I have many bright and pleasant memories from those days, of men who encouraged me and gave me all the support they could. I have also other memories—of those who thought they . . . had a right to criticise and condemn whatever others undertook or proposed to undertake.
DESPITE ITS ACCOMPLISHMENT of overwintering for the “first Antarctic night,” the Belgica expedition attracted little fame. Amundsen returned quietly to his home in Christiania, moving on to the next phase of his career: planning his own expedition. He completed a final stint in the army and then sought an audience with Fridtjof Nansen, who was then, as Amundsen put it, “the Grand Old man of Arctic exploration in Norway. I knew that a word from him would be priceless to me in enlisting aid in my enterprise; on the other hand, a word of disparagement from him would be fatal.”
Nansen would go on to become one of the founders of the League of Nations and also its high commissioner for refugees. In the 1890s, he was entertaining the possibility of leading his own expedition to Antarctica, and he welcomed the young man’s offer to discuss his recent voyage to the southern continent. “I went, therefore, to see him and laid before him my plans and hopes and asked his benediction,” Amundsen wrote. “This he graciously gave; and he even went further—he offered to commend me to the good offices of people who might help me.”
What these people might help him with was still very much a private matter, but on the Belgica expedition one of the objectives highlighted by de Gerlache—an objective that proved impossible—was to locate the magnetic South Pole. Amundsen began to imagine combining his quest to sail the fabled Northwest Passage with the more prosaic and scientifically noteworthy objective of locating the magnetic North Pole. “My plans matured,” he wrote after his first Antarctic voyage. “I wished to unite my childhood dreams about the North West Passage with the, in itself, far more important objective: to determine the magnetic North Pole’s present position.”
Encouraged by Nansen’s support and encouragement, and inspired by his own developing plans, Amundsen continued wrestling with the less exciting technical hurdles that blocked his dream of sailing the Northwest Passage: completing the final hours of ship time to obtain his captain’s licence, which would enable him to command a ship in international waters, and then passing an exam. He signed on to the Oscar, a small ship that was part of the family business, then stationed in Cartagena, Spain. Amundsen being who he was, rather than take some comfortable or practical method of reaching southern Spain, decided to cycle there with his brother Leon. Leon was in Norway, but he was planning to return to his wine-shipping business in southern France.
Cycling was not then a common activity in Europe, and the sight of two tall blond men pedalling south through the European countryside surely raised some eyebrows. It was an uneventful journey and Amundsen was soon at sea on a two-month voyage bound for Pensacola, Florida. He brought with him a large collection of books on polar travel and exploration—everything from Sir John Franklin’s decades-old books to British naval officer James Clark Ross’s account of reaching the magnetic North Pole in 1831 to the British explorer Frederick Jackson’s more recent A Thousand Days in the Arctic, concerning his recent expedition to Franz Josef Land, northeast of Spitsbergen, in the late 1890s.
When he returned from this commercial voyage, well-read and finally with enough sea time to be a certified ship’s captain anywhere in the world, Amundsen set out to burnish his scientific credentials. “My expedition must have a scientific purpose as well as the purpose of exploration,” he noted. “Otherwise I should not be taken seriously and would not get backing.” Amundsen was eager to accomplish heroic deeds, but who would pay for them? He went to visit Dr. Aksel Steen at the Meteorological Institute in Christiania and presented his case, emphasizing the magnetic North Pole and adding the navigation of the Northwest Passage as an interesting side project. The doctor was impressed and urged the young man to learn how to take the necessary measurements. He gave Amundsen a letter to take with him to Hamburg, introducing him to Professor Georg Neumayer, director of the German Marine Observatory.
In the seaport of Hamburg, Amundsen “hired a cheap room in the poor part of the city—my funds were low,” he sheepishly related. Despite his letter of introduction, he was not overly optimistic about the reception he would receive from the distinguished professor, since he was “an undistinguished stranger.” Nevertheless, “with beating heart, I presented myself at his outer office and handed in my card of introduction” to Neumeyer’s assistant. Amundsen was then ushered into the presence of “a man of probably seventy years, whose white hair, benign, clean-shaven face, and gentle eyes presented a most striking resemblance to the famous musician, Franz Liszt.” The young Norwegian introduced himself and stammered an erratic overview of his desire to go on a voyage and collect scientific data to justify the adventure. In his memoirs, Amundsen relates how he feared to aspire to something so prominent and prestigious.
