Voyages of Discovery (2006): Season 1, Episode 3 - Voyages of Discovery - full transcript

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In the spring of 1892, a charismatic
Norwegian explorer called Fridtjof Nansen

announced a daring plan
to venture into all this.

The Arctic,
unmapped and unconquered.

At the top of the world,

the ultimate goal - the North Pole.

Few had even entered
these icy wastes.

Fewer still had returned.

Nansen's dream to conquer the Pole
was thought nothing short of suicidal.

But Fridtjof Nansen ignored
his critics

and embarked on the most
extraordinary voyage in history.

It would be an expedition
of spectacular discoveries



that would launch polar exploration
into the modern era.

But at the cost of extreme suffering
and mental torture

in the most hostile place on Earth.

Little more than 100 years ago,

this 16 million square kilometers of
frozen sea was the last unknown on Earth.

A dangerous fascination for
that ominous blank on their maps

had enticed a few daring explorers
to venture into the barren ice.

But up to now,

all the attempts to penetrate the
Arctic had resulted in either death

or ships being destroyed
in the crushing polar pack.

Despite this, on 24th June 1893,

Nansen set sail from Oslo -
a man obsessed.

He was determined to fulfill the
dream that fired his imagination -

to reach the North Pole
and claim it for his country.



He bade farewell
to his beloved new wife Eva

and their infant daughter Liv.

He promised he would return
from his Arctic odyssey a hero.

The expedition would keep them apart
for at least three years, possibly eight,

but most thought forever.

I thought everything was black.

Within me, I was torn apart
as if something would break.

But nothing could deter
his ambition.

So with a raggedy bunch of sailors,
whalers and sealers

prepared to risk their lives with him,
Nansen embarked on his epic voyage.

At 31,
Nansen was an eminent zoologist,

a pioneering neurologist,
as well as an ambitious explorer.

He had just made an epic crossing
through the icy heart of Greenland.

Now, with his outrageous attempt
to conquer the Pole,

he was risking everything.

Nansen was convinced he could
achieve the impossible, and he had a plan.

A plan that was bold and brave,

but most people thought
plain barmy.

Ironically, Nansen's theory
on reaching the North Pole

was inspired by a tragic shipwreck
and the loss of 18 men.

In 1879, the US Arctic exploration
ship Jeannette

had made a bid for the Pole,

but the ship was crushed
by the freezing ice cap

and trapped
in the north-eastern Arctic.

When the wreckage was found
over two years later,

it was on the opposite side
of the polar ice - in the west.

Nansen's theory was that the wreck
had been carried the 4,000 kilometers

by the drift
of the floating ice cap.

His audacious adventure was born.

My plan for the North Pole is to sail
in ice-free water as far as possible.

Then go into the ice
until we are beset and frozen in,

then drift towards the Pole.

Nansen, as he had done for much of
his life, was turning a reigning concept

completely on its head, and
he was about to intentionally

confront the polar
explorer's worst nightmare.

He was going to freeze the Fram
in to the polar pack -

the same ice that wrecked the
Jeannette and many ships before her.

At best, it was considered
a ludicrous idea,

as this little ditty in
The Punch shows.

"So, Doctor Fridtjof Nansen's off.

"Cynics will chuckle
and pessimists scoff.

"What a noodle, that Norroway chap,

"to drift to the Pole
to complete our map."

Even in Norway, scorn was poured
over Nansen's idea

of deliberately freezing
into the ice cap.

Few academics would sign up for what
most thought was a doomed expedition.

One able and willing candidate
DID apply.

A fellow explorer called
Frederick George Jackson.

But he had to be very politely
turned down cos he was English,

and as far as Nansen was concerned,

this expedition was
for the honor of his homeland.

For Norwegians to claim for Norway the
last great unexplored region in the world.

To start with, everything
depended on getting

to the northeast side
of the polar ice pack.

But after six weeks at sea, they were
desperately struggling to make headway.

It was as if the ship was being held
back by a kind of strange force.

Nansen was baffled.

Back then, there were no instruments
for sampling underwater.

So, in the workshop on board ship,
Nansen designed and built his own.

