Farthest North, Volume 1 quotes

“A time will come in later years when the Ocean will unloose the bands of things, when the immeasurable earth will lie open, when seafarers will discover new countries, and Thule will no longer be the extreme point among the lands.”—Seneca.

Unseen and untrodden under their spotless mantle of ice the rigid polar regions slept the profound sleep of death from the earliest dawn of time.

Wrapped in his white shroud, the mighty giant stretched his clammy ice-limbs abroad, and dreamed his age-long dreams.

To what end? Was it to bring home the dead, as did Hermod when he rode after Baldur? No! It was simply to satisfy man’s thirst for knowledge. Nowhere, in truth, has knowledge been purchased at greater cost of privation and suffering.

But the spirit of mankind will never rest till every spot of these regions has been trodden by the foot of man, till every enigma has been solved.

Minute by minute, degree by degree, we have stolen forward, with painful effort. Slowly the day has approached; even now we are but in its early dawn; darkness still broods over vast tracts around the Pole.

Nowhere, in truth, has knowledge been purchased at greater cost of privation and suffering. But the spirit of mankind will never rest till every spot of these regions has been trodden by the foot of man, till every enigma has been solved.

Minute by minute, degree by degree, we have stolen forward, with painful effort.

Slowly the day has approached; even now we are but in its early dawn; darkness still broods over vast tracts around the Pole.

I believe that if we pay attention to the actually existent forces of nature, and seek to work with and not against them, we shall thus find the safest and easiest method of reaching the Pole.

It is useless, as previous expeditions have done, to work against the current; we should see if there is not a current we can work with.

The Jeannette expedition is the only one, in my opinion, that started on the right track, though it may have been unwittingly and unwillingly.

“We must, then, endeavor to ascertain if there are not other routes—and I believe there are.

I believe that if we pay attention to the actually existent forces of nature, and seek to work with and not against them, we shall thus find the safest and easiest method of reaching the Pole.

It is useless, as previous expeditions have done, to work against the current; we should see if there is not a current we can work with.

The eminent Arctic traveller, Admiral Sir Leopold M’Clintock, opened the discussion with the remark: “

I think I may say this is the most adventurous programme ever brought under the notice of the Royal Geographical Society.

” He allowed that the facts spoke in favor of the correctness of my theories, but was in a high degree doubtful whether my plan could be realized. He was especially of opinion that the danger of being crushed in the ice was too great.

Bow, stern, and keel—all were rounded off so that the ice should not be able to get a grip of her anywhere. For this reason, too, the keel was sunk in the planking, so that barely three inches protruded, and its edges were rounded.

The object was that “the whole craft should be able to slip like an eel out of the embraces of the ice.”

The hull was made pointed fore and aft, and somewhat resembles a pilot-boat, minus the keel and the sharp garboard strakes. Both ends were made specially strong.

A dull, gloomy day; and with it came the inevitable leave-taking. The door closed behind me. For the last time I left my home and went alone down the garden to the beach, where the Fram’s little petroleum launch pitilessly awaited me.

Behind me lay all I held dear in life. And what before me?

How many years would pass ere I should see it all again? What would I not have given at that moment to be able to turn back; but up at the window little Liv was sitting clapping her hands.

And what before me? How many years would pass ere I should see it all again? What would I not have given at that moment to be able to turn back; but up at the window little Liv was sitting clapping her hands.

Happy child, little do you know what life is—how strangely mingled and how full of change.

Like an arrow the little boat sped over Lysaker Bay, bearing me on the first stage of a journey on which life itself, if not more, was staked.

Yonder it lies on the point—the fjord sparkling in front, pine and fir woods around, a little smiling meadow-land and long wood-clad ridges behind. Through the glass one could descry a summer-clad figure by the bench under the fir-tree....

It was the darkest hour of the whole journey.

And now out into the fjord. It was rainy weather, and a feeling of melancholy seemed to brood over the familiar landscape with all its memories.

Here and there past homely little havens with houses around them set in smiling green trees! Ah! those snug homes in the lee of the skerries awake a longing for life and warmth in the breast.

You may shrug your shoulders as much as you like at the beauties of nature, but it is a fine thing for a people to have a fair land, be it never so poor.

Never did this seem clearer to me than now when I was leaving it.

