You cannot pick up a bag and start for the North Pole as you would go to Philadelphia. . . . It will take all of two years to get ready. . . . [T]he food has to be especially carefully prepared, otherwise the men get scurvy, and it is no use to be an explorer unless you live to come back.
AFTER A FEW DAYS celebrating in Nome and a tour of the nearby gold mines, the company of Norwegian adventurers split up. Amundsen boarded the steamship Victoria on September 5, 1906, bound south for San Francisco, while first lieutenant Godfred Hansen took command of the battered Gjøa and prepared to follow. When Amundsen arrived in the city, San Francisco was a mess of crumbled, burned buildings and sprawling tent communities. It had been devastated by its now-famous earthquake in April, and the sounds of frenetic construction rose from the ruins. Understandably, its residents were preoccupied with their task, and Amundsen was not met by cheering crowds, nor indeed by anyone but a small contingent from the local Norwegian community. Nevertheless he remained in San Francisco, speaking and touring around the region, until the Gjøa arrived.
When Amundsen and his crew were reunited, second lieutenant Helmer Hanssen noted that “there were celebrations one after the other, both given by Norwegians and Americans, until finally we could not distinguish night from day . . . ladies, dancing, good food, and quite a lot of good drinks, too.” In mid-October the crew made arrangements to return home and to leave the ship in the hands of the Norwegian American community in California. The Gjøa was unable to sail home in its worn-out condition, and Amundsen couldn’t afford to keep the crew on salary any longer.1
Amundsen was now a famous man, and he was in great demand as a speaker in the United States. He spent most of October and November riding the train east across the country, lecturing and presenting his story, photographs and artefacts. In the early twentieth century, before the invention of radio, Americans went out to seek entertainment. All their forms of entertainment—theatre, musical performances, circuses and lectures—were live. Amundsen’s hastily organized lecture tour was highly anticipated, and halls were sold out in cities across the country. He made stops in Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cambridge, Philadelphia and New York, among countless others. But the novelty of celebrity wore off quickly. By November he was tired of the daily grind, the rounds of public speaking in a language in which he was not yet fully fluent. In a letter to his brother, he complained of being exhausted from the endless celebrations and the constant retelling of his story: “I’ll be glad when the 8th arrives and we can turn our back on it all and leave with the Hellig Olav [a Norwegian luxury liner departing from New York].” Many years later, his friend Harald Sverdrup wrote of Amundsen’s dislike of the lecture circuit. “He hated the lecture trips on which he had to place himself in the hands of a manager and sell his freedom of action to a person whose publicity schemes he disliked but could not avoid.” But speaking engagements were a vital source of income for a man destined not to enjoy stable government funding or institutional support, yet possessed of an expansive imagination and a determination to explore the remotest frozen regions of the globe.
The final stop on Amundsen’s first whirlwind American lecture tour was at the Norwegian Club in New York, where the tables were festooned with Norwegian and American flags and he and his crew were placed at tables of honour. After a toast was proposed to President Theodore Roosevelt and Norway’s newly elected King Haakon VII, the president’s letter of compliments was read aloud, congratulating Amundsen “on the notable feat he has accomplished.” Amundsen stood to begin his speech, starting in English and then with a sigh pushing on in Norwegian, a language understood by most of his audience that night. A giant map of the Arctic hung on the wall behind him. He turned to highlight the route of the Gjøa, but could not seem to locate it. Finally he turned and announced, “I found the Northwest Passage, but I cannot find it on this map!” Evidently this was taken as a joke, since it was met with “roars of laughter.” Later that night, the explorer and his crew boarded the Hellig Olav, bound for Norway.