And the very one he made
survives to this day.

Can you believe it?
Who better to tell us how it

works than Ola, from the
Nansen Institute in Bergen.

So, come on then, mate,
how does it work?

OK, this is a device

which you can bring up water
from great depths.

You send a messenger down the cable,
and the messenger hits like that...

and it turns round. And you see?

Now it's closed, and all the water
from, say, 3,000 meters sits in here.

Can we use it? Yes, absolutely.

Come on then, what are we doing?

First we have to screw these up here.

Bit of slack. Ah, yeah.

Now we're going to put the messenger,
so it turns to pick the water up, OK?

That's blooming clever!

OK, Paul, give me the bottle
because now I open it up...

We'll do this again.

No water in there.
Yes, here it comes, you see?

With this sample, you can determine
the salinity of the water,

and Nansen discovered
that it was a very fresh layer,

really fresh layer, for
example caused by ice

melting, fresh layer
on top of the salt water.

The water is so fresh
that you can even drink it. Wow!

'Fresh water was not
something anyone expected

in the middle of the
Russian Kara Sea.'

Nansen realized it was the
outflows from the Siberian

rivers and the melting
glaciers they were passing.

This layer of fresh water
sitting on salt water was causing

a kind of extra underwater wake, gripping
the ship while she tried to make headway.

The strange layers that Nansen
discovered are now known as dead water,

and they're marked on the charts
up here, so we can avoid them.

With his new found
knowledge, Nansen steered

a course away from
the river run-offs

to the northeast -
but into more trouble.

Already delayed by the dead water,

Nansen needed to push further north
before being frozen in.

But the winter ice was forming
a month early.

The sea was freezing
around him... too soon.

Finally, on 22nd September 1893,

Nansen crossed the 78th parallel of
latitude, into uncharted territory.

Now we are entering
the absolutely unknown.

Here, all charts stop,

and now
our real voyage of discovery begins.

They were now in the mysterious
polar realm, with no support,

no communication
and no means of rescue.

Nansen and his men were off the map.

It was time to party.

Nansen joined everyone round the
table in the saloon, and drank hot punch.

This proved what the moment meant,
as under his regime, alcohol was a rarity.

Navigator Scott Hansen summed it up.

A party that begins at 4am in the morning
at the northernmost tip of the known world

belongs to the rarer events
of a man's life,

and must be absolutely classed
as a success.

Skal. Skal!

Nansen had navigated the ship
through the closing ice floes

as far north as he could go.

They were now at the mercy
of the polar pack ice.

When the Arctic Ocean
freezes in winter, the

sea ice can get to be
almost 50 meters thick.

This groaning mass has a potential
crushing pressure

of 500 kilograms
per square centimeter.

Now the entire bid for the Pole
depended on this small ship

surviving the huge pressure
of the closing ice.

For Nansen,
it was the moment of truth.

His tiny wooden vessel and his
dreams would be tested to their limits.

Nansen called his eccentric creation
Fram, meaning forward,

and she was truly
a ship like no other.

His wild idea was that the unusual
curved sides and rounded bilges

would stop the ice
from getting a grip on her.

And his theory was that being
egg-shaped, she would slowly rise up

under the crushing pressure
of the freezing ice,

and end up
sitting on top of the frozen sea.

Nansen wasn't an engineer,
but he'd done his research,

and he had a good innate feel
for design - stuff that works -

and on his side
he had Norway's best ship designer.

Together, they hoped to
create a ship that would

rise up above the
incoming pressure of the ice.

A bit like this.

As the ice comes in, it's a huge
amount of pressure,

and unless it's right, the ship's going
to break under that pressure, and sink.

And in this case,
this is what they hoped to do.

Well, Nansen's theory
was all well and good,

but there was no way it could be
tested on a full-sized ship,

except out
in the unforgiving Arctic ice.

As the ice pushed in
against the hull,

the Fram
was facing her greatest test.

For Nansen and his crew, there was
little they could do but... wait.

And Fram's timbers moaned and
creaked as the pressure on them grew.