Steamboats crowded with people came out from the towns we passed to greet us, and bid us God-speed on our way with music, songs, and cannon salutes. The great tourist steamboats dipped flags to us and fired salutes, and the smaller craft did the same.

It is embarrassing and oppressive to be the object of homage like this before anything has been accomplished.

There is an old saying:

How sad has been the separation! what longing, what yearning, await them in the coming years! And it is not for profit they do it. For honor and glory then? These may be scant enough.

It is the same thirst for achievement, the same craving to get beyond the limits of the known, which inspired this people in the Saga times that is stirring in them again to-day.

In spite of all our toil for subsistence, in spite of all our “peasant politics,” sheer utilitarianism is perhaps not so dominant among us, after all.

While the Fram was slowly and quietly working her way out to sea, towards our distant goal, I stood and watched the land gradually fading away on the horizon.

I wonder what will happen to her and to us before we again see Norway rising up over the sea?

But a fog soon came on and obscured everything.

Fog, and nothing but fog, wherever we turn our eyes. It condenses on the rigging and drips down on every tiniest spot on deck. It lodges on your clothes, and finally wets you through and through.

It settles down on the mind and spirits, and everything becomes one uniform gray.

First drift-ice. July 28, 1893

but a head-wind soon compelled us to beat up under steam and sail, which we went on doing for a couple of days, plunged in a world of fog.

Ugh! that endless, stubborn fog of the Arctic Sea!

When it lowers its curtain, and shuts out the blue above and the blue below, and everything becomes a damp gray mist, day in and day out, then all the vigor and elasticity of the soul is needed to save one from being stifled in …

Where he wills he pitches his tent, his reindeer around him; and at his will again he goes on his way. I almost envied him.

He has no goal to struggle towards, no anxieties to endure—he has merely to live!

I wellnigh wished that I could live his peaceful life, with wife and child, on these boundless, open plains, unfettered, happy.

Towards morning we drew near the Fram, passing two Samoyedes, who had drawn their boat up on an ice-floe and were looking out for seals. I wonder what they thought when they saw our tiny boat shoot by them without steam, sails, or oars.

We, at all events, looked down on these “poor savages” with the self-satisfied compassion of Europeans, as, comfortably seated, we dashed past them.

But pride comes before a fall! We had not gone far when—whir, whir, whir—a fearful racket! bits of broken steel springs whizzed past my ears, and the whole machine came to a dead stop. It was not to be moved either forward or backward.

I wonder what they thought when they saw our tiny boat shoot by them without steam, sails, or oars. We, at all events, looked down on these “poor savages” with the self-satisfied compassion of Europeans, as, comfortably seated, we dashed past them.

But pride comes before a fall!

We had not gone far when—whir, whir, whir—a fearful racket! bits of broken steel springs whizzed past my ears, and the whole machine came to a dead stop. It was not to be moved either forward or backward.

Sverdrup was now positive that we should be able to sail in open water all the way to the New Siberian Islands, so it was his opinion that there was no hurry for the present.

But hope is a frail reed to lean on, and my expectations were not quite so bright; so I hurried things on, to get away as soon as possible.

At the supper-table this evening King Oscar’s gold medal of merit was solemnly presented to Trontheim, in recognition of the great care with which he had executed his difficult commission, and the valuable assistance thereby rendered to the expedition.

While this was being done, last lines were added in feverish eagerness to the letters home. Then came a last hand-clasp; Christofersen and Trontheim got into the boat, and had soon disappeared in the fog.

With them went our last post; our last link with home was broken. We were alone in the mist on the sea.

It was not likely that any message from us would reach the world before we ourselves brought the news of our success or defeat. How much anxiety were those at home to suffer between now and then!

It was imperative to get on quickly, but there was no longer cover enough for me to advance on hands and knees. My only chance was to wriggle forward like a snake on my stomach. But in this soft clay—in the bed of the stream?

Yes—meat is too precious on board, and the beast of prey is too strong in a man.

My clothes must be sacrificed; on I crept on my stomach through the mud. But soon there was hardly cover enough even for this. I squeezed myself flat among the stones and ploughed forward like a drain-cutting machine.

As I went down again towards the shore I had the sea before me, quiet and beautiful. The sun had gone down behind it not long before, and the sky was glowing in the clear, light night. I had to stand still for a minute.

