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00:08In the spring of 1892, a charismatic Norwegian explorer called Frithof Nansen announced a daring plan to venture into all
00:18this.
00:20The Arctic, unmapped and unconquered.
00:27At the top of the world, the ultimate goal, the North Pole.
00:33Few had even entered these icy wastes.
00:36Fewer still had returned.
00:40Nansen's dream to conquer the Pole was thought nothing short of suicidal.
00:51Frithof Nansen ignored his critics and embarked on the most extraordinary voyage in history.
00:58It would be an expedition of spectacular discoveries that would launch polar exploration into the modern era.
01:08But at the cost of extreme suffering and mental torture in the most hostile place on Earth.
01:39Little more than 100 years ago, this 16 million square kilometres of frozen sea
01:45was the last unknown on Earth.
01:55A dangerous fascination for the ominous blank on their maps
01:59had enticed a few daring explorers to venture into the barren ice.
02:08But up to now, all the attempts to penetrate the Arctic had resulted in either death
02:13or ships being destroyed in the crushing polar pack.
02:21Despite this, on the 24th of June, 1893, Nansen set sail from Oslo.
02:27A man obsessed.
02:32He was determined to fulfil the dream that fired his imagination to reach the North Pole
02:38and claim it for his country.
02:47He bade farewell to his beloved new wife, Ever, and their infant daughter, Liv.
02:54He promised he would return from his arctic odyssey a hero.
03:00The expedition would keep them apart for at least three years,
03:04possibly eight, but most thought forever.
03:09I thought everything was black.
03:12Within me, I was torn apart as if something would break.
03:18But nothing could deter his ambition.
03:33So, with a raggedy bunch of sailors, whalers, and sealers
03:38prepared to risk their lives with him,
03:41Nansen embarked on his epic voyage.
03:52At 31, Nansen was an eminent zoologist, a pioneering urologist, as well as an ambitious explorer.
04:00He had just made an epic crossing through the icy heart of Greenland.
04:05Now, with his outrageous attempt to conquer the Pole, he was risking everything.
04:13Nansen was convinced he could achieve the impossible, and he had a plan.
04:17A plan that was bold and brave, but most people thought plain balmy.
04:25Ironically, Nansen's theory on reaching the North Pole was inspired by a tragic shipwreck and the loss of 18 men.
04:33In 1879, the U.S. Arctic exploration ship, Jeanette, had made a bid for the Pole.
04:40But the ship was crushed by the freezing ice cap and trapped in the northeastern Arctic.
04:48When the wreckage was found, over two years later, it was on the opposite side of the polar ice, in
04:54the west.
04:57Nansen's theory was that the wreck had been carried to 4,000 kilometres by the drift of the floating ice
05:03cap.
05:04His audacious adventure was born.
05:09My plan for the North Pole is to sail in ice-free water as far as possible,
05:15then go into the ice until we are beset and frozen in, then drift towards the pole.
05:24Nansen, as he'd done for much of his life, was turning a reigning concept completely on its head,
05:30and he was about to intentionally confront the polar explorer's worst nightmare.
05:36He was going to freeze the fram into the polar pack,
05:40the same ice that wrecked the Jeanette and many ships before her.
05:44At best, it was considered a ludicrous idea, as this little ditty in the punch shows.
05:51So, Dr. Fridof Nansen's off, sinks with chuckle and pessimist scoff.
05:56What a noodle, that Norway chap, to drift to the pole to complete our map.
06:03Even in Norway, scorn was poured over Nansen's idea of deliberately freezing into the ice cap.
06:10Few academics would sign up for what most thought was a doomed expedition.
06:15One able and willing candidate did apply, a fellow explorer called Frederick George Jackson.
06:22But he had to be very politely turned down, because he was English.
06:25And as far as Nansen was concerned, this expedition was for the honour of his homeland.
06:30For Norwegians to claim for Norway, the last great unexplored region in the world.
06:54To start with, everything depended on getting to the northeast side of the polar ice pack.
07:00But after six weeks at sea, they were desperately struggling to make headway.
07:05It was as if the ship was being held back by a kind of strange force.
07:12Nansen was baffled.
07:15Back then, there were no instruments for sampling underwater.
07:19So in the workshop on board ship, Nansen designed and built his own.
07:25And the very one he made survives to this day.
07:28Can you believe it?
07:30And who better to tell us how it works at OLA from the Nansen Institute in Bergen?
07:34So, come on then, mate.
07:35How does it work?
07:36Okay, you know, this is a device which you can bring up water from great depth.
07:41You send a messenger down the cable, and the messenger hit like that.
