A message from the living world
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| Tuesday, 20th December 2011 | Written by Matt Vance |
At 84° 26’ south, nearly halfway back from the South Pole to his base at the Bay of Whales, Roald Amundsen and his men witnessed a curious thing. Two skua gulls appeared from the north, circled the group of five men and alighted on top of their snow block navigation beacon. The skuas eyed the explorers for a while before taking to their wings and heading south. This was the first sign of life for 82 days. The explorers remained silent. Much later, Amundsen described this as “a message from the living world to this realm of death”.
One hundred years on, this moment has been lost in the greater glory of the heroic era of polar exploration. It hides in the heady 841 pages and two volumes of Amundsen’s book, The South Pole. The book is no longer in my local public library and can only be found in obscure second-hand bookstores. It chronicles the first, and only, overland return journey to the South Geographic Pole from the Ross Sea.
It’s a heavy read and is the only one I have taken on a trip to Antarctica. I read it in lengthy drafts during bad weather as the Southern Ocean extracts its payment from the old icebreaker on her long slide south from New Zealand.
Such was the nature of Amundsen that the entire first volume of his book was dedicated to his preparations. He had spent several years in the Arctic learning from the Inuit how to live and move on the ice. Interspersed amongst these practicalities was the political and financial trickery that Amundsen waged to get the expedition off the ground. To the credit of Amundsen’s political skill, he secured both the backing of the Norwegian Government and Fridtjof Nansen’s ship Fram on the basis of an expedition to the North Pole!
By the time the political ructions of Amundsen’s deception had died down in Norway, Amundsen was in the Ross Sea looking for a suitable base from which to strike out to the South Pole. He took a calculated risk and opted not for land, but for a section of the Ross Ice Shelf called the Bay of Whales. This bay gave easy access to the ice shelf and lay over 111km closer to the pole than the alternative Ross Island. The icescape of the bay is in a constant state of flux and like most of the Ross Ice Shelf it occasionally calves off large chunks. It was a typical Amundsen punt; intensely practical, but offering no permanent shrine to history.
Amundsen named his base Framheim and built a small prefabricated hut with a network of under-ice caves that served as workshops and storage areas over the long polar winter of 1911. Amundsen’s descriptions of this time are of the meticulous preparations of his men and of a hut full of glowing good cheer. This account of life at Framheim was as close as Amundsen was to get to the idea of home for the rest of his life.
Somewhere deep in volume 1 of Amundsen’s book there is a photo of their midwinter feast at Franheim. The men are jammed around the dining table politely addressing the intrusion of the camera. Amundsen sits quietly at the back. Unlike the rest of his team, failure to gain the South Pole was not an option for him; he had staked his entire reputation on it. On the trail, Amundsen was the will that moved them on, he led from the back, picking up the debris of gear the careering sleds dropped and leaving the route-finding to his more able men. At the back, he had time to think and indulge his fastidious mind on planning the next step.
Unlike most of the known world of the time, the South Pole did not have a physical presence; it was an abstract concoction of lines. Finding it needed the skill of a navigator. After traversing the continent for 57 days, Amundsen’s team spent four days taking sun sites and laying grids to make sure he had covered the likely position of the pole. The photos that Bjaaland took are simple statements of men in good trim, removing their hats and facing the icy wind that snapped at the Norwegian flag. Amundsen did not talk of the South Pole in the soft terms he saved for Framheim. He celebrated with cigars, filling his lungs with the warmth that was lacking in this desolate spot.
By the time I have chewed my way through most of Amundsen’s book the icebreaker is deep in the Ross Sea. Amundsen himself said that “latitude makes every difference in this world” and never was this truer than of the Bay of Whales. Nearly one hundred years on, the Bay has shifted 10km further south and has become only a small indent in the coastline. From the deck of the ship it is the one soft point in a vast, steely coastline of ice cliffs.
There is no record of Framheim’s disappearance. As the Fram pulled out of the Bay of Whales in the late summer of 1912 the hut was lost in the fog. The minds of the men were on the journey to Hobart and the breaking of the news of the South Pole to the waiting world. By the time Admiral Byrd revisited the Bay of Whales 17 years had passed. There was no sign of the hut. At some stage in the intervening years the Ross Ice Shelf calved and Framheim was set free to dissolve like an explorer turning north.
After their departure from Framheim, the world would never be the same place for Amundsen or his men. They would gyrate off into their own orbits of financial ruin, suicide and mediocrity and never quite gain the sense of all that was real that had been shown to them at Framheim. Amundsen too was eclipsed by his desire to be a great explorer and his fixation on the North Pole; a love affair that proved terminal.