The adventurers were met by a Norwegian battleship and escorted into Christiania, where they were feted with banquets and public ceremonies. It must have been strange for them to return as the first internationally recognized heroes of a newly independent nation. On May 17, the Norwegian national day, Amundsen delivered the keynote speech from the balcony of the National Hotel in Christiania. Then, after a brief tour of the larger Norwegian towns, he began preparing for something he had long dreamed of: presenting a paper to the venerable Royal Geographical Society in London. He had been exchanging letters with the society’s secretary, J. Scott Keltie, about the particulars of the prestigious invitation: the length and content of his paper, the issue of his lack of proficiency in English and the support of his compatriot Fridtjof Nansen, now the Norwegian ambassador to Britain. The first letter from Keltie, sent before Amundsen sailed into San Francisco, had been waiting for him when he arrived there. Keltie heartily congratulated Amundsen on his “great feat” and then advised him on how to manage his financial affairs to obtain the most money from his exploits, having been in close discussions with Nansen: “I am sure that you will be careful not to give away any information about your work, and about your adventures to Newspaper Interviewers for nothing. If things are properly managed you ought to make a considerable sum out of Articles for Newspapers, out of Lectures, and also out of the book which I have no doubt you will publish as soon as possible.” Keltie recommended that Amundsen get all agreements in writing and even suggested the amounts Amundsen should receive for his lectures. But he also wanted to ensure that Amundsen, then on the west coast of the United States, would sail directly to England, preferably around South America: “there is no doubt that if you came home round Cape Horn with your ship, and so practically circumnavigated America and then came straight across the Atlantic and came up the River Thames to London, it would produce a very great effect upon the British Public”—and thereby increase his earnings. Come to London first, before the United States, Keltie urged him, “and give your account of the Expedition to our Society.” He suggested that “in order to please the Americans,” Amundsen might have to give a talk to one or two of their societies, but that he should make his arrangements to tour America after his triumphant presentation in London.
Britain and the Northwest Passage had been linked for centuries. There are countless stories of British mariners who struggled and perished in their search for incremental pieces of the geographical puzzle, and in the post-Napoleonic world the quest for the Northwest Passage had become a playing field for displaying the talents and perseverance of the Royal Navy. That quest was the source of more than a few of Britain’s national myths. If a Norwegian was fated to be the one who claimed the laurels of victory in the epic struggle, then at least the celebrations should take place in London, rather than in the United States. “Hoping to see you soon,” Keltie signed off. He was disappointed that Amundsen spent so much time in the United States and then followed that with a brief tour of Norway, thereby preventing the Royal Geographical Society from hosting the premiere of the explorer’s publicity tour. Nevertheless, a date was set for Amundsen’s lecture—February 11, 1907—and Keltie offered to “be of any service to you with regard to the English Edition of your book, or for Articles in English Papers.” Keltie planned the address to be a prominent affair, featuring not only Amundsen but a roster of additional speakers, including distinguished politicians, admirals and scientists, blowups of up to one hundred photographs, to be “mounted on screens in the Reception Room,” and a giant map, specially made for the occasion. He urged Amundsen to wait until after his lecture before signing any book, article or lecture deals, because he was sure the publicity would “attract a great deal of attention” and elevate Amundsen’s fees.
Keltie also addressed the concern that Amundsen didn’t speak English fluently enough for such an august congregation. “If you find that you could not make yourself quite intelligible, perhaps you could read a portion of the paper at the meeting, and allow Dr. Nansen if he is willing, to read the remainder.” Nansen acted as Amundsen’s spokesman and gave a speech at his lecture, which fell within his professional duties as ambassador; Amundsen was, after all, the unofficial representative of his new nation. The sombre lecture, followed by serious questions and discussion, was not the casual affair that would have suited Amundsen, who was not really familiar with or comfortable in these class-dominated British surroundings. He was more at ease with the Inuit or the working-class society of his crew, even though he always remained the first among equals. And Nansen, with his aristocratic air, was “too kingly, he will not hobnob with the common herd.” But in Britain Nansen was accorded a great deal of respect, more than Amundsen would ever receive. Keltie was even concerned that Amundsen’s “secretary”—his brother Leon, who planned to stay with Amundsen in the Royal Society’s Club—would not be up to the social standards of the establishment. He sent Amundsen a note that contained a barely disguised warning: “I have no doubt he would be a quite suitable person for the Club, I shall be glad to arrange a room for him there.” It would be Amundsen’s job to make sure that his secretary was, in fact, “quite suitable.”