In the midst of all this beauty, man was doing the work of a beast of prey!

At this moment I saw to the north a dark speck move down the height where the mate and Hansen ought to be. It divided into two, and the one moved east, just to the windward of the animals I was to stalk.

and now they were right in front of me, within what I should have called easy range if it had been daylight. I tried to take aim, but could not see the bead on my gun.

Man’s fate is sometimes hard to bear.

My clothes were dripping with wet clay, and after what seemed to me most meritorious exertions, here I was at the goal, unable to take advantage of my position. But now the reindeer moved down into a small depression.

Is it because of the contrast with this poor, barren, sunless land of mists—without a tree, without a bush—nothing but stones and clay?

No peace in it either—nothing but an endless struggle to get north, always north, without a moment’s delay. Oh, how one yearns for a little careless happiness!

”

“Thursday, August 20th. Still foggy weather. New islands were observed on the way back. Sverdrup’s high land did not come to much. It turned out to be an island, and that a low one.

It is wonderful the way things loom up in the fog.

This reminded me of the story of the pilot at home in the Dröbak Channel. He suddenly saw land right in front, and gave the order, ‘Full speed astern!’ Then they approached carefully and found that it was half a baling-can floating in the water.”

Something special in the way of a toast was expected on such an occasion. I lifted my glass, and made the following speech: “

Skoal, my lads, and be glad we’ve passed Chelyuskin!

” Then there was some organ-playing, during which I went up into the crow’s-nest again, to have a last look at the land.

Now there was a pretty to do! Ten or twelve great weird faces glared upon us at once; the colossal creatures twisted themselves round with incredible celerity, and came waddling with lifted heads and hollow bellowings to the edge of the ice where we lay.

It was undeniably an imposing sight; but I laid my gun to my shoulder and fired at one of the biggest heads.

The animal staggered, and then fell head foremost into the water. Now a ball into another head; this creature fell too, but was able to fling itself into the sea.

Here and there are left a few waving streamers of light, vague as a foreboding—they are the dust from the aurora’s glittering cloak. But now it is growing again; new lightnings shoot up, and the endless game begins afresh.

And all the time this utter stillness, impressive as the symphony of infinitude.

I have never been able to grasp the fact that this earth will some day be spent and desolate and empty. To what end, in that case, all this beauty, with not a creature to rejoice in it? Now I begin to divine it.

Winter is rapidly approaching; there are 14½° of frost this evening, but we do not feel it cold. To-day’s observations unfortunately show no particular drift northward; according to them we are still in 78° 50′ north latitude. I wandered about over the floe towards evening.

Nothing more wonderfully beautiful can exist than the Arctic night. It is dreamland, painted in the imagination’s most delicate tints; it is color etherealized.

One shade melts into the other, so that you cannot tell where one ends and the other begins, and yet they are all there. No forms—it is all faint, dreamy color music, a far-away, long-drawn-out melody on muted strings.

It is dreamland, painted in the imagination’s most delicate tints; it is color etherealized. One shade melts into the other, so that you cannot tell where one ends and the other begins, and yet they are all there.

No forms—it is all faint, dreamy color music, a far-away, long-drawn-out melody on muted strings.

Is not all life’s beauty high, and delicate, and pure like this night? Give it brighter colors, and it is no longer so beautiful.

First you hear a sound like the thundering rumbling of an earthquake far away on the great waste; then you hear it in several places, always coming nearer and nearer.

The silent ice world re-echoes with thunders; nature’s giants are awakening to the battle.

The ice cracks on every side of you, and begins to pile itself up; and all of a sudden you too find yourself in the midst of the struggle. There are howlings and thunderings round you;

Thought follows thought—you pick the whole to pieces, and it seems so small—but high above all towers one form.... Why did you take this voyage?... Could I do otherwise?

Can the river arrest its course and run up hill?

My plan has come to nothing. That palace of theory which I reared, in pride and self-confidence, high above all silly objections has fallen like a house of cards at the first breath of wind.

Can the river arrest its course and run up hill? My plan has come to nothing. That palace of theory which I reared, in pride and self-confidence, high above all silly objections has fallen like a house of cards at the first breath of wind.

Build up the most ingenious theories and you may be sure of one thing—that fact will defy them all.