07:46And it turns around, and you see, now it's closed.
07:51And now the water from, say, 3,000 metres sits in here.
07:54Can we use it?
07:55Yes, absolutely.
07:56Come on then, what are we doing?
07:57Let this bit.
07:58First, we have to screw this up here.
08:01A bit of a slack car, yeah.
08:05Very good.
08:06Now we're going to put the messenger, so it turns to pick the water amp, okay?
08:13That's blooming clever.
08:15Okay, Paul, give me the bottle, you know, because now, and open it up, we'll do this again.
08:20There's no water in there.
08:21Yes.
08:21Yeah, there is, look.
08:22Here it comes, you see?
08:23With this sample, you can determine the salinity of the water.
08:27And Nansen discovered that it was a very fresh layer, really fresh layer, for example, caused by ice melting.
08:35Fresh layer on top of the salt water.
08:38The water is so fresh that you can even drink it.
08:41Wow.
08:43Fresh water was not something anyone expected in the middle of the Russian Kara Sea.
08:51Nansen realised it was the outflows from the Siberian rivers and the melting glaciers they were passing.
08:58This layer of fresh water, sitting on salt water, was causing a kind of extra underwater wake, gripping the ship
09:06while she tried to make headway.
09:09The strange layers that Nansen discovered are now known as dead water, and they're marked on the charts up here
09:15so we can avoid them.
09:17With his newfound knowledge, Nansen steered a course away from the river run-offs to the northeast, but into more
09:25trouble.
09:32Already delayed by the dead water, Nansen needed to push further north before being frozen in.
09:40But the winter ice was forming a month early.
09:45The sea was freezing around him, too soon.
09:49The sea was freezing around him, too soon.
09:51The sea was freezing around him, too soon.
10:03Finally, on the 22nd of September, 1893, Nansen crossed the 78th parallel of latitude into uncharted territory.
10:15Now we are entering the absolutely unknown, here all charts stop, and now our real voyage of discovery begins.
10:26They were now in the mysterious polar realm, with no support, no communication, and no means of rescue.
10:34Nansen and his men were off the map.
10:37It was time to party.
10:51Nansen joined everyone round the table in the saloon and drank hot punch.
10:56This proved what the moment meant, as under his regime, alcohol was a rarity.
11:02Navigator Scott Hansen summed it up.
11:07A party that begins at 4am in the morning, at the northernmost tip of the known world, belongs
11:13to the rare events of a man's life, and must be absolutely classed as a success.
11:35Nansen had navigated the ship through the closing ice flows as far north as he could go.
11:42They were now at the mercy of the polar pack ice.
11:48When the Arctic Ocean freezes in winter, the sea ice can get to be almost 50 metres thick.
11:53This groaning mass has a potential crushing pressure of 500 kilograms per square centimetre.
12:03Now the entire bid for the pole depended on this small ship, surviving the huge pressure of the closing ice.
12:12For Nansen, it was the moment of truth.
12:15His tiny wooden vessel and his dreams would be tested to their limits.
12:26Nansen called his eccentric creation Fran, meaning forward, and she was truly a ship like no other.
12:33His wild idea was that the unusual curved sides and rounded bilges would stop the ice from getting a grip
12:39on her.
12:39And his theory was that being egg-shaped, she would slowly rise up under the crushing pressure of the freezing
12:46ice,
12:47and end up sitting on top of the frozen sea.
12:52Nansen wasn't an engineer, but he'd done his research, and he had a good innate feel for design.
12:58Stuff that works. And on his side, he had Norway's best ship designer.
13:04Together, they hoped to create a ship that would rise up above the incoming pressure of the ice.
13:10A bit like this.
13:12As the ice comes in, it's a huge amount of pressure, and unless it's right,
13:17the ship's going to break under that pressure and sink.
13:20But in this case, this is what they hoped to do.
13:25Well, Nansen's theory was all well and good, but there was no way it could be tested on a full
13:29-size ship.
13:30Except out in the unforgiving Arctic ice.
13:38As the ice pushed in against the hull, Fram was facing her greatest test.
13:48For Nansen and his crew, there was little they could do but wait.
13:53And Fram's timbers moaned and creaked as the pressure on them grew.
14:00Now, we are in the very midst of what the prophets would have had us dread so much.
14:07The ice is pressing and packing around us with a noise like thunder.
14:21It took the whole of October for the sea to completely freeze around the ship.
14:26And by the 25th, when the sun dipped below the horizon for the last time,
14:31the wretched sound of the timbers creaking became just too much.
14:39Terrified, the men abandoned ship.