Now we are in the very midst of what the
prophets would have had us dread so much.

The ice is pressing and packing
around us with a noise like thunder.

It took the whole of October for the
sea to completely freeze around the ship.

And by the 25th, when the sun dipped
below the horizon for the last time,

the wretched sound of the timbers
creaking became just too much.

Terrified, the men abandoned ship.

From the surrounding ice floe,
they stood and watched.

The ship trembles and jumps up.

She allowed the ice to move
beneath her, and lifted a little.

There's no movie footage
of Nansen's bid for the

Pole, but it was documented
with still photographs.

These extraordinary images
capture the moment

the ship, intact and undamaged,
rose up out of the ice.

It had worked.

This egg-shaped hull
had resisted the crushing

forces, and rather than
get trapped in the ice,

the 800-tonne ship had been lifted
up, and was sitting on top of the sea ice.

And just as Nansen had promised,

Fram was demonstrating she was the
toughest wooden ship ever built.

We're now in the front of the ship.

Wow! With all the...
It's absolutely massive.

All the thick beams,
and all of them are joined together

by knees from Norwegian pine
trees. Which bits are the knees?

Is it all right to get up there?

Instead of using metal,
they used the root and the

stem of a tree in one
piece. So it's upside-down.

This is the trunk. Exactly.

And this is the root.
It's obviously massively strong.

Yes, the strongest piece of the tree
and also very flexible.

How many of them are on board because
they seem to be every couple of feet?

They used 400 trees for the ship.

These knees themselves look massive, but
how thick is the hull here, do you think?

On the sides it's 80cm -
about this big.

Three layers of wood.

And the front is also
three massive beams,

one in front of the others,
making 1.25 meters.

So this hull, right here,

is that thick. Yeah, 80cm on
the side and 125 in the front.

Every effort was made to make
the hull as smooth as possible,

so even the nails was pushed hard
in, so that the ice couldn't grip the nail.

And also, there's no
keel, the keel is inside

the ship with only two
inches pointing out,

so that the ice could
not grip the keel if the

ice was pushed under
the boat, and then tip it.

So with this extremely smooth
hull, is so the ice can't get any grip all.

Even the rudder and the propeller
can be pulled up when the ice came.

But that the trade-off for that is that
she would have been really lively at sea.

Exactly. You float like a cork
on top of the waves,

and all the diaries
talk about massive seasickness.

One of the crew members said that at
first they were worried about dying,

and then about NOT dying soon enough.

For all the Fram's strength and
weight, she's still a small ship.

Just 39 meters long, 11 meters wide
and a five-meter draft.

Compared to the unforgiving polar
ice cap, she was just a spec of dust.

The ship was now part
of the Arctic ice.

If Nansen's theory was correct,

she would drift across the top of
the world, over the North Pole.

Inside, 13 men would have to endure
the cold and dark...

imprisoned in the tiny vessel
for more than three years.

The Fram was now over 2,000
kilometers from civilization.

She'd vanished from
the world, and for those

on board, the world
had vanished from them.

And the dangers now changed
from being physical to mental.

It was a very real threat.

Polar expeditions in the past
had foundered

as the isolation of the Arctic
pushed men into insanity,

mutiny, even cannibalism.

And Nansen's crew now faced
years alone in the Arctic,

in a tiny vessel
trapped in the ice.

So he drew up a rigorous schedule
to try and occupy the men.

Scientific observations,
surveying and

maintenance were top
of the exhaustive list.

The working day would begin
at 8am sharp, with monitoring,

experiments and repairs filling
every hour until dinner at 6pm.

The crew were then allowed
the evenings to themselves.

Nansen had also figured out,
when he was crossing Greenland,

that variety in the diet
is exceptional for morale.

Up till then, monotonous diets
on expeditions were legendary.

So Nansen personally supervised the
sterilizing and canning or freeze-drying

of 52 varieties of meat,
fish, vegetables, potatoes,

pates and fruit and, best of all,
he brought along plenty of this -

chocolate.

In fact,
Cadbury's sponsored the expedition.

At every moment of importance or anything
worth noting, out would come the chocolate.

