216 EFFECTIVENESS OF THE COMMITTEE ON OCEANOGRAPHY 



He would not have succeeded if he had not been joined by a stronger ally — 

 the spirit of adventure. To resist those two together was hopeless. I had to go. 

 Many attempts had been made to cross Greenland, the unknown interior of 

 which was supposed to be covered by an enormous icecap, called the Inland Ice. 

 But all of these attempts had been made from the inhabited west coast, and had 

 not succeeded. How then was my plan formed? 



It was one autumn evening in Bergen (in 1883); I was sitting and listening 

 indifferently as the day's paper was being read by my friend the clergyman. But 

 suddenly my attention was roused by a telegram: Nordenskiold had come back 

 from his expedition toward the interior of Greenland, he had had two Lapps 

 with him, who had found good snow for skiing, and had covered incredible dis- 

 tances on ski. In that same moment it struck me that an expedition of Norwegian 

 ski runners, going in the opposite direction, from east to west, will cross Greenland. 

 The plan was ready. 



So it struck me that the only sure road to success was to force a passage through 

 the floe belt, land on the desolate and icebound east coast of Greenland, and 

 thence cross through the unknown, over to the inhabited west coast. In this 

 way one would burn one's boats behind one, there would be no need to urge one's 

 men on, as the east coast would attract no one back, while in front would lie the 

 colonies on the west coast with the allurements and amenities of civilization. 

 This plan, when it was published, was declared by the so-called competent 

 authorities to be utterly impossible. One of them, a Dane, who had traveled 

 along the icebound east coast of Greenland, where I proposed to land, declared 

 in a public lecture that the plan "betrayed absolute ignorance of the true con- 

 ditions," and showed "such absolute recklessness that it was scarcely possible 

 to criticize it seriously." I daresay he was right in his way. 



Some authorities criticized especially the unpardonable rashness of destroying 

 the bridges behind you. The first thought of a good general and leader was 

 always to secure a safe line of retreat, without which his men would not go on 

 with confidence. But I always thought "the line of retreat" a wretched invention, 

 as I told you before, and I was justified by the events. In spite of my youthful 

 ignorance and lack of experience, and although our preparations and equipment 

 were lamentably imperfect in several respects, as my companion, Captain Sver- 

 drup, would tell you, if he were to give you his candid opinion, the expedition was 

 carried out in accordance with the plan. The method worked out extremely 

 well, the lack of the line of retreat simplified matters, and acted as a stimulus, 

 making up for the defects in our preparations. 



The same method was also used for our next expedition. Of course, having 

 once set foot on the Arctic trail, and heard the "call of the wild" of the unknown 

 regions, we could not return to the microscope and the histology of the nervous 

 system again, much as I longed to do so. I had conceived an idea that there was 

 a continuous drift of the ice across the unknown regions round the North Pole, 

 from the sea north of Bering Straits and Siberia on into the sea between Green- 

 land and Spitsbergen. I found more and more proofs which definitely convinced 

 me of the existence of such a drift. 



Then it struck me that this drift of the ice could be used for transport of an 

 expedition across the unknown regions. It would only mean building a ship of a 

 special shape, sufficiently strong to resist the ice pressure, and this ship we could 

 push as far as possible into the pack ice on the side where it was drifting north- 

 ward, let her be frozen in, and then the ice would carry us across the regions which 

 the previous expeditions had tried in vain to reach. 



It simply meant working with the forces of nature instead of against them. 



Here again the same principle was applied. Once we were well started on this 

 expedition, there would be no line of retreat. Our hope was ahead of us, and so 

 the ship was called the Fram, which means forward. 



When this plan was published it was severely attacked by most of the very 

 first authorities on polar exploration in Great Britain and in other countries. 



As the prominent Arctic navigator, Admiral Sir George Nares expressed it: 

 It totally disregarded the adopted Arctic axioms for successfully navigating an 

 icy region, which were: "that it is absolutely necessary to keep close to a coast 

 line, and that the farther we advance from civilization the more desirable it is to 

 insure a reasonably safe line of retreat." He did not believe in a drift of the polar 

 ice as assumed by me. 



That splendid Arctic explorer, Admiral Sir Leopold McClintock said that it 

 was impossible to build a ship strong enough to resist the ice pressure in the 

 winter, and he believed, as did the majority of the others, that "there was no 

 probability of ever seeing the Fram again when once she had given herself over 

 to the pitiless polar ice." 