Was I so very sure? Yes, at times; but that was self-deception, intoxication. A secret doubt lurked behind all the reasoning. It seemed as though the longer I defended my theory, the nearer I came to doubting it.

“Thursday, November 30th. The lead showed a depth of exactly 83 fathoms (170 m.) to-day, and it seemed by the line as if we were drifting northwest. We are almost certainly farther north now; hopes are rising, and life is looking brighter again.

My spirits are like a pendulum, if one could imagine such an instrument giving all sorts of irregular swings backward and forward.

It is no good trying to take the thing philosophically; I cannot deny that the question whether we are to return successful or unsuccessful affects me very deeply.

The hard grains that come down now and again are nothing. Oh the beautiful white snow, falling so gently and silently, softening every hard outline with its sheltering purity! There is nothing more deliciously restful, soft, and white.

This snowless ice-plain is like a life without love—nothing to soften it.

The marks of all the battles and pressures of the ice stand forth just as when they were made, rugged and difficult to move among. Love is life’s snow.

This snowless ice-plain is like a life without love—nothing to soften it. The marks of all the battles and pressures of the ice stand forth just as when they were made, rugged and difficult to move among.

Love is life’s snow.

It falls deepest and softest into the gashes left by the fight—whiter and purer than snow itself. What is life without love?

“

Oh, how tired I am of thy cold beauty! I long to return to life.

Let me get home again, as conqueror or as beggar; what does that matter? But let me get home to begin life anew. The years are passing here, and what do they bring? Nothing but dust, dry dust, which the first wind blows away;

“

I am almost ashamed of the life we lead, with none of those darkly painted sufferings of the long winter night which are indispensable to a properly exciting Arctic expedition.

We shall have nothing to write about when we get home. I may say the same of my comrades as I have said for myself; they all look healthy, fat, in good condition; none of the traditional pale, hollow faces;

Every now and then I hear remarks expressive of perfect satisfaction with the life.

Truly the whole secret lies in arranging things sensibly, and especially in being careful about the food.

A thing that I believe has a good effect upon us is this living together in the one saloon, with everything in common. So far as I know, it is the first time that such a thing has been tried;

“But longing—oh, there are worse things than that! All that is good and beautiful may flourish in its shelter.

Everything would be over if we cease to long.

“But you fell off at the end, old year; you hardly carried us so far as you ought. Still you might have done worse; you have not been so bad, after all.

It is an easy life; nothing that weighs heavy on one, no letters, no newspapers, nothing disturbing; just that monastic, out-of-the-world existence that was my dream when I was younger and yearned for quietness in which to give myself up to my studies.

Longing, even when it is strong and sad, is not unhappiness.

A man has truly no right to be anything but happy when fate permits him to follow up his ideals, exempting him from the wearing strain of every-day cares, that he may with clearer vision strive towards a lofty goal.

This at once upsets all faith in the operation of a current; we find either none, or an extremely slight one; my only trust now is in the winds.

Columbus discovered America by means of a mistaken calculation, and even that not his own; heaven only knows where my mistake will lead us.

Only I repeat once more—the Siberian driftwood on the coast of Greenland cannot lie, and the way it went we must go.

Perhaps, if the truth were known, I am longing now more than ever. The only thing that helps me is writing, trying to express myself on these pages, and then looking at myself, as it were, from the outside.

Yes, man’s life is nothing but a succession of moods, half memory and half hope.

“Thursday, January 18th. The wind that began yesterday has gone on blowing all to-day with a velocity of 16 to 19 feet per second, from S.S.E., S.E., and E.S.E. It has no doubt helped us on a good way north;

When I was just a few paces from it, and preparing to shoot, it raised its head and I saw that it was a walrus, and that same moment it threw itself sideways into the water. There we stood.

To shoot at such a fellow with a revolver would be of as much use as squirting water at a goose.

The great black head showed again immediately in a strip of moonlight on the dark water.

It is extraordinary how little inured one gets to disappointments; the longing begins again; and again attainment seems so far off, so doubtful. And this though I dream at nights just now of getting out of the ice west of Iceland.

Hope is a rickety craft to trust one’s self to.

I had a long, successful drive with the dogs to-day.