But being so far inside the Arctic
Circle created an extra challenge -

the disorientation and depression caused
by five winter months of constant darkness.

Ever the innovator, Nansen installed
a windmill to generate electricity,

and used the new-fangled light bulbs
to create an artificial day.

And an organ for evening renditions

lifted the spirits during
the never-ending night.

Ironically, and despite
all his precautions,

it was Nansen himself
who began to suffer.

The loneliness and tedium
prompted wild mood swings.

He's an odd character - sometimes serious,
scientific and aggressive in discussions.

And then, one fine day
extravagantly cheerful

and pleasant, almost
to the point of puerility.

Nansen became surly, depressed, and
ranted at the futility of his expedition...

..and even, sometimes, his own life.

Here I am, among the drifting
ice floes and the great silence.

I stare up at the eternal courses
of the stars,

thoughtful as thought.

Everything is picked to pieces and
becomes miserably small and worthless.

As leader, Nansen was unable
to confide his feelings.

He missed the companionship
of his wife Eva.

Nansen had now been away
for six months,

and Eva was distracting herself
by pursuing another love.

Singing.

SHE SINGS IN NORWEGIAN

She would rehearse
regularly with the aim of

turning professional
and touring in the spring.

This was their first winter apart,
and on 8th January,

Nansen missed the first birthday
of their daughter, Liv.

Nansen's diary entry
on that special day

records his thoughts
as they turn to his little Liv.

A good day to you
on this your day, little Liv.

Perhaps Liv's day
will be the start of our

luck in our northward
drift under your star.

But Nansen's hopes
would soon turn to despair.

Star sightings to check his
northward drift towards the Pole

revealed a disaster.

Over the last six months, the path of
the Fram was erratic, to say the least.

The ice they were stuck in
was going backwards,

sideways and occasionally -
if they were lucky - north.

Basically, they had only traveled
111 kilometers towards the North Pole.

Nansen had calculated
that the prevailing wind

and the predictable current would
carry his ship directly to the Pole.

This news was a terrible blow.

During a routine series
of underwater soundings,

he made an extraordinary discovery
that explained everything.

At the time, it was assumed there
was a shallow sea beneath the polar ice.

But when Nansen took depth soundings,
he was astonished by the results.

The cable,
lowered through a hole in the ice,

touched the bottom
at 1,860 fathoms -

that's almost 4½ kilometers.

In an extraordinary breakthrough,
Nansen had discovered

over 63 million cubic kilometers
of previously unknown deep sea -

a massive new ocean.

The Arctic Ocean.

And it was the strange
currents in this deep

ocean that were skewing
his drift to the Pole.

When he was here, he was noticing
that, compared to the wind,

he wasn't drifting
as he expected to drift.

That is correct.
He expected to kind of drift

with the same direction as the wind,

but measurements show that he was
drifted to the right of the wind.

Always to the right?
Always to the right.

Roughly with 30 degrees to the right.

Oh, wow, that's a lot. It's a lot,
yes, but then it also postulated

that when you went down
into the deeper part of the ocean,

one layer dragged the other,
so the current was turning...

and then he started to think.

What about Earth's rotation?

And then came the idea
that it must be...

The deflection to the right must be
caused by the Earth's rotation.

And this was one of the first times

a scientist really looked

at the whole Earth rotation
was affecting the current.

And it seems even more unbelievable
to me

that he figured it out while he was
locked into the ice, stuck on the Fram.

Well, maybe he had time to think!

It was an amazing discovery

that the Earth's rotation
affected current,

but it was a cruel blow for Nansen.

He now realized the drift would not take
the Fram over the North Pole, after all.

His voyage of discovery had failed.

If the ice ever released him, he
would be returning home empty-handed.

Nansen was devastated,

but his obsession would not die.

On 16th November, he gathered the crew
together to make a remarkable announcement.

Nansen had
an extraordinary new plan...

THEY SPEAK IN NORWEGIAN

To leave the ship, and ski the
remaining 600 kilometers to the Pole.

His crew were horrified.

To stand any chance of success, he
proposed to travel swift and light.