Despite Amundsen’s misgivings, the lecture was a great success. But even though Amundsen had hired Nansen’s lecture agent to organize a tour, the public interest was not enough to make it profitable. Amundsen was offered various explanations, including that he had gone to the United States first and that he hadn’t sailed up the Thames in his ship, thus failing to provide a newsworthy event upon which to report. But it is more likely that the mediocre interest was due to his lack of proficiency in English (he concluded his speech with the comment “I speak English so badly that I hope you will excuse me if I thank you in only a few words”) and the fact that no Briton was interested in celebrating a foreigner’s victory over what had traditionally been seen as a British quest. As a result, he and his expedition were essentially ignored by the British press. After the warm reception he had received in the United States, Amundsen had every reason to imagine that the conquest of the Northwest Passage would be heralded as a historic achievement in Britain as well, and its conqueror afforded a hero’s welcome. But he was disappointed and hurt by the apparent snub he received in Britain.
After his muted reception in Britain, a disillusioned Amundsen turned to Europe. For several months trains carried him to the major cities from Copenhagen to Rome, where theatres were packed and dignitaries hosted receptions in his honour. He addressed the Geographical Society in Paris, and he addressed the Berlin Geographical Society, with Kaiser Willhelm II in attendance. He did not bother to return to Britain, even when he was invited to receive King Edward’s Gold Medal “for his work in connection with the magnetic North Pole,” since his continental lecture tour kept him fully occupied in profitable appearances—exceedingly important for a man with debts to pay. He also penned articles for various American periodicals, such as Harper’s Monthly Magazine. On April 20, 1907, at Nansen’s urging, the Norwegian parliament voted to award Amundsen a sum large enough to clear all his remaining debts from the Gjøa expedition.
His massive European tour ended in August. Soon he was dreaming of “new worlds to conquer,” as he put it in his autobiography, and needed new financing. He returned to Norway for a few months, but in the fall was back in the United States, continuing his Herculean lecture and publicity tour in order to raise funds. He can hardly be said to have lived in Norway during these years, so often was he on the road. It was the start of a pattern that would shape the rest of his life: his home was on rail cars, in hotels and aboard ships.
While in America, Amundsen floated the possibility of his next adventure. In a frank discussion with a New York Times reporter on October 27, he announced his plans to “discover” the North Pole. The reporter, expressing amazement at the extreme cold and the social isolation, was shocked by the number of years Amundsen claimed the expedition would take. Amundsen replied, “You cannot pick up a bag and start for the North Pole as you would go to Philadelphia. . . . It will take all of two years to get ready, to provision the ship, and five years rations. You see, the food has to be especially carefully prepared, otherwise the men get scurvy, and it is no use to be an explorer unless you live to come back.” The reporter, quite taken with Amundsen’s charming ways, enthusiastically reported Amundsen’s claims about the comfort of snow huts, the friendliness of Arctic peoples, the dangers of frostbite and his fondness for ice: “‘I have some pictures of fine ice,’ Amundsen said, feelingly, and one could almost see his eyes kindle with pleasure at the memory of some particularly artistic iceberg. . . . Your arctic explorer revels in a field of ice, as a farmer delights in a wheat field.”
Icebergs, people who dwell in snow houses, windswept lands of perpetual darkness lying in the uncharted wastes at the globe’s poles: in the early twentieth century, these exotic scenes were finally being revealed to “civilized” people by the intrepid actions of seemingly fearless adventurers who were impervious to hardship. Newspapers craved this sort of never-before-known content for their papers and spun a variety of angles on the experience to enliven their news reporting. Another article in the New York Times that year reported Amundsen’s speculation that he might have polar bears haul his sledges to the pole (“they’ll be cheap to feed”) under the control of a bear trainer who “guarantees they won’t eat the explorer.” This apparently was something Amundsen was seriously considering but eventually dropped as impractical, not to mention dangerous.