14:42From the surrounding ice flow, they stood and watched.
14:47The ship trembles and jumps up.
14:50She allowed the ice to move beneath her and lifted a little.
14:59There's no movie footage of Nansen's bid for the pole,
15:02but it was documented with still photographs.
15:05These extraordinary images capture the moment the ship, intact and undamaged,
15:12rose up out of the ice.
15:16It had worked.
15:18This egg-shaped hull had resisted the crushing forces.
15:21And rather than get trapped in the ice,
15:24the 800-ton ship had been lifted up and was sitting on top of the sea ice.
15:29And just as Nansen had promised, Fran was demonstrating
15:32she was the toughest wooden ship ever built.
15:37Now we're in the front of the ship.
15:40Wow.
15:41With all the...
15:42Absolutely massive.
15:43All the thick beams and all of them are joined together by knees
15:48from Norwegian pine trees.
15:50Okay, which are the knees? Which bits are the knees?
15:52It's alright to get up there.
15:54Oh, yeah, these things.
15:55Instead of using metal, they used the root and the stem of a tree in one piece.
16:00Oh, so it's upside down.
16:01This is the trunk.
16:02Exactly.
16:03And this is the root.
16:04And it's obviously massively strong.
16:06Yeah.
16:06Strongest piece of the tree and also very flexible.
16:10And how many of them are on board?
16:11Because they seem to be every couple of feet.
16:13They used 400 trees for the ship.
16:16So these knees themselves look massive.
16:18But how thick is the hull here, do you think?
16:20On the sides, it's 80 centimetres, about this wing.
16:26Three layers of wood.
16:27And the front is also three massive beams.
16:31One in front of the others, making 1.25 metres.
16:35So this hull, right here, is that thick?
16:39Yeah, 80 centimetres on the side and 1.25 in the front.
16:43Every effort was made to make the hull as smooth as possible.
16:47So even the nails was pushed hard in,
16:50so that the ice couldn't grip in the nail.
16:53And also, there's no keel.
16:55The keel is inside of the ship, with only two inches pointing out.
16:59So that the ice could not grip the keel
17:02if the ice was pushed under the boat and then tip it.
17:06So with this extremely smooth hull,
17:09it's so that the ice can't get any grip at all?
17:11Yeah, everything, even the rudder and the propeller,
17:13can be pulled up when the ice came.
17:16But it seems obvious that the trade-off for that
17:18is that she would have been really lively at sea.
17:20Exactly, she'd float like a cork on top of the waves.
17:24And all the diaries talk about massive seasickness.
17:28One of the crew members said that first they're worried about dying
17:32and then about not dying soon enough.
17:35For all the fram's strength and weight,
17:40she was still a small ship, just 39 metres long,
17:4411 metres wide and a 5 metre draught.
17:48Compared to the unforgiving polar ice cap,
17:51she was just a speck of dust.
18:06The ship was now part of the Arctic ice.
18:10If Nansen's theory was correct,
18:12she would drift across the top of the world,
18:15over the North Pole.
18:22Inside, 13 men would have to endure the cold and dark,
18:28imprisoned in the tiny vessel for more than three years.
18:36The fram was now over 2,000 kilometres from civilisation.
18:41She'd vanished from the world.
18:42And for those on board, the world had vanished from them.
18:46And the dangers now changed from being physical to mental.
18:53It was a very real threat.
18:55Polar expeditions in the past had founded as the isolation of the Arctic,
19:00pushed men into insanity, mutiny, even cannibalism.
19:06And Nansen's crew now faced years alone in the Arctic,
19:10in a tiny vessel trapped in the ice.
19:15So he drew up a rigorous schedule to try and occupy the men.
19:20Scientific observations, surveying and maintenance
19:22were top of the exhaustive list.
19:26The working day would begin at 8am sharp,
19:29with monitoring, experiments and repairs filling every hour
19:32until dinner at 6pm.
19:36The crew were then allowed the evenings to themselves.
19:44Nansen had also figured out when he was crossing Greenland
19:46that variety in the diet is exceptional for morale.
19:50Up till then, monotonous diets on expeditions were legendary.
19:54So Nansen personally supervised the sterilising
19:57and canning or freeze drying of 52 varieties
20:01of meat, fish, vegetables, potatoes, pâtés and fruit.
20:07And best of all, he brought along plenty of this.
20:10Chocolate!
20:15In fact, Cadbury sponsored the expedition.
20:18At every moment of importance or anything worth noting,
20:21out would come the chocolate.
20:30But being so far inside the Arctic Circle created an extra challenge.