He would take
only one other person -

first mate
Frederik Hjalmar Johansen.

Johansen was a world-class gymnast,

and also the fastest skier
Nansen knew.

This was Nansen's biggest gamble
to date.

It was only 30 years
since the British Navy's

Sir John Franklyn -
along with all his 134 men -

had perished whilst battling
the brutal open Arctic.

Nansen's new action plan
was ambitious by any measure.

With provisions for just
100 days, he calculated

he could get to the North
Pole and back to land.

He'd have to face
the whole unmapped polar pack,

and temperatures
often below minus-45.

Nansen used the dogs and sledges
from the Fram.

They'd been brought
up in case the Fram was

crushed in the ice and
they'd had to abandon ship.

But now Nansen figured
the Fram was safe in her icy cradle.

So, with the dogs in harness,

Nansen was ready to start
the most risky journey of his life -

to conquer the top of the world,
in his own unique style.

It was now almost two years
since Nansen had set sail.

Eva was becoming a success, her reputation
as a singer growing all over Europe.

She had no idea that her beloved had
now left the relative safety of the Fram

and was risking everything
in his dash for the Pole.

At first, everything went well.

Nansen was getting into his stride,

thanks to a brilliant range of
innovations that kept him on the move,

and still work for
us explorers today.

It was the first time that dogs and men
had worked together in the polar regions

and, to Nansen's joy,
it was a perfect match.

In eight days away from the Fram,
he had covered 105 kilometers,

and was now averaging over 13
kilometers a day towards the Pole.

But it was still tough
going, and the physical

exertion would really
have taken its toll

were it not for a small
but simple device that

Nansen had spotted
and decided to try out.

It was a prototype stove
called the Primus,

and Nansen immediately saw its potential
to combat the dreaded Arctic thirst.

Strenuous exercise in dry polar air
causes extreme water loss.

You can lose over four liters of liquid a
day, all of which needs to be replaced.

Eating a bit of snow for refreshment
tastes great, but it's very dangerous.

It chills the central
core of your body.

The trick is to melt the snow, and
that takes a tonne of fuel.

The Primus...

..used pressurized fuel...

and a clever pre-heating mechanism

so that you burn vaporized fuel.

It produces a really clean,

soot-free, super-hot flame.

In fact, I've heard that
in the old days,

these original Primus stoves were
used by Scandinavian women

in the marketplace - they put them
under their dresses to keep warm!

With the fuel-efficient Primus,

Nansen avoided the dangerous
dehydration of Arctic thirst,

so he traveled light and fast,

melting as much snow as he needed,
going twice as far on half the fuel.

DOGS BARK

By the third week into the trek for the
Pole, Nansen was truly pushing hard.

And his remarkable talent
for invention served him well.

He had come up with a whole new way
to allow him to travel fast over the ice -

cross-country skis.

These are the very
skis that he used?

Yes, they are our cultural heritage.

It's light. It's lovely.

I've got skis shorter than this
that are a lot heavier, even now.

I find it really interesting
that he went to do the North Pole

with just wood - he didn't take
skis, he built skis on the way.

Yes, and they had to use skis
for exercising.

They were very fat, so Nansen
ordered his crew going around the ski

to lose some weight also.

It's not built for turning.

I mean, there's no... no side cut
at all or waist -

it's just completely parallel.

They are parallel, and then they are
pointed at both ends.

Oh, I see... Also very practical.
You can see also...

The tail is cut away, isn't it?

Yes. So it's lighter, more elegant,
and in the worse case, if one end -

this end, for example - broke, you
can just turn the ski and continue.

And they are just incredibly
designed for one single purpose -

going in a long straight line

using the smallest amount
of energy as possible.

He was a fantastic inventor.

Inventing a new energetic style
of skiing

brought a fresh challenge
for Nansen - overheating.

Old-style heavy-duty clothing
didn't suit the demands

of vigorous cross-country skiing,

so Nansen had another idea -

lightweight layers to
regulate body temperature.

Nansen's ideas were inspired
by a weatherproof woollen material

created by Dr Jaeger of Germany.