On December 14, Amundsen was in Washington, D.C., attending a dinner at a posh hotel, where he was honoured to receive the Hubbard Gold Medal from “the largest organization of its kind in the world,” the National Geographical Society. The illustrious guests included Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks, the French and British ambassadors and “a host of other members of the Diplomatic Corps, Senators, Representatives, prominent officials, [and] distinguished scientists,” according to a newspaper story covering the event. It was a signal honour, not to mention that the medal was a large and valuable piece of gold. Soon after, at a well-attended lecture at Carnegie Hall, Amundsen “horrified the audience” with tales of how the Inuit occasionally committed suicide. He explained how a hide string was placed across the snowy ground of an igloo and “all the members of the family solemnly retire to the outside, leaving the sick person within. But there are peep holes, and through these they watch him. He gets up and bends down over the string, trying to force his throat so hard upon that he is strangled.” If the family outside spying through the holes thought the man was not “getting along as fast as he should they kindly go in and help him strangle himself.” Despite spinning amusing or shocking stories for the press, Amundsen continued claiming that he despised the lecture tour after the initial excitement wore off. Certainly, he was making money; but, as he later wrote, he felt he was “merely part of a lecture machine set in motion between New York through intermediate stops to San Francisco.” He earned every penny on his “journey full of work and strain.”
Amundsen returned briefly to Norway in early 1908 and purchased a chalet-style house perched on some rocks above Bunde Fjord outside of Christiania. He named it “Uranienborg” after the primitive observatory at Gjøahavn, and decorated it in the style of a ship’s cabin with etchings of scenes from his adventures in the Arctic on doors and walls. He moved his old family housekeeper, Betty, into a nearby cottage. In photographs of the home taken from the decks of ships anchored at its dock, it can be seen peeking through the forest upon a rocky promontory; it was easier to reach by water than by land. But all was not perfect. Amundsen’s fame and relative wealth had allowed him to help friends and family, but he was having problems with two of his brothers, Gustav and Jens, whose failed business ventures, resentments and demands for money were bad for the family name. Amundsen provided them with some money to help out, but he soon realized that whatever he supplied would never be enough.
Amundsen’s journals from the Gjøa’s three-year cruise through the Northwest Passage were heavily edited and published as a book, which came out in the summer of 1908. Originally written in Norwegian, it was translated into English and appeared in the United States as The North-West Passage. Amundsen dedicated the book to Nansen, the man to whom he owed so much. Generous in victory, he devoted the book’s first sentence to his crew, offering his “warmest and most heartfelt thanks to the small party of brave men who risked their lives to ensure the success of my undertaking” and a solemn mention of the young Gustav Juel Wiik. A review in the New York Times pronounced the account “a notable contribution to science and literature” and revealed that “the fascination of the book lies in just this wholehearted kind of simplicity, the sort of sincerity that goes with the doing of great deeds.” The North-West Passage was a modestly successful endeavour rather than a bestseller, but its proceeds, combined with the profits from the American lectures and articles, meant that Amundsen was now reasonably well off. In his autobiography he summed up the two years after emerging from the Northwest Passage rather perfunctorily: “I devoted 1906 and 1907 to lecturing in Europe and the United States, and returned to Norway with enough funds to repay all my creditors, including the one who had nearly prevented the voyage, and I was now free to make other plans.” Now in his mid-thirties, Amundsen could not settle down. He was already dreaming of his next adventure.
When Amundsen was in San Francisco in early 1908, he inspected the Gjøa, noticed its condition and decided to sell it. He would need a new ship for his next expedition—a polar ice drift, similar to Nansen’s original voyage on the Fram, except this one would succeed in reaching the North Pole.
