Norwegian National Day Talk

Sentinel Butte, North Dakota     

Interior of Sentinel Butte Lutheran Church

Nansen the Explorer

Nansen the Diplomat

As an Arctic explorer Nansen is best known for two daring adventures.  In 1888 he led a party of six on a trek across Greenland.  Earlier failed attempts by other explorers in 1883 and 1886 had embarked from settlements on the west coast of Greenland, making it possible to retreat back to civilization if the journey proved to be too challenging.  Nansen boldly started from the unpopulated east coast so there would be no option but to push forward to their destination on the west coast if they were to survive.  It was a dangerous and exhausting trek that reached altitudes of 9000 feet with temperatures as low as -50°F.  It took the party 49 days to reach Godthaab (now known as Nuuk) on the west coast of Greenland on October 3 1888.

Nansen's Greenland Crossing, 1888

___  Actual route of crossing

 ___  Original planned route

  ___  Search for landing

In the summer of 1893 Nansen set off set off from Christiania (Olso) with a crew of 12 (chosen from thousands of applicants) on a sturdy vessel named the Fram, which he designed especially for navigating Arctic sea ice.  Nansen’s plan was to use the summer months to navigate eastward along the north coast of Norway and Russia as far as Siberia.   In September he intentionally steered the ship into the Arctic pack ice theorizing that the drift of the ice would take him over the North Pole, thus becoming the first expedition to reach the pole.  Over the next 18 months the flow of ice took the ship to 84°north latitude, but the movement toward the pole was too slow. Nansen realized it would take several more years to reach it.

     Nansen’s Arctic Adventure, 1893-96

 ___  Fram voyage eastward

           ___   Fram westward drift in sea ice

___   Nansen's polar attempt

Thus, in March 1895 Nansen and one companion, Hjalmar Johansen, along with 28 dogs, left the ship to try to make a 400-mile dash across the ice to the North Pole.   They covered 140 miles in 28 days, but with their limited rations they had to turn back before realizing their goal.  On their harrowing southward journey hoping to reach Spitsbergen they were fortunate to reach Franz Josef Land far to the east, where they holed up for eight months during the winter of 1895-96.  That spring, as luck would have it, they chanced upon a British explorer who helped them get to Spitzbergen before eventually being reunited with the Fram and its crew later that summer inTromsø. 

In the years that followed, Nansen undertook several oceanographic expeditions into the Arctic, but gradually he became more involved in politics and diplomacy.  In 1905 he supported efforts to make Norway totally independent by dissolving the union with Sweden, and for the next two years was Norway’s well received ambassador in London.   After World War I, he became active in efforts to draw up the Covenant for the League of Nations, and from 1920 until his death from a heart attack in1930 he was a Norwegian delegate to the League. 

In 1921 Nansen was persuaded to administer the League’s newly created High Commission for Refugees.  During the next nine years he organized several major projects to repatriate and minister to the needs of hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war and refugees displaced by World War I, including Russians, Turks, Armenians, Assyrians and other nationalities.   Among these efforts he is best known for creating the so-called “Nansen Passport” that served as an identification document that would enable stateless refugees to cross national borders.  For these collective efforts he is credited with being instrumental in establishing the principle of international responsibility for refugees and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously in 1938.

Roald Amundsen

The other great Norwegian polar explorer, Roald Amundsen, is best known for leading the first expedition to South Pole, which was accomplished 100 years ago in 1911.  Born in 1872, and thus a decade the junior of Nansen, Amundsen was less committed than Nansen to conducting scientific studies on his adventures than to being the first to achieve notable polar exploits.  He was a master at planning complicated expeditions in incredibly harsh environments.

Amundsen’s was the first to navigate the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to Pacific oceans. Using a relatively small seal hunting vessel, he worked his way through the treacherous frigid, ice-clogged waters of the Canadian Arctic between 1903 and 1906, spending three winters in the region.  During this trip, he learned much from the local Inuits on how to survival in extreme extreme conditions, such as the value of seal skin coats and dogs.

