| nansen farthest north |
| 1 | ages passed deep was the silence then in the dawn of history far away in the south the awakening spirit of man reared its head on high and gazed over the earth to the south it encountered warmth to the north cold and behind the boundaries of the unknown it placed in imagination the twin kingdoms of consuming heat and of deadly cold but the limits of the unknown had to recede step by step before the ever increasing yearning after light and knowledge of the human mind till they made a stand in the north at the threshold of natures great ice temple of the polar regions with their endless silence up to this point no insuperable obstacles had opposed the progress of the advancing hosts which confidently proceeded on their way but here the ramparts of ice and the long darkness of winter brought them to bay host after host marched on towards the north only to suffer defeat fresh ranks stood ever ready to advance over the bodies of their predecessors shrouded in fog lay the mythic land of nivlheim where the rimturser carried on their wild gambols why did we continually return to the attack there in the darkness and cold stood helheim where the death goddess held her sway there lay nastrand the shore of corpses thither where no living being could draw breath thither troop after troop made its way to what end was it to bring home the dead as did hermod when he rode after baldur no it was simply to satisfy mans thirst for knowledge nowhere in truth has knowledge been purchased at greater cost of privation and suffering but the spirit of mankind will never rest till every spot of these regions has been trodden by the foot of man till every enigma has been solved minute by minute degree by degree we have stolen forward with painful effort slowly the day has approached even now we are but in its early dawn darkness still broods over vast tracts around the pole our ancestors the old vikings were the first arctic voyagers it has been said that their expeditions to the frozen sea were of no moment as they have left no enduring marks behind them this however is scarcely correct just as surely as the whalers of our age in their persistent struggles with ice and sea form our outposts of investigation up in the north so were the old northmen with eric the red leif and others at their head the pioneers of the polar expeditions of future generations it should be borne in mind that as they were the first ocean navigators so also were they the first to combat with the ice long before other seafaring nations had ever ventured to do more than hug the coast lines our ancestors had traversed the open seas in all directions had discovered iceland and greenland and had colonized them at a later period they discovered america and did not shrink from making a straight course over the atlantic ocean from greenland to norway many and many a bout must they have had with the ice along the coasts of greenland in their open barks and many a life must have been lost and that which impelled them to undertake these expeditions was not the mere love of adventure though that is indeed one of the essential traits of our national character it was rather the necessity of discovering new countries for the many restless beings that could find no room in norway furthermore they were stimulated by a real interest for knowledge othar who about 890 resided in england at alfreds court set out on an errand of geographical investigation or as he says himself he felt an inspiration and a desire to learn to know and to demonstrate how far the land stretched towards the north and if there were any regions inhabited by man northward beyond the desert waste he lived in the northernmost part of helgeland probably at bjarkoi and sailed round the north cape and eastward even to the white sea. |
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