For some time, Nansen had been toying with the idea of taking the Fram on another voyage. Antarctica was his preferred destination, for a quick ski dash to the geographical South Pole. The Fram, now officially owned by the Norwegian state, was specially designed to withstand the pressures of being pinched in the ice. Nansen was eleven years older than Amundsen and running out of time for embarking on a multi-year expedition that demanded stamina. He was also preoccupied with his responsibilities as Norway’s ambassador to Great Britain. But in late 1907, Amundsen had sent a letter to Nansen from the United States asking if he could borrow the Fram, which of course would end Nansen’s dreams of attaining the South Pole. Since he was not working toward this objective, and after much inner debate, Nansen relinquished his claim to his old ship and offered it to Amundsen, along with his support. Amundsen was Nansen’s protégé, but Nansen was also pragmatic, appreciating the political benefit to Norway of Amundsen’s conspicuous achievement.
Amundsen’s fame had made securing the financing for this expedition a much simpler task than the wheedling and begging that had occupied him before he sailed for the Northwest Passage. He presented his plans to the Norwegian Geographical Society in the fall of 1908. His plan was to take the Fram and repeat Nansen’s famous drift, ramming the ship into pack ice and being carried by the currents in the Arctic Ocean, which would allow him to continue the scientific work that Nansen had begun—of mapping the currents and measuring the temperatures at varying depths and seasons—but using better-designed and more sophisticated instruments. These tedious, perpetual measurements, undertaken as his ship sat immobile for years, drifting with the ice, were not the type of thing to inspire Amundsen. But the expedition would offer him the opportunity to do something he found far more exciting: dash on skis toward the North Pole, also using dogsleds—although this was not how the expedition would be sold to the public, at least not in Europe. Amundsen knew that science (and respectability) would still be the necessary frame upon which to hang the cloak that concealed his true intention. King Haakon and Queen Maud immediately forwarded a large donation in support of the expedition, and the resulting publicity sparked fundraising throughout Norway.
The plan was to enter the Arctic Basin through the Bering Strait and sail northwest until the Fram was immobilized in the plateau of grinding ice. The ship would drift with the undulating fields of ice, and the crew would take soundings to determine water depth in order to map a rough outline of the sea floor, measuring air temperature, water salinity, winds and tides, as well as, according to a London Times article, “the modifying effects of the flaming, shooting boreal aurora.” It would emerge from this seemingly unpleasant polar tour perhaps four years later, somewhere between Greenland and Spitsbergen. The Arctic ice, according to the Times, was the ideal place from which to conduct oceanographic observations and measurements: “This is due to the peculiar conditions there—a sea of 2,200 fathoms deep, or more, upon the surface of which one can move about almost as on dry land. One can live and build upon the ice, and from it lower all one’s instruments into the sea, and reach down to the greatest depths, without all the difficulties with which one has to contend in storm and rough water on the open sea. There is no more ideal place to be found for oceanic investigation.”
Amundsen sailed to London, and on January 25, 1909, presented a detailed paper outlining his goals to the Royal Geographical Society. The important scientific questions that the expedition would try to answer included the mystery of the aurora borealis: “We all know the magnificent auroras up there in the deep, gloomy polar night . . . those strange, flaming, shooting movements across the sky on calm winter nights—we know them all so well, and have so often admired the mysterious spectacle. No one can doubt that a remarkable force is the back of this, a force that we human beings are determined to find, bind, and utilize.” Nansen wrote a short postscript for the proposal in which he lavished praise on Amundsen as a friend, “a scientific explorer of the right stuff and also as a leader of men, and my confidence in him makes me believe that he is one of those that carry through successfully, in one way or another, whatever they undertake.” He was enthusiastic about the expedition from the start, giving Amundsen his wholehearted support both publicly and privately, and helping with the planning and fundraising.