“Young man, you have something more on your mind than this!” Neumayer exclaimed kindly. “Tell me what it is.” Amundsen then admitted he wanted to conquer the Northwest Passage. “Ah,” Neumayer responded, “there is still more.” Neumayer waited while Amundsen overcame his reticence and blurted out that his scheme was indeed more grand, that he aspired to no less than the accurate measurement and observations of the magnetic North Pole to settle the longstanding controversy over whether it was mobile or static. The old man rose slowly to his feet, approached Amundsen and quietly embraced him. “Young man,” Neumayer said, “if you do that, you will be the benefactor of mankind for ages to come. This is the great adventure.”
For the next three months, Amundsen immersed himself in the study of magnetic science and the methods for taking magnetic observations at the institute. Neumayer gave him much personal instruction and attention, which Amundsen repaid by being the first student to arrive in the observatory in the morning and the last to leave at night. Amundsen was very serious in his studies, and the professor, impressed with his diligence, insisted on dining with him regularly at a luxurious hotel where the restaurant was “a fairyland of savoury delights, and its menu a Lucullian feast.” The professor also introduced Amundsen to other visiting scientists and luminaries, “thereby providing me, not only with a much appreciated meal, but with the stimulation of contact with active minds and intellects of achievement. Never shall I cease to be grateful to this kindly old soul who so greatly encouraged and helped me.” It is worth noting that Amundsen was turned down for similar training at the British Observatory at Kew and recalled this perceived slight when writing his memoirs nearly three decades later.
Back in Christiania in November 1900, Amundsen prepared for another meeting with Nansen, in which he would outline the details of his proposed expedition and the dual but linked objectives of navigating the Northwest Passage and locating the magnetic North Pole. Nansen had given him encouragement the previous year, and now Amundsen was returning to get his mentor’s solid support for a specific objective. “I think it is Mark Twain who tells of a man who was so small that he had to go twice through the door before he could be seen. But this man’s insignificance was nothing compared to what I felt on the morning I stood in Nansen’s villa at Lysaker and knocked at the door to his study.” Amundsen soon stood before the man who had “for years loomed before me as something almost superhuman: the man who had achieved exploits which stirred every fibre of my being.”
Nansen had a reputation for being stern and brusque, and was known for his attention to hierarchy and formality. As Amundsen wrote many years later, Nansen was perhaps “too kingly” toward his men, unchallenged as the world’s foremost polar scientist. The older man was, however, an adventurer in addition to being a scientist, and he supported Amundsen enthusiastically right from the start, perhaps inspired by Amundsen’s youthful enthusiasm and energy. “From that moment,” Amundsen recalled, “I date the actual realization of the Gjøa expedition.” The idea of relocating the position of the magnetic North Pole, and the adventure involved in doing it, was enough to secure the famous patriot’s blessing. Without that support, Amundsen’s life as a famous explorer might have ended before it even began.
Of the many lessons Amundsen had learned from the Belgica voyage and from his discussions and meetings with Cook and Nansen, a few were vital: (1) that a small, light-travelling group could be successful where a large, overly burdened one would fail; (2) that skiing was the best way to travel in polar environments and that a small, select band of tough, equally skilled skiers could prove successful where a large and varied group was more likely to disintegrate and fail (a group is only as fast as its slowest member, and therefore all its members need to be equally conditioned and skilled); (3) that the most effective means of travel in polar environments was not man-hauling large sledges but rather using dog teams to haul light sleds; and (4) that the best clothing would be based on designs used by the people native to those wind-lashed polar landscapes. So, when conceiving his expedition, Amundsen opted for simplicity—the absence of superfluous people, overly ambitious plans or complicated equipment. An expedition on a smaller scale also had the advantage of being more affordable, which was particularly important for an individual planning a privately financed adventure. He also came to a conclusion that was more common in the military: if an expedition leader provided no line of retreat, then the only way out was to follow the plan. Nansen, for example, when crossing Greenland, had his party dropped on the uninhabited east coast to work their way toward the settlement on the west—success and survival for him and his men lay in pushing forward, never to retreat.
