Introduction to Roald Amundsen
Amundsen, Roald (1872-1928), a Norwegian polar explorer. Amundsen was the first man to reach the South Pole, to sail a ship completely through the Northwest Passage, and to fly a dirigible over the North Pole.
Amundsen was born in Borge. After studying medicine for two years, he went to sea on a Norwegian freighter. From 1897 to 1899 he served as first mate on a Belgian ship, the Belgica, which was the first to winter in the Antarctic.
From 1903 to 1906 Amundsen commanded the Gjöa in the first complete navigation of the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Polar Expeditions
Returning to Norway, Amundsen prepared to drift from the Bering Strait towards the North Pole in Fridtjof Nansen's ship, the Fram. Interest in the project died, however, after Robert E. Peary reached the Pole in 1909.
In 1910 Amundsen sailed south from Norway in the Fram. The public expected the ship to sail to the Bering Strait by way of Cape Horn around South America; Amundsen, however, headed for the South Pole. On October 19, 1911, he and four companions began the overland trip with four sledges and 52 dogs. They raised the Norwegian flag at the South Pole on December 14, 1911, about one month before the arrival of Robert F. Scott's British expedition.
After World War I, Amundsen planned to drift from the Bering Strait towards the North Pole in the Maud. Taking the Northeast Passage to the Bering Strait (1918-20), he became the second man (the first was Nils Nordenskjöld) to sail along the whole northern coast of Europe and Asia. In 1922 as the Maud began its drift, Amundsen left the ship to make a flight across the North Pole. However, damage to the plane forced him to cancel the trip.
Roald AmundsenIn 1925 Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth, his American financial supporter, tried to reach the North Pole in two seaplanes. They did not reach the Pole, but their flight was the first of any real extent over the Arctic Ocean. In May, 1926, they finally crossed the North Pole in the semirigid dirigible Norge, built and piloted by Umberto Nobile. They were not first, however; Richard E. Byrd had flown over the Pole a few days earlier.
In 1928, Nobile was forced down in the dirigible Italia while on an arctic expedition. Amundsen lost his life at sea while flying to assist in Nobile's rescue.
Books by Amundsen include Amundsen's Northwest Passage (1908); The South Pole (1913); Our Polar Flight (with Ellsworth, 1925); First Crossing of the Polar Sea (with Ellsworth, 1927); My Life As an Explorer (1927).