And a ground-breaking breathable
wind-proof material called Burberry cloth,

and this was manufactured in
a factory in Basingstoke, England.

Now, this layer principle was
an inspired idea by Nansen.

It meant you could travel
in the cold and across the

snow and ice at the very
limits of human endurance.

These days, we use the layer
principle without even thinking about it.

But it's all thanks to Nansen.

After one month on the
ice, they were halfway

to the Pole, but
conditions were worsening.

Even with all Nansen's
ingenuity, the extreme

environment was now
punishing their bodies.

At minus 45 degrees Celsius,
skin will freeze within seconds.

Tuesday, minus 45.

We don't sleep at all
because of the cold.

We work a lot and suffer much.

My God, icy sleeping bags,
heavy loads, but onward we must go.

My fingers are all destroyed.

All mittens are frozen stiff,
it is becoming worse and worse.

God alone knows what
will happen to us.

It's not pleasant to
be a human being here.

There must surely be an end to it.

The problem were these
hellish contortions in the pack ice.

There's nothing worse
for a polar traveler.

And up here in the Arctic, the
constant movement of the sea

buckles and shatters
the frozen surface

and forces it into
thousands of hummocks

and these big pressure ridges.

Some of them can be ten meters high,

making them completely
insurmountable.

And now the dogs were also
suffering, as Nansen recorded.

The dogs are becoming almost
impossible to drive ahead,

the more tanglements and other
devilments that appear in them.

In the growing chaos, the lead dog
team fell into a crack in the sea ice

and had to be pulled out
of the water one by one.

The sledge had gone in as well,
and had to be man-hauled out.

The mood darkened even
more when they had to begin

slaughtering some of the
dogs to feed the others.

And although they'd planned this, it felt
like murder, and depressed them immensely.

But on they went.

After battling the ice for five
weeks, their pace was slowing.

The past 12 days
had only achieved 75 kilometers.

They were running out of time
and supplies.

Nansen also had a sense
of unease. Something

else wasn't right
with their progress,

so he stopped
to take a precise star fix.

The results
came as a terrible shock.

They showed that the
last 75 tortuous kilometers

hadn't got them any
closer to their goal.

Nansen was distraught, as he realized
that the ice was playing a terrible trick.

As they hauled northwards, the whole
of the pack ice was drifting southwards,

it was as if they were on a giant running
machine - they were almost going backwards.

It was a gut-wrenching blow.

After 175 kilometers of painfully
hard slog since they'd left the Fram,

Nansen - frozen, exhausted
and utterly demoralized -

reflected on the note
Eva had written in his diary.

My beloved boy, God grant that health,
happiness and good luck will follow you.

The ice is growing worse and worse.

Yesterday it brought me
to the brink of despair.

We have advanced hardly a mile.

There seems little sense
in carrying on any longer.

We sacrifice the precious
days for too little.

Nansen's North Pole ambition
was over.

It was time to turn back.

They'd got further
north than anyone before

them, but the North
Pole was out of reach.

They were exhausted,
conditions were worsening

and their rations
were dangerously low.

Nansen knew in the shifting ice,
he could never find the Fram again.

Now his challenge was not
reaching the Pole, but surviving.

A month after turning and
heading south for land,

the sun was rising higher in the sky
and the sea ice was melting under them.

Having turned, they were
searching for a glimpse

of land that might help
them get their bearings.

By late May, Nansen was becoming
more and more disorientated.

Both their watches had
stopped, which meant

that they had completely
lost track of time,

and Nansen was navigating
by guesswork.

All he had was the sun,
his compass and this hand-drawn map.

But what he didn't know
was that the map was wrong.

It looked as if they were tantalizingly
close to a large group of islands,

but as it was, they were searching
for some phantom land.

After 100 days - the maximum
Nansen had allowed -

they had completely
run out of provisions.

The two dogs that were left
were no use to them

because from now on
they would have to kayak.

Out of compassion they agreed
to each shoot each other's dogs.

And they used two precious bullets
to dispatch them quickly.

Then they used the dog's blood

to moisten the last of the
dry dregs of the meat paste.

