Nansen
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
FRIDTJOF, a Norwegian scientist and explorer; born in Great Fröen, near Christiania, Norway, Oct. 10, 1861. At the age of 19 he entered Christiania University, giving his attention there chiefly to biological in- 내 FRIDTJOF NANSEN vestigations, in the pursuit of which, in 1882, he made a voyage in a sealer to the North Atlantic sealing grounds, and in 1888 crossed the continent of Greenland, returning in 1889. Following 1884, he matured a plan for a polar journey, a vessel (the "Fram") was built, designed especially for encountering the drift ice, and on June 24, 1893, with a crew of 11 men, he set sail from Christiania for the polar regions-the design being to reach the North Pole by letting the ship get frozen into the ice N. of Siberia and drift with a current setting toward Greenland. They reached the New Siberian Islands in September, and in 1895 were in lat. 84° 4'. There, accompanied by Johansen, Nansen left the "Fram" in charge of his other companions and pushed across the ice to Franz-Josef Land, where he wintered. Here, on June 17, 1896, he met the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition, with which he returned to Vardö, having in his cruise penetrated to lat. 88°, circumnavigated the Nova Josef, and Spitzbergen archipelagoes, and Zembla, Franzand reached point a about 225 miles from the Pole. One week later the "Fram" reached Vardö. He was appointed Professor of Zoology in the University of Christiania. In 1919 he visited Russia for the Allied Council and prepared a report on conditions there. He wrote: "Across Greenland"; "Esquimaux Life"; "Farthest North" (1897); "Through Siberia, the Land of the Future" (1914).
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's caught Nansen in 1921 mid-career, noting only that he had lately "visited Russia for the Allied Council" — in fact that relief work became the rest of his life. Appointed the League of Nations' first High Commissioner for Refugees in 1921, he organised famine relief in Russia and created the "Nansen passport," an identity document that let stateless people travel; he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 and died at Lysaker on 13 May 1930. Later accounts also corrected the polar figures: Nansen and Johansen turned back at 86°14' N in April 1895, a record then, not the 88° given here, and the Pole was first reached decades afterwards. The Fram itself survives on land, housed in its own museum in Oslo — the city Collier's still called Christiania, renamed in 1925.
Written for this edition, 2026.