A fairly straightforward autobiography of his life, from childhood adventures on the ice, the Belgica expedition and its problems with scurvy, his secret departure for the NW Passage to avoid his creditors, the two years on King William Island, another year near Herschel Island, and completion in 1906. Next he planned a North Pole expedition, but Peary’s claim there clandestinely shifted his focus to the South Pole. He passes over the SP trip quickly, before moving on to his attempt to drift across the North Pole, his interest in aerial exploration (1922), his business difficulties with H.J. Hammer as well as his brother Leon, his dirigible work with Lincoln Ellsworth, and the flight of the Norge in 1926. Throughout he claims he has been misrepresented and sometimes his apologia is convincing, sometimes not; either way it is a lengthy (over 100 pages) exercise in self-justification. He is particularly incensed at Nobile for claiming the Norge expedition was his idea (later attributed to Mussolini), and for any number of contractual difficulties. The work concludes with miscellaneous chapters on Stefansson, on Amundsen’s views on the business of exploration, on food and equipment, and finally an appendix of notes by Riiser-Larsen further refuting Nobile’s claims; these are more dispassionate than Amundsen and therefore more convincing.
My Life as an Explorer.
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
Come North with Me: An Autobiography.
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
Although as a child Balchen read a great deal about Polar adventures, his adult autobiography shows little sign that reading played any role in his professional life as a career aviator. The book is included here as one of the best written and least narcissistic of personal accounts. There is no indication that this is a translation from his native Norwegian, nor whether he used a ghost writer in preparing the book. His WWII adventures in northern Norway are particularly compelling.
Roald Amundsen.
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
Bomann attempts to do to Amundsen what Huntford did to Scott. Most of the time he refers to Amundsen as “the polar explorer” as if he thought himself the only one. Apart from a reference to Amundsen’s childhood reading of and fascination with Sir John Franklin, I found nothing about reading.
A Voyage Around the World with the Romanzov Exploring Expedition in the years 1815-1818 in the Brig Rurik, Captain Otto von Kotzebue.
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
p. 27, a paeon to the son of Kotzebue, the German-born, Russian sea captain on his circumnavigation: How often in the far ends of the earth, namely on O-Wahu [O’ahu], Guaján [Guam], etc., have I been praised for my small share in the enterprise of his son, in order to cast a hem of the mantle of his fame over me. Everywhere we heard his name mentioned. American newspapers reported that The Stranger had been performed to extraordinary applause. All the libraries in the Aleutian Islands, as far as I have investigated them, consisted of a single volume of the Russian translation of Kotzebue.
No Man’s Land: A History of Spitsbergen from its Discovery in 1596 to the Beginning of the Scientific Exploration of the Country.
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
A general history of the archipelago, based on Conway’s studies and his earlier visits. Although he reviews a number of books in preparation for his manuscript, he does not here reveal the thoughtful reader who appears in his earlier narratves
In Nation Named for Ice, Poets Are Just Getting Warmed Up.
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
On Iceland (pop. 330,000) as a nation of devoted if sometimes amateur poets: Icelanders are unusually prolific readers and writers, and books of verse tend to sell very well in Iceland. Poetry was the third-largest category of books published in the country in 2014, after fiction and the arts….
Arctic Adventure: My Life in the Frozen North
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
One of two or three autobiographies by Freuchen, this mainly of his life and adventures with Rasmussen during the Thule expeditions. A few things stand out: his total admiration for Robert Peary (of course for Rasmussen as well), his growing sensitivity to Inuit culture (thanks to his marriage with Navarana), and his lack of any literary pretentions. He scarcely mentions anything he does during his leisure time.
Nansen
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
p. 67, on equipping the Fram for Nansen’s North Pole voyage: There were a library of a thousand books and a supply of games and musical instruments to help pass the time.
Voyages of a Modern Viking
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
A very pleasant autobiography of someone who sailed with Amundsen on the Gjoa, the Fram, and the Maud, based on his diaries and presumably translated from Norwegian (though there is no indication).
Danish Arctic Expeditions, 1605 to 1620. In Two Books: Book I. The Danish Expeditions to Greenland…; Book II. The Expedition of Captain Jens Munk.
- 1605-1620 Danish Arctic Expeditions.
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
Book I: The Danish Expeditions to Greenland in 1605, 1606, and 1607; to which is Added Captain James Hall’s Voyage to Greenland in 1612.
Vitus Bering: The Discovery of the Bering Strait
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
A fascinating biography of the famous Danish-Russian explorer of the Far East of Siberia and the Northern Pacific. The frequent accounts of reading were not from books usedat sea as most of our examples are but are later readings, included here to give some insights into a significant early expedition.
Ending in Ice: the Revolutionary Idea and Tragic Expedition of Alfred Wegener.
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
Alfred Wegener is most famous for his proposed theory of continental draft, published in 1912. At first denied and scorned, then dismissed as unimportant, followed by eventual acceptance. His other fame relates to his several research expeditions seeking to understand the climatic influence of Greenland weather. He died on the ice trying to rescue his scientific colleagues isolated at Eismitte in 1930. Unlike so many explorers he was dedicated to his scientific endeavors.
German Exploration of the Polar World. A History, 1870-1940.
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
p. 46, Karl Koldewey’s Germania sailed with the Hansato Greenland in June 1869, but soon the ships parted. Hard to know which fared the worse. The Hansa sank. Aboard the Germania: Confinement, tension, isolation, darkness, and the exhausting routine of physical labor gradually erode group morale. The psychological health of the men had not been neglected when planning the expedition, and efforts were made to supply healthy diversions. A newspaper was attempted (as would be the case later with subsequent German expeditions to Greenland, but it “died of neglect” after five issues.
In Northern Mists: Arctic Exploration in Early Times.
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
Nansen’s second major work, this book covers only the earliest period of Northern exploration and could well be titled “In Northern Myths.” He is certainly among the earliest and most scholarly, literary, and research-oriented writers of exploration history, the work verges little upon the subject of our inquiry.
Danish Greenland: Its People and Its Products
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
p. 168: on training of indigenous boys: The author cannot omit adding one instance to illustrate this. Once he took such a boy with him to Denmark, where he stayed only one winter as apprentice in a printing-office, and acquired a skill in book-printing, lithography, and bookbinding, of which he has afterwards given proofs by managing, all by himself, without the least assistance, a small office in Greenland, the productions of which will be mentioned by and by. This young man is by no means a rare exception; perhaps one out of ten may be found to be equally highly gifted. It cannot be denied that the half-breeds seem to surpass the original race as regards such perfectibility.