Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was the first to stand on the South Pole and yet he has been relegated to the back pages of polar exploration, overshadowed by Captain Robert Falcon Scott.
Even though Amundsen was also the first to reach the North Pole and navigate the Northwest Passage, (also second to navigate the Northeast Passage but first to circumnavigate the North Polar basin) leading him to become a hero in his native Norway and in the U.S. as well, following his death on June 28, 1928, he slipped into obscurity, overshadowed by Scott simply because British writers have been the ones telling the story.
“He’s been sidelined because of that,” Stephen Bown, author of the recent The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen. “Scott died at the South Pole, so Scott’s story ended at the South Pole, so naturally they want to end it at the South Pole and there’s always just a few paragraphs about Amundsen.”
Leading the British Antarctica Expedition 1910, Scott reached the South Pole on Jan. 17, 1912, 34 days after Amundsen reached the pole. But where Amundsen and his expedition returned safely, Scott and his party died on the return trip.
Given that the Scott expedition ended in tragedy and that it was a national expedition, the story has since grown into a mythology.
“And a mythology evolves,” Bown said, “and the stories on the side become distorted to accommodate central themes of the mythology or they just get dropped, such as Amundsen. He’s often presented as the coarse and uncouth counterpart to the great, victorious Scott.
“I’m drawn to people whose reputation or legacy has been lost or misplaced or inaccurate because of distortions over the time. People who had a completely different reputation in their lifetime than they do know.”
And Amundsen is the perfect example.
While alive, Bown said, Amundsen was “enormously successful” and in the U.S. he was a household name. Once, for example, during a lecture tour when Amundsen had to cancel an appearance in Los Angeles, one of the L.A. newspapers reported that Amundsen had the flu and would be better in a few days. The New York Times also picked up the story.
“That was in the 1920s. That’s how famous he was.”
When Amundsen began experimenting with aircraft in the Arctic, Bown said a newspaper described one of his expeditions as the greatest sporting events in history.
Amundsen had his faults. He could be brash and intractable, but his strengths, however, were enormous and propelled him to great heights.
Amundsen was also an exceptional leader. While he established a hierarchy where he held the power, bringing no other men who could challenge his authority, he instead took great care to surround himself with competent men who excelled at particular tasks.
While Amundsen could hunt, ski, drive a dog sled and fly, he sought out men who were better at these tasks.
Amundsen also gave full credit to the Inuit of Gjoa Haven (named for his ship the Gjoa) where he stayed for three years, learning cold-weather survival skills.
“That’s where he learned everything needed to survive in the Arctic. He learned about dogs, he learned about sleds, how to build snow houses, how to eat foods so you don’t get scurvy and vitamin-D deficiency and how to make clothes so you don’t get frostbite. He learned all that in the Arctic.”
And yet, Bown said, accounts of South Pole exploration tend to present Amundsen as a “nasty, unhumorous person” instead of a humble man who readily admitted the Inuit were the ultimate polar survivors.
“If you wanted to succeed at the poles you had better learn from (the Inuit). That was an unusual attitude at the time,” Bown said.
Bown has since earned a spot on the 10-book longlist for British Columbia’s National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction with its $40,000 prize for his balanced and comprehensive biography of Amundsen. Finalists for that award will be announced Dec. 4.
And he’s been longlisted for good reason. Over his eight books Bown has established himself as an insightful historian and a masterful storyteller with an unending capacity to tease an interesting story from the historical ether.
During his research for The Last Viking he turned up over 400 newspaper articles, mostly from the New York Times that he “relied upon extensively to enliven his story and to enrich the understanding of his personality.”
The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen, published by D&M Publishers of Toronto, is available for $32.95.