Roald Amundsen

Amundsen at the South Pole, 1911

Amundsen next set his mind to becoming the first to achieve what Nansen had failed to do, reach the North Pole.   But as he was about to set out using Nansen’s vessel the Fram, he heard that two other explorers, Frederick Cook and Robert Peary, had separately reached the North Pole, claims that have since been disputed.  Amundsen set sail from Christiania in June 1910 ostensibly on a mission to the North Pole, but with secret plans go to Antarctica and become the first to reach to the South Pole.   Even his crew was not aware of this change in plans until well into the voyage. The same year a British expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott was undertaking a well publicized expedition to the South Pole.  Thus, it became a competition between the Norwegian and British explorers to see who would get to the pole first. 

 ___   Amundsen's route

  ___   Scott's route

Amundsen reached the Ross Ice Shelf in January 1911 and with his small crew began work on a base camp and supply depots at 80°, 81°, and 82°south latitude before spending the long dark Antarctic winter refining their plans and equipment for an assault on the South Pole.  On October 19, after being turned back by weather as cold as -70°F a month earlier, Amundsen and four compatriots set out with four sledges and 52 dogs, climbing as high as 10,000 feet, before reaching the South Pole on December 14.  At the pole they planted a Norwegian flag and left a small tent to document their accomplishment.  Amundsen and his men returned to their base camp on the Ross Ice Shelf on January 25, 1912. Robert Scott and his men reached the South Pole 35 days after Amundsen and tragically froze to death on their way back to civilization as the weather conditions deteriorated during the Antarctic autumn.

Between 1916 and 1919, Amundsen tried to improve on Nansen’s earlier strategy for reaching the North Pole by having his ship drift with the flow of Arctic pack ice.  When those efforts failed he became interested in airplanes, but was unsuccessful in his attempts to fly over the North Pole.  Finally, in 1926, he drifted over the pole in a dirigible, becoming the first to achieve an uncontested reaching of the pole by either sea, ice, or air.  Two years later, Amundsen was killed when his plane crashed into the Barents Sea while on a daring rescue mission.  The plane and his body were never recovered.

I have been fortunate to experience Syttende Mai twice in Oslo. Both times the weather was beautifully warm and sunny, which is unusual this time of year. Colorful and dignified are the words that come to mind to describe how Norwegians celebrate their national day. The day is a feast for the eyes because of the many Norwegian women, and some men, wearing the elegant traditional bunads that are distinctive to each district of the country.  Much of the morning is taken up by the seemingly endless children's parade in which school groups and bands (and adult ones as well) weave their way through downtown Oslo and pass in front of the national palace where the royal family waves from a balcony. During the afternoon and evening many people enjoyed the sunshine along in the parks or along the quay or relaxed with tall glasses of beer in the sidewalk seating of restaurants along Karl Johansgata. Many Norwegians, however, spend the rest of the day in family get togethers.

Strangely, being a Norwegian-American alone in Oslo on Syttende Mai was a bittersweet experience for me.  I profoundly admired the way Norwegians demonstrated love of their country in such a moving way without the boasting and bravado and national exceptionalism of the American 4th of July.   I wanted to feel that I was one of them by virtue of my ancestry.  But wasn't it more honest to consider myself an outside observer, whose ancestors left Norway forever more than a century ago when the times weren't so good in their native country, and America beckoned as the land of better opportunities?   My grandparent’s children and grandchildren sought to become thoroughly Americanized.  My brother and I even turned up our noses at the lutefisk our parents served on Christmas Eve, but we did look forward to the krumkakker and other Norwegian holiday treats.

As second and third generation Norwegian-Americans we can never be full fledged Norwegians.  But we can admire what Norway has achieved and the quality of life that its citizens enjoy.   And we can take pride in our ancestry and appreciate the solid Norwegian values that have served us well in the United States.  And we can share a special kind of kinship with contemporary Norwegians as we join them in celebrating their national day.