Still pressing south, and now four
and a half months away from the Fram,

the terrain began to change.

Now desperately hungry, the starving
men shot everything possible -

seagulls, seals, even walruses
were now in their sights.

Despite the huge body
and deformed appearance,

there was something gently pleading
and helpless in the round eyes.

Seemed mostly like murder.

GUNSHOT

I put an end to it with a
bullet behind the ear,

but those eyes pursue me even now.

After another two weeks,
they were exhausted,

and the struggle was unrelenting.

Now winter was closing in,
making travel impossible.

In the dying rays of the brief Arctic
summer, their hope also faded.

They battled aimlessly south, making
little headway in the closing ice.

Temperatures were plummeting.

Against all the odds,
they had crossed 480 kilometers

of the unforgiving polar wastes,
but now they were spent.

It would be foolish to proceed.

In desperation, they prepared for another
Arctic winter at the mercy of the ice.

In the early 1990s, one of the most
extraordinary sights

in the history of Polar
exploration was unearthed.

When it was first discovered,

all that remained was a
shallow scraped hole,

some used gun cartridges
and a scattering of bones.

And it was all that remained of
Nansen's most unwelcome adventure.

So it's here in the high Arctic
where they built this winter cavern.

Cavern or cabin... A hole
in the ground,

or even more so a hole
in the permafrost.

You have to remember,
the ground is frozen from about...

In summer, the top 30
centimeters defrosts and

from there, down to 600
meters, it's frozen ice.

And there's basically a log

above a small hole in the ground.

They'd dug a hole into
the permafrost,

laid a single driftwood log
across the top.

The walrus that they'd killed
for food,

they put the hides over the top
with rocks holding down the hide,

and they crawled in
this hole in the ground.

Wow. Definitely not a cabin.

They then started sharing the
same sleeping bag to stay warm,

they burned the walrus blubber for
lighting because you have to remember,

at that area it's four
and a half months to five

months of total darkness
throughout the winter.

And they would have
laid in the cabin for

that winter in nearly
a state of hibernation.

All that was keeping
Nansen alive was the survival

techniques he had learned
form the Inuit in Greenland.

I live their life, I eat their food.

I learned to appreciate
the inventions the

Eskimos had made to
secure life's necessities.

The men were just surviving.

They did little and spoke less,
holding on to the last flames of optimism.

It is miserable. One feels bitter
and depressed.

Monotony has told on both of us,
and we both have our dark moments.

If we did not have the certainty
of returning to the world,

this existence would be unbearable.

Back in Oslo, three years had passed
with no word of the expedition.

But Eva refused to give up hope.

Together, she and Liv faced
their third Christmas alone.

Most people had given
Nansen up for lost.

Others believed he was already dead.

SHE SINGS "SILENT NIGHT"
IN NORWEGIAN

Incredibly, they had survived.

Although buried alive in
their hole in the ground,

Nansen and Johansen also marked
Christmas in their own special way.

To celebrate, Johansen turned
his grease-ridden shirt inside-out,

and Nansen changed his underpants
for the first time that year.

As the dead of winter passed,

a scattering of life slowly
returned to the frozen wastes.

They managed to kill a lot of
walrus on the beach straight

down from where they
built the hole in the ground,

and they put all that meat as
a stash right next to the cabin,

if you'd like to call it, and
of course the bears started coming.

So then they started shooting
the bears as they come.

And they couldn't eat the food faster
than they managed to replenish.

I notice you're wearing a gun.
Is that for the same reason?

We've got the gun cos a
bear could pop up anywhere.

A wise Eskimo always
looks over his shoulder.

After eight months of
total isolation,

the men broke from their
dark, cold, stony prison

to struggle south again.

They were still
hopelessly disorientated.

The islands Nansen hoped he
was heading for were, in fact,

over 800 kilometers away -
an impossible distance to kayak.

Nansen could not know this so, with blind
faith, and little choice, they went on.

For over a month, they'd skied, clambered
and kayaked over unforgiving terrain.

At last, they'd reached
some open water,

so they rigged their
two kayaks together,

catamaran-style, and rigged up
a sail, and carried on.

