby committing him- self, his reputation, and his future career to getting there first. He believed that failure in any way, includ- ing arriving second to Robert Falcon Scott, would leave him as a cad who had unsuccessfully tried to perform a dirty trick. Accusations and hurt feelings, on the other hand, would drown under the acclama- tion of a tremendous feat.
Amundsen’s 1910–1912 Antarctic expedition was a model of polar logistics and planning. He and four companions reached the South Pole on December 14, 1911, a month before Scott, and returned to his base camp at the Bay of Whales with scarcely any pro- blems to report.
On the personal side Amundsen was less success- ful. He needed to be the absolute leader, and could not tolerate real or imagined criticism from his men. When Nansen’s companion from the Arctic, Hjalmar
Johansen, challenged his leadership, Amundsen removed Johansen from the Pole group and assured that he arrived back in Norway in disgrace. During the Belgica expedition’s forced wintering in Antarc- tica, Amundsen had removed himself from the ex- pedition over a slight he felt he had received from the leader. However, he informed expedition leader Adrein de Gerlache that he would stay with the group until they reached civilisation again!
World War I represented a time change in many ways, not least concerning transport methods, and Amundsen was quick to see that aircraft could revo- lutionise polar exploration. He bought one of the first planes to reach Norway, and he took the coun- try’s first civil pilot’s licence, in September 1915. The plane, however, was quickly donated to the military. Amundsen’s expedition on the Maud, 1918–1925, was to be the North Pole expedition to which he had previously committed himself. It was successful in obtaining important scientific results, but Amundsen left it in 1922 when it became obvious that ships were no longer the right transport method for his ambi- tions. He had on the way completed a navigation of the Northeast Passage, the third in history, thus making him the first to circumnavigate the Arctic.
Amundsen’s last expeditions were all with aircraft in the Arctic. In 1923, on the Alaskan coast, his plane was damaged before a planned flight over the Arctic Ocean was realised. In 1925, he flew with Lincoln Ellsworth, Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen, and three others
from Svalbard to 87430 N in two aircraft, N24 and
N25. The following year the Amundsen-Ellsworth- Nobile Transpolar Flight in the dirigible Norge flew over the North Pole while travelling from Svalbard to Alaska. Amundsen thus became the first person to have been at both Poles.
Amundsen was now 55 years old, unmarried, with constant financial problems and with a bitter tenden- cy to fall out with his nearest associates. He had been almost unsurpassed as a polar explorer and expedi- tion leader with the traditional methods of skis and dogsleds, but the modern means of transport made him more of a passenger than a dynamic leader. When Umberto Nobile crashed on the ice with his dirigible Italia in 1928, Amundsen rose to the occa- sion and set out to look for him in a French aircraft with five others. They disappeared into the Arctic, and only two pieces of the plane were ever found.
Amundsen was decorated by many countries for his feats as a polar explorer, and numerous book and films have been produced about his life.
SUSANBARR
See also Belgian Antarctic (Belgica) Expedition (1897–
1899); British Antarctic (Terra Nova) Expedition
(1910–1913); British Antarctic (Terra Nova) Expedi- tion, Northern Party; Dogs and Sledging; Ellsworth,
Lincoln; Hanssen, Helmer; Norwegian(Fram) Expedi-
tion (1910–1912); Ponies and Mules; Riiser-Larsen, Hjalmar; Scott, Robert Falcon; Wisting, Oscar
References and Further Reading
Amundsen, Roald. The South Pole: An Account of the Nor- wegian Antarctic Expedition in the ‘‘Fram’’ 1910–1912. London: Murray, 1912.
———. My Life as an Explorer. Facsimile edition. Stroud, UK: Thimble Press, 1996.
Barr, Susan. ‘‘Amundsen and Cook: Prelude to the Tactical Assault on the Pole, 1908–1911.’’ Appendix to Cook, Frederick, Through the First Antarctic Night 1898–99 (first published 1900). Pittsburgh: Polar Publishing, 1998, pp. 415–435.
Bomann-Larsen, Tor, and Roald Amundsen. En biografi (Norwegian). Oslo: J. W. Cappelens, 1995.
Declair, Hugo, ed. Roald Amundsen’s Belgica Diary. Blunti- sham, UK: Bluntisham Books, 1999.
Huntford, Roland. Scott and Amundsen. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1979.
Huntford, Roland, ed. The Amundsen Photographs. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1987.