Perhaps most importantly, on the Belgica Amundsen had learned a lot about poor management, poor organization and poor equipment. A hero, in his mind, was not someone who suffered disaster after disaster, heroically pulling through with great endurance, but rather one who focused his intelligence and skills to avoid disaster, thus succeeding by good planning and crafty decision making. Amundsen was not preparing for heroic disasters—he planned to succeed with as little potential for disaster as possible, even if this meant years of preparation. As he would demonstrate throughout most of his life, Amundsen had an innate sense of when he was ready for an undertaking; in 1900, he felt he wasn’t prepared to tackle the Northwest Passage quite yet.
He also didn’t have a ship, so he travelled north to one of the remotest places in Norway. The town of Tromsø is surrounded by deep fjords, and at the time, it was accessible only by sea. Tromsø was effectively the gateway to the Polar Sea and home to the Norwegian sealing industry. Here Amundsen wanted to seek out any additional information that might help him on a polar voyage, from people who routinely sailed in Arctic waters. He also wanted to purchase his ship here; a vessel that was seaworthy in these conditions. He settled in Tromsø for a few months and, in a classic example of his single-mindedness, interacted only with people whom he felt had knowledge that could help him. He had them over for coffee in his small room, listening intently and respectfully to the sometimes tall tales of the veteran sealers and ship captains. In January 1901, after learning from these practical northern mariners, Amundsen began negotiating for a ship. He asked his brother Gustav, who was then managing his finances, to send a large chunk of his inheritance to Tromsø.
The ship Amundsen had his eyes on was a forty-seven-tonne fishing smack, small but sturdy, designed for coastal and northern waters. Amundsen noted that the ship was twenty-nine years old, the same age as he was; it was named Gjøa, after the previous owner’s wife. The little sail-powered vessel, he noted, “had ample opportunities of proving herself an uncommonly well-built boat.” A small ship could sneak through the ice floes rather than crush against them. And he preferred a small ship because, as the north was harsh and unforgiving, it would be impossible to live off the land if there were too many people to feed.
Amundsen hired a small crew and set off on a summer voyage to test the Gjøa and to take some scientific measurements for Nansen. Cruising the waters between Norway and Greenland for six months, he tested the ship in all weather conditions. “The Gjøa performed splendidly under all conditions,” he reported. He also commented that he was glad to see that northern Norwegians were not afraid of eating seal meat, which he knew was going to be a staple food on his voyage. He needed a cook who could make use of one of the most abundant northern food sources and a crew who would eat it, to stave off scurvy. On this first voyage, Amundsen broke even, barely covering his costs with the sale of seal pelts and a couple of walrus and polar bear skins.
During these first months at sea, he did note deficiencies in the Gjøa’s design, as far as his purposes were concerned. In Arctic waters, he knew the little ship would be working its way through pack ice and close to rocky, uncharted shores. It would require some modifications at the Tromsø shipyard, including iron reinforcements to the hull, supplementary petroleum tanks and a small engine, a thirteen-horsepower motor that could be “connected to everything that could possibly be driven with its aid.” Years later, he commented that “our successful navigation of the North West Passage was very largely due to our excellent little engine.”
In his memoirs, published two decades after the event, Amundsen wrote, “The winter and spring of 1902–1903 I spent in feverish preparation for my great adventure of the North West Passage. I besieged every possible source of funds—the learned societies and the private patrons of science. The rest of my time was spent in selecting and ordering supplies.” The process was considerably more complicated and time-consuming than he admitted or remembered in his memoirs. It was from his base in Tromsø in 1900 that he began not only the search for a crew interested in a multi-year voyage of great uncertainty and danger but also the list of things necessary to outfit a ship for a voyage that might last three or more years. It was a daunting task for a single person, particularly since he was lacking the funds to provide even the most basic equipment and supplies.
As fortune would have it, in spite of Amundsen’s habitual secretiveness during his months in Tromsø, there was a person who found his furtive planning and work on the Gjøa too unusual to ignore. Fritz Zapffe was an active skier, mountain scrambler and climber then working as a pharmacist in Tromsø. He was also a correspondent for a Christiania newspaper, Morgenbladet. Amundsen was initially reticent about answering any questions about his destination or the modifications to his ship. But Zapffe persevered, and finally Amundsen admitted that he was indeed planning something but didn’t want anyone to know about it. He told Zapffe that he wanted people to know about his undertaking only when he had achieved something significant, something worthy of attention.