It worked great until
they went ashore

to stretch their tired bodies.

A wind came up, caught the craft
and it began to drift away.

On board was their
food, clothing, ammunition

- everything on which
their lives depended.

And of course, it would
have been complete madness

for either one of them to have
jumped in the icy water after it.

The water was icy cold and it was
exhausting to swim with clothes on.

The kayaks drifted further
and further away.

It seemed more than doubtful
whether I would manage it,

but there drifted all our hope.

If only I could hold
out, we were saved.

So I forced myself on.

At long last, I could stretch
out my hand and grasp the ski

that lay across the kayaks.

Nansen was numb with cold,
and soaked through.

I never could have done this if I
hadn't had a safety back-up team.

But Nansen had saved
their provisions, he'd

saved their lives, he'd
saved the expedition.

It was the luckiest of escapes.

But if you thought THAT was lucky, what
was about to befall them beggars belief.

They were about to experience
one of the most extraordinary

and fortuitous coincidences
in the history of exploration.

Over 15 months since Nansen had walked
away from the relative comfort of the Fram,

and nearly a year since
his provisions ran out,

in the middle of nowhere, lost,
on an unknown Arctic island,

he heard the distant sounds
of dogs barking.

Suddenly I was certain
that I heard a strange voice.

The first for three years.

Behind that single human voice in
the middle of this wilderness of ice

lay home, and she who was
waiting at home for me.

Hello! Hello!

I waved my hat, he did the same.

I came closer, and believed
that I recognized Mr Jackson.

How do you do? How do you do?

How do you do? Aren't you Nansen?
Yes, yes, I am.

'The man in black
was a fellow explorer.

'The Englishman Frederick
George Jackson,

'who Nansen had turned down for
the voyage over three years before.

'Undaunted, he'd organized
his own expedition, but

he'd been misled by the very
same bad map as Nansen.

'There was one crucial difference
between the two men's predicament -

'Jackson had a ship,
and knew the way home.'

By Jove, I'm glad to see you.
I'm glad to see you too.

It was a bitter-sweet moment.

Nansen's ordeal was over,
but he was returning home

with his dreams of conquering the
North Pole for Norway in tatters.

In a final coincidence, on 19th May,

exactly the same day that Nansen and
Johansen left their winter lair,

the Fram at last broke free from
the ice, and she sailed here,

to the most northerly
inhabited place on Earth

- the islands of Svarbard
in the high Arctic.

And from a telegraph station
that was just over there,

they sent the first message for over three
and a half years to say they were safe.

In an emotional
reunion, Nansen rejoined

the rest of the Fram
crew for the final leg,

and they fought back tears of joy
as they sailed south for home.

They were re-entering
the land of the living.

And not only had Nansen
survived over three

years in the Arctic
wastes, he'd come home.

Although the expedition never achieved
its goal, Nansen's legacy is phenomenal.

He'd gone further north
than any man before,

and opened up the Arctic
to modern exploration.

His pioneering
achievements inspired Captain

Scott, Shackleton, Pirie
and Roald Amundsen.

Amundsen even took the Fram when
he beat Scott to the South Pole.

In a spectacular series of journals,

Nansen detailed hundreds of ground-breaking
scientific observations still used today.

Whilst trapped in the ice cap, he
discovered a new magnificent ocean,

developed the theory of
Polar drift and launched the

global science of oceanography
into the 20th century.

Nansen went on to be
an Ambassador for Norway,

and in 1922, he was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize.

He passed away peacefully on
this balcony in May 1930,

and is buried in the grounds of the
house he designed and built here in Oslo.

And long after he died,
Nansen's innovations affect us all.

Even today.

He will never be forgotten.

Two mountains bear his
name, and even on the

moon and Mars, you'll
find a Nansen crater.

Nansen was forever seeking results, whether
in science, politics or exploration.

He was inspirational
and driven to the end.

Few men in history can match him in
stature, and for me,

he'll always be the original
incarnation of Polar explorer as hero.

His expedition that
never reached the North

Pole was truly the most
successful failure ever.