Nansen’s support, combined with the support of the Royal Geographical Society, was instrumental in persuading the Norwegian parliament to approve 75,000 kroner in February for the repair and special outfitting of the Fram to meet its new challenges. Although the ship’s main propulsion would remain wind power, as part of the refitting Amundsen had a new diesel motor installed to replace the bulky steam engine. The Fram would not be ploughing through the pack ice; it needed to be manoeuvrable and nimble, to take advantage of momentary openings in the ice and respond quickly to changing conditions. Although steam could be powerful, it needed time to build up the pressure required for that power. Another important consideration was that steam engines wasted fuel—a scarce commodity in the Arctic—because the boilers had to be kept at a slow burn. But using diesel engines for marine propulsion also meant taking a chance: the “direct reversible Marine-Polar-Motor,” built by the Diesel Motor Co. of Stockholm for the Fram’s upcoming voyage, had been designed only a few years earlier. The Fram was one of the first ocean-going vessels—and the first polar exploration vessel—to be fitted with a marine diesel engine, which was much safer and fuel efficient than the small gas motor on board the Gjøa and produced about fifteen times the horsepower. No polar exploration ship had ever had the advantage of a diesel engine, but it was one new piece of technology that Amundsen immediately recognized as being of inestimable advantage. The work on the Fram at the shipyards also included improving the ventilation of the engine room, insulating the beams, remodelling the propeller shaft, adding bilge pumps, repairing the exterior of the hull and replacing the motors for the windlass, as well as installing new anchors and new floors in the galley. Many other minor improvements would update the aging vessel and prepare it for the rigours of at least four years in the Arctic.
Although he had raised only a quarter of the funds he needed—despite appeals to the nation’s pride—Amundsen, with his characteristic boldness, was already happily launched into the planning and logistical details, taking on more debt, making promises and deals for a voyage that could last for seven years. Despite the mountain of work, he was enjoying a measure of happiness in an aspect of life that had so far eluded him. His relationships with women had been of the clandestinely arranged variety familiar to the travelling mariner, in brothels or with courtesans, or inside an igloo. But in Norway Amundsen met a woman who captured his attention—Sigrid Castberg, the wife of a well-known Christiania lawyer. At the time that they began their secret affair, the city had a population of around 250,000—small enough that within certain circles secrets were bound to escape. Despite his plans for an imminent and lengthy polar expedition, Amundsen urged Castberg to get a divorce and marry him. She wisely put him off, suggesting they be united after his return and remaining his companion until his departure.
In November 1909, Amundsen boarded a ship bound for New York, on another tour that combined advance publicity for his forthcoming venture with arrangements for some of its practical aspects. He arrived in New York in the centre of a controversy. While he was in the quarantine zone awaiting clearance to enter the United States, a yacht carrying reporters from the New York Herald cruised close by to try to get a quote from him. He declined. Stepping off the gangplank onto the wharf, however, he was beset by dozens of reporters. They were seeking his opinions on a matter that had not been much in the news in Europe but undoubtedly weighed heavily on Amundsen’s thoughts: the claims of Robert Edwin Peary and Amundsen’s old friend Dr. Frederick Cook to have been the first to reach the North Pole—separately.
Their rival claims had become public on September 1, mere weeks before Amundsen had sailed from Europe. The New York Times reported on its front page at the time: “Peary Discovers the North Pole after Eight Trials in 23 Years.” Peary claimed to have reached the Pole on April 6, 1909. Cook countered that he had reached the Pole nearly a year earlier, on April 21, 1908. Both American explorers had been striving to reach this elusive goal for many years in many expeditions, some of them together. At one point Cook had even led a voyage that rescued Peary from the ice near Greenland. The evidence supporting their rival successes was vague and inconclusive—some perhaps even fraudulent, as later analysis revealed. But at the time the claims had yet to be scrutinized. Peary was the favourite of the establishment; he had many powerful friends and the backing of the National Geographic Society. One of these friends, Rear Admiral Colby M. Chester, had cast doubt on the accuracy of Cook’s claims, and the press not surprisingly encouraged the battle. It would be advantageous to them for Amundsen to take sides, to stir up additional controversy.