Amundsen’s book is wedged firmly in my bunk as I make for the low aft deck of the icebreaker. Along the ice edge of the Bay of Whales the wildlife throngs. Immediately inland, there is nothing but a vast, white desert. A flock of skuas take off, circle the ship and head south with a message from the living world.
One hundred years on, this moment has been lost in the greater glory of the heroic era of polar exploration. It hides in the heady 841 pages and two volumes of Amundsen’s book, The South Pole. The book is no longer in my local public library and can only be found in obscure second-hand bookstores. It chronicles the first, and only, overland return journey to the South Geographic Pole from the Ross Sea.
It’s a heavy read and is the only one I have taken on a trip to Antarctica. I read it in lengthy drafts during bad weather as the Southern Ocean extracts its payment from the old icebreaker on her long slide south from New Zealand.
Such was the nature of Amundsen that the entire first volume of his book was dedicated to his preparations. He had spent several years in the Arctic learning from the Inuit how to live and move on the ice. Interspersed amongst these practicalities was the political and financial trickery that Amundsen waged to get the expedition off the ground. To the credit of Amundsen’s political skill, he secured both the backing of the Norwegian Government and Fridtjof Nansen’s ship Fram on the basis of an expedition to the North Pole!
By the time the political ructions of Amundsen’s deception had died down in Norway, Amundsen was in the Ross Sea looking for a suitable base from which to strike out to the South Pole. He took a calculated risk and opted not for land, but for a section of the Ross Ice Shelf called the Bay of Whales. This bay gave easy access to the ice shelf and lay over 111km closer to the pole than the alternative Ross Island. The icescape of the bay is in a constant state of flux and like most of the Ross Ice Shelf it occasionally calves off large chunks. It was a typical Amundsen punt; intensely practical, but offering no permanent shrine to history.
Amundsen named his base Framheim and built a small prefabricated hut with a network of under-ice caves that served as workshops and storage areas over the long polar winter of 1911. Amundsen’s descriptions of this time are of the meticulous preparations of his men and of a hut full of glowing good cheer. This account of life at Framheim was as close as Amundsen was to get to the idea of home for the rest of his life.
Somewhere deep in volume 1 of Amundsen’s book there is a photo of their midwinter feast at Franheim. The men are jammed around the dining table politely addressing the intrusion of the camera. Amundsen sits quietly at the back. Unlike the rest of his team, failure to gain the South Pole was not an option for him; he had staked his entire reputation on it. On the trail, Amundsen was the will that moved them on, he led from the back, picking up the debris of gear the careering sleds dropped and leaving the route-finding to his more able men. At the back, he had time to think and indulge his fastidious mind on planning the next step.
Unlike most of the known world of the time, the South Pole did not have a physical presence; it was an abstract concoction of lines. Finding it needed the skill of a navigator. After traversing the continent for 57 days, Amundsen’s team spent four days taking sun sites and laying grids to make sure he had covered the likely position of the pole. The photos that Bjaaland took are simple statements of men in good trim, removing their hats and facing the icy wind that snapped at the Norwegian flag. Amundsen did not talk of the South Pole in the soft terms he saved for Framheim. He celebrated with cigars, filling his lungs with the warmth that was lacking in this desolate spot.
By the time I have chewed my way through most of Amundsen’s book the icebreaker is deep in the Ross Sea. Amundsen himself said that “latitude makes every difference in this world” and never was this truer than of the Bay of Whales. Nearly one hundred years on, the Bay has shifted 10km further south and has become only a small indent in the coastline. From the deck of the ship it is the one soft point in a vast, steely coastline of ice cliffs.
There is no record of Framheim’s disappearance. As the Fram pulled out of the Bay of Whales in the late summer of 1912 the hut was lost in the fog. The minds of the men were on the journey to Hobart and the breaking of the news of the South Pole to the waiting world. By the time Admiral Byrd revisited the Bay of Whales 17 years had passed. There was no sign of the hut. At some stage in the intervening years the Ross Ice Shelf calved and Framheim was set free to dissolve like an explorer turning north.
After their departure from Framheim, the world would never be the same place for Amundsen or his men. They would gyrate off into their own orbits of financial ruin, suicide and mediocrity and never quite gain the sense of all that was real that had been shown to them at Framheim. Amundsen too was eclipsed by his desire to be a great explorer and his fixation on the North Pole; a love affair that proved terminal.
Amundsen’s book is wedged firmly in my bunk as I make for the low aft deck of the icebreaker. Along the ice edge of the Bay of Whales the wildlife throngs. Immediately inland, there is nothing but a vast, white desert. A flock of skuas take off, circle the ship and head south with a message from the living world.
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