Amundsen was reluctant to toot his own horn, to publicly brag or strut; he believed that he deserved recognition only after he was successful. Zapffe tactfully pointed out that any success would depend on raising the funds to finance his expedition. For a private citizen, advance publicity might be the only way to get additional financial support. People or advertisers could donate or lend money only if they knew about this exciting new adventure and rallied around it—there could be no public support for a secret. Although Zapffe’s point appears obvious, Amundsen had absolutely no exposure to or experience with publicity or fundraising. Fortunately, he took Zapffe’s advice to heart and never made the same mistake.
Zapffe, who became one of Amundsen’s life-long friends and supported many of his adventures with logistical assistance over the years, wrote a front-page story about the planned conquest of the Northwest Passage. Despite Amundsen’s initial misgivings about getting publicity before he had done anything, the article led to a surge in financial support. Zapffe also helped Amundsen’s endeavour in other ways: through his knowledge of outdoor equipment and his local contacts, he was able to help with the design and manufacture of key pieces of equipment and clothing. He advised Amundsen to consider Arctic clothes designed by the Sami, the indigenous reindeer-herding nomads of Norway’s north, and arranged for him to acquire reindeer-hide boots, overcoats and sleeping bags. Amundsen was quick to recognize the superiority of the local clothing and gear. It made a strong impression on him, particularly when combined with what he had learned from Cook in Antarctica and his experience there with inferior clothing and equipment unsuited to the rigours of a polar environment. Through Zapffe, Amundsen was able to source equipment and clothing that were far superior to anything he could purchase in the outfitting shops of southern cities.
The next two years saw Amundsen travelling, fundraising, testing his equipment and continuing to study history and the science of magnetic observation. In the spring of 1902, he moved the Gjøa from Tromsø to Christiania for the final preparations, including making vast quantities of pemmican from dried meat and berry mixture. He knew that once he sailed for the Northwest Passage, anything he might need had to be aboard the ship in the right quantities—he couldn’t count on being able to resupply or reprovision for several years, and the lack of something vital could easily result in death. He took a short voyage north with Aksel Steen to test the magnetic measurement instruments that were being supplied by the German Marine Observatory, and he also ventured abroad to London, where he met the president of the Royal Geographical Society, Sir Clements Markham, and several retired Royal Navy officers who were veterans of cold-climate voyages, in order to hear any suggestions they might have.
In the fall of 1902, Amundsen was back in Norway, where he officially passed his exams and received his master’s certificate, enabling him to be both the expedition leader and the captain of the ship, avoiding the infighting between sailors, scientists and explorers that he saw had plagued innumerable previous expeditions. Qualifying for his master’s certificate was one accomplishment Amundsen remained proud of throughout his life, always preferring the title “Captain” over any other. But his optimism and excitement about the expedition were tinged with disappointment and frustration. The modifications to the ship, the purchasing and stocking of supplies and the stockpiling of money to pay the salaries of his crew had burned through his funds and all the donations he had received.
Around this time, Nansen persuaded King Oscar II of Sweden to contribute to the venture. Although the Swedish king’s gift was intended as a gesture of goodwill, Nansen had other hopes. He was a vocal and prominent advocate for Norwegian independence from Sweden, and his support of Amundsen was predicated not only on his interest in geographical exploration but also on increasing international recognition of and support for the Norwegian independence movement: if Amundsen was successful in claiming the geographical prize of the Northwest Passage, the reflected glory and international attention would go to Norway. Nansen believed that an increasing lexicon of great deeds done by native sons would go a long way toward boosting national pride and confidence in the country while elevating international awareness of Norway as a distinct culture with its own heroes and contributions to the world.
Nansen, who had dealt with the publicity from his own past adventures, helped Amundsen negotiate international newspaper rights to his story. It was again a steep learning curve for Amundsen, who had never considered these activities—putting a public face on the expedition, generating advance interest, securing financial support and publication rights and paying creditors afterwards—to be part of his job as expedition leader, but he quickly realized that for a privately funded individual they were just as important as succeeding at the expedition itself.