Why dwell on such things just now? It will be many a long day before we can see all that again. We are going at the miserable pace of a snail, but not so surely as it goes.

We carry our house with us; but what we do one day is undone the next.

“Monday, February 26th. We are drifting northeast. A tremendous snow-storm is going on. The wind has at times a velocity of over 35 feet per second;

“

But I do not laugh at the winds; they are everything; they bend to no man’s will.

“But why always worry about the future? Why distress yourself as to whether you are drifting forward or backward? Why not carelessly let the days glide by like a peacefully flowing river?

“

It is unworthy of a man to set himself a task, and then give in when the brunt of the battle is upon him.

There is but one way, and that is Fram—forward.

It will be a goodly collection of observations that we shall take home with us from this region, with which we are now rather too well acquainted. The rest is, and remains, a mere matter of vanity. ‘

Love truth more, and victory less.

’

everywhere the same struggle for existence. So it ever is.

If we penetrate within even the hardest shell we come upon the pulsations of life, however thick the crust may be.

“I seem to be sitting here in solitude listening to the music of one of Nature’s mighty harp-strings.

but at other times, when the drift again bore southward—and that was often—my doubts would return, and it seemed as if there was no prospect of getting through within any reasonable time.

Truly such drifting in the ice is extremely trying to the mind; but there is one virtue it fosters, and that is patience.

The whole expedition was in reality one long course of training in this useful virtue.

For the rest, this is the first ice-bound expedition that has not spent the summer spying after open water, and sighing and longing for the ice to disperse. I only wish it may keep together, and hurry up and drift northward.

Everything in this life depends on what one has made up one’s mind to.

One person sets forth to sail in open water, perhaps to the very Pole, but gets stuck in the ice and laments; another is prepared to get stuck in the ice, but will not grumble even should he find open water.

One person sets forth to sail in open water, perhaps to the very Pole, but gets stuck in the ice and laments; another is prepared to get stuck in the ice, but will not grumble even should he find open water.

It is ever the safest plan to expect the least of life, for then one often gets the most.

”

It is more than true that it is ‘easy to live a life of battle’; but here there is neither storm nor battle, and I thirst after them. I long to enlist titanic forces and fight my way forward—that would be living!

But what pleasure is there in strength when there is nothing for it to do?

Here we drift forward, and here we drift back, and now we have been two months on the same spot.

“And these are small, one-celled lumps of viscous matter, teeming in thousands and millions, on nearly every single floe over the whole of this boundless sea, which we are apt to regard as the realm of death.

Mother Nature has a remarkable power of producing life everywhere—even this ice is a fruitful soil for her.

“In the evening a little variety occurred in our uneventful existence, Johansen having discovered a bear to the southeast of the ship, but out of range.

“Why is it that at times I complain of the loneliness?

With Nature around one, with one’s books and studies, one can never be quite alone.

“Thursday, August 16th. Yesterday evening, as I was lying in my berth reading, and all except the watch had turned in, I heard the report of a gun on deck over my head.

There they tumble over each other in a heap round her, sleep, yawn, eat, and pull each other’s tails.

It is a picture of home and peace here near the Pole which one could watch by the hour.

“Life goes its regular, even, uneventful way, quiet as the ice itself; and yet it is wonderful how quickly the time passes. The equinox has come, the nights are beginning to turn dark, and at noon the sun is only 9 degrees above the horizon.

for, to say the truth, we all of us dearly love the ship, as much as it is possible to love any impersonal thing. And why should we not love her?

No mother can give her young more warmth and safety under her wings than she affords to us.

She is indeed like a home to us.

Restless as it, they will wreathe the whole vault of heaven with their glittering, fleeting light, surpassing all else in their wild loveliness, fairer than even the blush of dawn; but, whirling idly through empty space, they bear no message of a coming day.

The sailor steers his course by a star.

Could you but concentrate yourselves, you too, O northern lights, might lend your aid to guide the wildered wanderer! But dance on, and let me enjoy you;

What would it profit even if we could say that it is an electric discharge or currents of electricity through the upper regions of the air, and were able to describe in minutest detail how it all came to be? It would be mere words.

We know no more what an electric current really is than what the aurora borealis is.

Happy is the child.... We, with all our views and theories, are not in the last analysis a hair’s-breadth nearer the truth than it.