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"Man Proposes, God Disposes", Edwin Landseer (1864)
"Man Proposes, God Disposes", Edwin Landseer (1864)

For almost 400 years, various expeditions had searched for a navigable route to shorten the sailing distance between Europe and Asia.

"Man Proposes, God Disposes", Edwin Landseer (1864)
"Man Proposes, God Disposes", Edwin Landseer (1864)

Many ships and hundreds of men never returned, but each was a spur to those who followed.

Franklin

In 1845, the Briton Sir John Franklin leads what will be his last polar expedition.

With 129 men divided between the ships Terror and Erebus, it aims to conquer the Northwest Passage.

But neither ship comes home. And no one survives to tell the tale.

Several expeditions are sent out to discover the fate of Franklin’s expedition, and in the process large parts of the Northwest Passage are mapped. In 1854, Robert McClure's expedition becomes the first to make it through, from west to east. But they have been forced to abandon their ship halfway and to continue by sledge, travelling several hundred kilometres across the ice before reaching a ship that can take them home.

Decades later, a young Roald Amundsen discovers the Franklin story.

 

“When I was fifteen years old, the works of Sir John Franklin, the great British explorer, fell into my hands. I read them with a fervid fascination which has shaped the whole course of my life. Of all the brave Britishers, who for 400 years, had given freely of their treasure, courage, and enterprise to dauntless but unsuccessful attempts to negotiate the Northwest Passage, none was braver than Sir John Franklin.”

As far as we know, it is around this time that Amundsen acquires a reproduction of a particular painting:

Subtitled
“It might be done and England should do it”,
this 1874 painting by John Everett Millais now hangs in London’s Tate Gallery.

Praised by critics and public alike, it carried several iconic British references.

The elderly sailor symbolizes Britain’s heroic maritime history.

The map on the table is from Robert McClure's expedition and references British discoveries in the Northwest Passage.

On the wall hangs a portrait of Lord Nelson.

We don’t know how Amundsen came by the Millais print,

but twenty years later it remained important enough to be displayed on his new living room wall at Uranienborg.

Nansen

On Tuesday, 30 May 1889, the streets of Kristiania (Oslo) are crowded with people.

Fridtjof Nansen and the rest of his expedition have just become the first to cross the Greenland ice sheet. Sixty thousand are said to have turned out to hail the country's new polar heroes.

A sixteen-year-old Roald Amundsen will later recall how it feels to be there:

 

National Library of Norway
National Library of Norway

"That day I wandered with throbbing pulses amid the bunting and the cheers, and all my boyhood's dreams reawoke to tempestuous life. For the first time something in my secret thoughts whispered clearly and tremulously: 'If you could make the North West Passage!'."

Roald Amundsen is growing up in an age perfect for the life he will lead. While being fascinated by earlier expeditions, he is able to watch new ones break records and reach further into the ice than ever before.

It is a time when some dreams can actually come true.

Before Roald Amundsen's dream of the Northwest Passage can come true, however, a lot needs to happen.

In 1897, he is hired on a Belgian expedition to Antarctica with the barque Belgica. After sailing into the ice, Belgica becomes stuck fast.

The expedition makes history as the first to winter in Antarctica, and the time proves significant for Amundsen's dream.

 

Follo museum, MiA
Follo museum, MiA

"During that long, relatively inactive winter, our original plan, regarding the determination of the location of the South Magnetic Pole, was of course still discussed, and this in turn led to the fact that the question of the Earth's magnetic conditions in general, and in particular the location of the North Magnetic Pole, were also discussed eagerly."

After returning from Antarctica, Roald Amundsen gets on his bicycle. With his brother Leon, he sets off from Kristiania on 9 September 1899 and twenty-two days later arrives in Paris.

The two brothers have covered over 1,700 kilometres across Europe.

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Roald then signs on to the family-owned cargo vessel Oscar to cross the Atlantic to America. 

En route in April 1900, Oscar arrives in the port town of Grimsby, England.

Here Amundsen picks up something important.

From someone he refers to only as "an old gentleman", Amundsen acquires all the literature that exists at the time about the Northwest Passage.

One book in particular will prove to be pivotal. In Francis Leopold McClintock's book on the fate of Franklin,  Amundsen finds

"a prophecy that the true channel would be found by following a more southerly route than that taken by previous explorers." 

Chapter 2

Overview
Museum24:Portal - 2025.03.06
Grunnstilsett-versjon: 2