Farthest North (Modern Library Exploration)
by Fridjtof Nansen

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Book Reviews of Farthest North (Modern Library Exploration)

Book Review: Another Great Adventure - And a True Story
Summary: 5 Stars

Summary of Farthest North (Modern Library Exploration)

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 As a historical document, as an epic adventure, and as a revival of a worthy hero long forgotten, Farthest North is a tale well worth remembering.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

These are the diaries of Nansen's lunatic three-year long expedition to the North Pole, which made him the John Krakauer of his age. 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 crushing pressures, and so drift North. Experts said that such a mission was tantamount to suicide. This is the stirring first-person account of this 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." Setting out in the end on a harrowing fifteen-month sledge journey to reach his destination by foot, he was required them to share a sleeping bag of rotting reindeer fur and to feed the weaker sled dogs to the stronger ones. Given up for dead, he traveled 146 miles farther north than anyone else in the past four hundred years.

For the first time in 100 years this version contains the complete unabridged journey with some photographs that have not been seen for 100 years. Also included are photographs from the original Norwegian edition and a few photographs that were never published before.

Polar Regions Books

• History > Australia & Oceania
• Europe
• World > Expeditions & Discoveries
• Science > Earth Sciences > Geography
• Travel > Polar Regions > Arctic
• History: Europe: General
• History: World: General
• Science: Earth Sciences: Geography: General