The reporters pestered him with questions. Taken aback by the vigorous questioning, he “reaffirmed his belief in Dr. Cook.” Amundsen made this potentially damaging statement even though he had been warned not to do so by the Norwegian consul in Chicago, Fredrik Herman Gade, a well-connected lawyer and old friend from Amunsen’s school days, who would be helping him contract for supplies. Amundsen didn’t realize the extent of the controversy in the United States, nor did he appreciate that Peary was the man with the greatest institutional support. Before sailing to New York, he had made a quick trip to Copenhagen to meet Cook. They stayed at the same hotel, and the two explorers were constantly seen about town together. While in Europe, Amundsen declared that he believed Cook’s claim was credible: “Peary’s behavior [in denouncing Cook] fills me with the deepest anger and I want to proclaim publicly that Dr. Cook is the most reliable Arctic traveler I know and it is simply unreasonable to doubt him and believe Peary.”
Amundsen had greatly admired Cook from his days on board the Belgica and fondly remembered the older man’s friendship and willingness to share what he knew about the techniques of polar survival. Cook had gone out of his way to befriend and mentor Amundsen. In his narrative account of the Belgica voyage, published as Through the First Antarctic Night, Cook wrote of Amundsen that he was “the biggest, the strongest, the bravest, and generally the best dressed man for sudden emergencies.” No wonder that Amundsen’s innate sense of loyalty kicked in. This loyalty, once given, was solid; some of his friends claimed that he was in fact too trusting. Amundsen would go out of his way to help and support anyone he considered to have helped him in the past. It was an admirable character trait, but it would get him into trouble in the coming years.
In the American press, it was Cook who was being challenged. The balance of evidence, however selective, and public sentiment joined the institutional tilt toward Peary. Amundsen, belatedly sensing trouble while still on the wharf, became evasive with the reporters, who badgered him with questions: What did Scandinavian explorers in general feel about the controversy? Were Inuit boys who had travelled with Cook capable of lying about their destination? Did Cook have the necessary scientific training to make proper measurements? Had Amundsen seen Cook’s records or proof?
“You don’t hear very much about it,” Amundsen responded to a New York Times reporter. “They [the European press] are very quiet. . . . Perhaps they do not feel justified in rendering their verdict until after Dr. Cook has presented his proofs, as he has agreed to do.” Amundsen mentioned his and Cook’s voyage aboard the Belgica to suggest that Cook had written about that voyage accurately and honestly—so he could not be entirely untrustworthy. He displayed considerable tact in his reply, deflecting the pointed questions while refusing to endorse either of the claimants. “It may be,” he hedged, “that they differed by several geographical minutes. It is not important if the exact mathematical pole was reached or not, but it is important that the geographical conditions of the spot were observed.”
By this time Amundsen had clearly learned a great deal about managing his public image and playing the press for his own benefit. Gone were the awkward, stuttered sentences in broken English and the uncomfortable responses. The Norwegian adventurer now looked and acted the part of a famous explorer—tall, erect, stately and clear in his opinions and in expressing them. He could be direct or obfuscating. He could spin a tale of the sort he now instinctively knew reporters wanted to hear and people wanted to read.
American reporters were not interested only in Amundsen’s expeditions and opinions on exploration. The adventurer was already beginning the slow transformation into that particularly American creation, the celebrity, that would reach its apogee a decade later. What did Amundsen think about American football, one reporter wanted to know, and Amundsen had an answer: he “liked American football” and would be recommending it to the Norwegians when he returned. He had taken in a Yale-Harvard game in Cambridge and was impressed with the action, noting that “Yale’s team was superior in every way to the one that represented Harvard” and that “I will talk to the university Presidents [in Norway] and shall attempt to persuade them to adopt the American college rules. . . . [I]f [Norwegians] could see an American game I am sure that this change would be made.”