In the late fall of 1902 he travelled south to Christiania and gave his first public lecture, “My Journey,” at a meeting of the Norwegian Geographical Society. Despite the increasing publicity and public awareness of his audacious voyage, Amundsen kept his cards close to his chest, revealing his full intentions to no one. Harald Sverdrup, the oceanographer and meteorologist who joined Amundsen on several later expeditions, recalled: “There is, however, no doubt that his reluctance to discuss plans, which was often considered a special form of conceit, had deep roots and that by nature he was a lonely man who preferred action to words.” In this instance, Amundsen did not reveal that he was more interested in navigating the Northwest Passage than in locating the roving magnetic North Pole (which he suspected would turn out to be an unremarkable patch of snow surrounded by a vast wasteland of similar terrain). He understood that private investors would not support a sailing trip along a remote coastline, no matter how storied and famous; yet the general public would be interested in a tale of adventure and derring-do, not merely scientific discovery. By balancing these objectives—focusing on the magnetic North Pole to secure institutional support and on the Northwest Passage to entertain armchair adventurers—Amundsen sought to satisfy the establishment and to intrigue the public.
In the end, he chose the need to interest a general audience over the constraints imposed by a government’s political and nationalist agenda. He came to realize that unless an explorer worked for the government, he was essentially an entertainer. Therefore, to become a successful explorer, he would have to become a successful entertainer. Still, he found fundraising to be the most tedious and disagreeable component of his preparation work, which never changed throughout his long career. Traipsing about the countryside with his cap out, begging for funds from well-connected and wealthy individuals, was something he always found undignified, even with Nansen’s aid and blessing. “This was ‘running the gauntlet’ in a fashion I would not willingly repeat,” he wrote in his book on the Northwest Passage. It was, however, entirely out of his control.
Many of his closest friends and family were a great encouragement to Amundsen during this time. Nansen had been “indefatigable in this matter as in all others,” as were his three older brothers—once they overcame their initial reservations about him spending his entire inheritance to buy the Gjøa. “I have many bright and pleasant memories from those days,” Amundsen recalled, “of men who encouraged me and gave me all the support they could. I have also other memories—of those who thought they were infinitely wiser than their fellow-creatures, and had a right to criticise and condemn whatever others undertook or proposed to undertake.” Adding to his stress, his brother Gustav was at this time experiencing financial difficulties of his own, and Amundsen moved the power of attorney over his affairs to his brother Leon.
During this time, Amundsen had been interviewing and selecting his crew, the men who would spend years together with him under dangerous, isolated and monotonous conditions. He wanted only the best, and fortunately he was a natural judge of character with an innate sense of how to build a team that would work well together. He searched widely and remained open to many possibilities before he settled on his team. He had the pick of the crop because he offered to pay well, more than a man could earn on other voyages. In the spirit of the best leaders, Amundsen went to great lengths to ensure that his men were well taken care of, even if this meant financial hardship and stress for himself. Harald Sverdrup recalled that Amundsen placed one characteristic in a potential crew member above all others: resourcefulness. “When preparations were still in progress, he might ask a question about a difficult task or give a man an impossible assignment. If he got the answer ‘it can’t be done’ he was through with the man then and there.”
A photo of Amundsen surrounded by his six polar pirates appears in the first edition of his official book detailing their adventure, The North West Passage: Being a Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship Gjøa, 1903–1907. All seven of the adventurers sport moustaches and appear in starched collars. Their serious, formal expressions are partly the product of the primitive photography techniques of the early twentieth century and partly a device for portraying the respectability they wished to convey to the world as professional explorers and as Norway’s cultural ambassadors. Two of the men had come to Amundsen’s attention through his friendship with Zapffe—first mate Anton Lund and second mate Helmer Hanssen, both northerners, both married and slightly older than Amundsen, and both with extensive experience on commercial whaling and sealing voyages in arctic waters. Lund, thirty-nine years old, first went to sea when he was twelve, and he was an experienced harpooner. Hanssen, who had briefly met Amundsen years earlier, before the Belgica sailed, would go on to become one of Amundsen’s staunchest allies, joining him on many adventures.
As first lieutenant, Amundsen selected Godfred Hansen, a lieutenant in the Danish navy, whose sense of humour and thorough grounding in the theoretical aspects of sailing and command were skills that Amundsen valued to round out the practical experience of the other crew members. Hansen had made four voyages to Iceland and the Faeroes with the navy and had a keen interest in polar exploration. He also had many other skills; Amundsen described him as a “navigator, astronomer, geologist and photographer.” His leave of absence from the navy was secured through the intercession and goodwill of Nansen. The expedition’s engineer and meteorologist was Peter Ristvedt, a young and energetic mariner who had met Amundsen when they did their military service together and who had sailed with the captain on the trial voyage of the Gjøa in 1901. Gustav Juel Wiik, the second engineer, had been trained at the magnetic observatory in Potsdam and was to help with the measurements of the magnetic North Pole. He was also a gunner in the Norwegian navy, had a philosophical and scientific disposition, and at barely twenty-five years of age was the youngest member of the expedition. The final member of the expedition was the cook and general roustabout Adolf Henrik Lindstrøm, a jolly and practical man only recently returned from nearly four years sailing on the Fram with Otto Sverdrup in the islands of the Arctic Archipelago. A heavy drinker, fondly known as “the Polar Cook,” he was perpetually cheerful, a trait that proved immeasurably valuable throughout the long polar winters.