Amundsen also mused about the feasibility of and interest in an auto race from New York to Paris, via the Bering Strait. “The crossing of the Bering Straits on the ice will probably be the most difficult stretch of the journey,” he casually remarked; “the eventuality of the loss of a machine at that point should be considered by the contestants.” He was learning to play to the media, getting a sense of how to enthrall people with his exploits and stories, to endear himself to people and to have his opinions reported. He now spoke English well but with a strong accent, and with the occasional distinctive turn of phrase that is evident in his writing and his speeches—an uncommon blend of the casual and the formal, underplayed with a mischievous grin, as if the world was an amusing place and everyone was participating in a shared joke.
During Christmas 1909, Amundsen stayed at the consul Gade’s estate outside Chicago. Gade was an influential man who had many contacts among other wealthy families, not only in Chicago but in New York and Boston as well. In Chicago, Amundsen was arranging for the shipment of pemmican and canned goods, but he didn’t want to pay full price for these items. Gade helped to arrange for “official supplier status,” much in the way that many companies become brand sponsors of publicity-generating spectacles today. The manufacturer would give Amundsen free or discounted product, which he would then publicly endorse as the best tinned meat, shoe polish, boots or toothpaste, and so on, used in the Arctic by the famous polar explorer. He also sought to arrange deals with suppliers to have their products appear in a photograph taken at the North Pole. Amundsen’s fame, complemented by Gade’s money, ensured that they remained close until the end of Amundsen’s life—each lending the other something he lacked.
The unexpected conquest of the North Pole, whether by Peary or by Cook, was not good for Amundsen and his latest expedition. Although the controversy got him into the papers again, and reporters dutifully mentioned his next planned voyage in the Fram in the spring of 1910, his expedition was now overshadowed—the North Pole had already been reached. Amundsen, thinking quickly, suggested that perhaps he could verify Cook and Peary’s rival claims on his own journey. But still his fundraising took a precipitous dive. The hook of the expedition, the expedition to the North Pole, had been taken by another, or others, and he needed a new plan. “Will you stop long enough to explore the land Dr. Cook says he observed on his way to the pole?” asked one reporter. “A ghost of a smile flitted across the face of the Norwegian explorer. After a moment’s hesitation he said, in all seriousness: ‘If we strike it—yes.’” He already knew that he wouldn’t be anywhere near the North Pole; he was already contemplating a new objective before he had even departed Norway for New York. During his tour of the United States in the fall of 1909, Amundsen had secretly been planning an expedition to the South Pole, even while talking up the benefits to science of his now-pointless north polar drift. “Everything was prepared quietly and calmly,” he wrote in his book The South Pole.
The British explorer Ernest Shackleton had just returned from a daring Antarctic adventure, and another British explorer, Robert Falcon Scott, announced in September that he was planning to travel to Antarctica in the summer or fall of 1910, to reach the South Pole. Nansen had been interested in this same geographical prize, but had passed it over to allow Amundsen to use the Fram for his north polar drift. The two Norwegians had earlier discussed the difficulties likely to be encountered on a dash to the South Pole, concluding that a ski and dogsled expedition would be just the method to succeed in Antarctica.
Years later, Cook wrote that it was he who suggested to Amundsen that he change his plans and go south, when the two men had met in Copenhagen. Wherever the idea had its genesis, the change of destination occurred with remarkable rapidity. Amundsen was fluid with his plans, never backing down and admitting defeat but pushing on in defiance of daunting odds. Faced with similar setbacks, most people would have returned whatever money had been raised and made their apologies. They would have accepted the vagaries of fate or ill luck. Amundsen, however, just changed his goal and continued in secret. The fact that Scott’s British expedition would be departing in the same season as his was an unexpected bonus as far as Amundsen was concerned. What better way for an independently financed explorer to gain publicity than with the public spectacle of a race?