Amundsen did not hire anyone with specific medical training. He didn’t trust doctors aboard an expedition ship, feeling they might split his authority and endanger the expedition because of their priest-like role of administering to the sick. A doctor’s opinions in favour of the perceived interest of the individual, Amundsen believed, could run counter to the best interests of the group. This was a response to his formative youthful experiences aboard the Belgica, and it’s hard not to observe that in addressing the problems that surfaced on that poorly planned and badly led voyage, Amundsen went too far in the opposite direction. All was being planned to prevent problems arising with leadership and cohesion. But in eliminating one obvious problem, he perhaps laid open the possibility for others to arise—on the Belgica it was Cook, a doctor and the man who Amundsen respected the most, who was the greatest source of leadership and practical advice.
Amundsen also arranged a special meeting with Sverdrup to discuss the Gjøa expedition and to gain insights and advice from the older man about his recent experience in the Arctic. Amundsen was particularly interested in Sverdrup’s thoughts on the use of dogs and sleds in Arctic travel. “Ah, the dogs,” Sverdrup wrote. “[I]t is they who give a polar journey its character; without them travel would indeed be grim.” Amundsen should use not just any dogs, he cautioned, but huskies, which were particularly bred for cold climates, harsh conditions and travel on snow and ice. Amundsen recalled hearing a similar opinion on Arctic dogs from Cook while on the Belgica expedition, and he no doubt remembered the unpleasant experience of man-hauling sledges across the icy Antarctic wastes. It would be preferable if dogs did the hauling. Arctic peoples had been using dogs for just this purpose for generations.
Even at this early stage in his career, Amundsen would learn from anyone if he thought it would benefit him or give him an edge toward success, and local and direct experience always held the greatest weight. He had never used dogs or sleds before, but he knew that his chance of locating the magnetic North Pole would be possible only if he harnessed the speed and extra hauling capacity of dogs and sleds to cover greater distances at a faster pace. Sverdrup not only passed along this most invaluable advice, he also offered to give Amundsen his dog team, which was not doing well in the warm climate of southern Norway. “Poor creatures!” Amundsen wrote. “It would have been better to let them remain in ice and snow than to drag them here, where they suffer sorely, especially this spring, which was unusually warm. They were now tied up along the rail and looked wretched in the rain—the greatest infliction to an Arctic dog. To get here they had made one voyage in the drenching rain, and now they had to endure another to get back. But, at any rate, back they were going, poor things—to their home.”
A few months before the planned departure of the Gjøa on its historic voyage, Amundsen ran out of money to pay for the remaining supplies. He had long ago exhausted his access to additional credit. In fact, apart from the ship, its vast stores of supplies and provisions and the trust accounts holding the men’s salaries, he was bankrupt. When creditors got wind of his predicament, several began agitating for the immediate repayment of the moneys they had advanced, in effect backing out of their agreement to support the expedition. Amundsen put them off as best as he could, but when the bailiffs were called he approached his men and explained his predicament—and then received their support to sail before they could be apprehended and their grand undertaking derailed. They cast off during a storm at midnight, just ahead of the creditors.
“The strain of the last days, getting everything in order, the anxiety lest something might yet prevent us getting away, and the desperate efforts to procure the money still wanting—all this had greatly affected me both in mind and body. But now it was all over, and no one can describe the untold relief we felt when the craft began to move.” The Northwest Passage beckoned, and the thirty-one-year-old Amundsen looked like he had aged a decade: his hair had turned white, his face was lined and his scalp showed some new baldness. The Last Viking set off on his first great undertaking. “The great adventure for which my whole life had been a preparation was under way!” he wrote. “The Northwest Passage—that baffling mystery to all the navigators of the past—was at last to be ours!”