20:35The disorientation and depression caused by five winter months
20:41of constant darkness.
20:43Ever the innovator, Nansen installed a windmill
20:47to generate electricity
20:48and used the newfangled light bulbs to create an artificial day.
20:57And an organ for evening renditions
21:01lifted the spirits during the never-ending night.
21:15It was Nansen himself who began to suffer.
21:20The loneliness and tedium prompted wild mood swings.
21:28He is an odd character.
21:29Sometimes serious, scientific and aggressive in discussions.
21:34And then one fine day, extravagantly cheerful and pleasant,
21:38almost to the point of puerility.
21:43Nansen became surly, depressed and ranted
21:47at the futility of his expedition.
21:51And even sometimes, his own life.
21:57Here I am among the drifting ice flows in the great silence.
22:02I stare up at the eternal courses of the stars.
22:07Thought follows thought.
22:09Everything is picked to pieces
22:11and becomes miserably small and worthless.
22:16As leader, Nansen was unable to confide his feelings.
22:21He'd missed the companionship of his wife, Ever.
22:32Nansen had now been away for six months
22:34and Ever was distracting herself by pursuing another love.
22:41Singing.
22:45She would rehearse regularly with the aim of turning professional
22:48and touring in the spring.
22:51This was their first winter apart
22:54and on the 8th of January,
22:56Nansen missed the first birthday of their daughter, Liv.
23:05Nansen's diary entry on that special day
23:07records his thoughts as they turned to his little Liv.
23:14A good day to you on this your day, little Liv.
23:18Perhaps Liv's day will be the start of our luck
23:21in our northward drift under your star.
23:27But Nansen's hopes would soon turn to despair.
23:33Star sightings to check his northward drift towards the pole
23:38revealed a disaster.
23:41Over the last six months,
23:42the path of the Fram was erratic,
23:44to say the least.
23:46The ice they were stuck in
23:47was going backwards,
23:49sideways,
23:50and occasionally, if they were lucky,
23:53north.
23:54Basically, they'd only travelled
23:56111 kilometres towards the North Pole.
24:02Nansen had calculated that the prevailing wind
24:05and a predictable current
24:06would carry his ship directly to the pole.
24:09This news was a terrible blow.
24:13During a routine series of underwater soundings,
24:16he made an extraordinary discovery that explained everything.
24:21At the time, it was assumed there was a shallow sea beneath the polar ice.
24:26But when Nansen took depth soundings, he was astonished by the results.
24:34The cable, lowered through a hole in the ice, touched the bottom at 1,860 fathoms.
24:41That's almost four and a half kilometres.
24:51In an extraordinary breakthrough, Nansen had discovered over 63 million cubic kilometres of previously unknown deep sea.
25:01A massive new ocean.
25:03The Arctic Ocean.
25:07And it was the strange currents in this deep ocean that was skewing his drift to the pole.
25:14When he was here, he was noticing that, compared to the wind, he wasn't drifting as he expected to drift.
25:22That is correct.
25:24He expected to kind of drift in the same direction as the wind,
25:28but measurements show that he was drifted to the right of the wind.
25:34Always to the right?
25:36Always to the right.
25:38Always to the right.
25:38Roughly with 30 degrees to the right.
25:40Oh, wow.
25:40That's a lot.
25:41It's a lot, yes.
25:42But then he also postulated that when you went down into the deeper part of the ocean,
25:49one layer dragged the other so the current was turning.
25:54And then he started to think, what about earth rotation?
25:58And then it came the idea that it must be, the deflection to the right must be caused by the
26:06earth rotation.
26:08And this was one of the first time a scientist really looked at how earth rotation was affecting the current.
26:19And it seems even more unbelievable to me that he figured it out while he was locked into the ice,
26:25stuck on the frown.
26:26Well, maybe he had time to think.
26:35It was an amazing discovery that the earth's rotation affected current, but it was a cruel blow for Nansen.
26:43He now realized the drift would not take the fram over the North Pole after all.
26:50His voyage of discovery had failed.
26:54If the ice ever released him, he would be returning home empty handed.
27:01Nansen was devastated, but his obsession would not die.
27:09On the 16th of November, he gathered the crew together to make a remarkable announcement.
27:22Nansen had an extraordinary new plan.
27:31To leave the ship and ski the remaining 600 kilometres to the pole.
27:42His crew were horrified.
27:47To stand any chance of success, he proposed to travel swift and light.
27:54He would take only one other personal.
27:58First mate, Frederick Yalmar Johansson.
28:02Johansson was a world-class gymnast, and also the fastest skier Nansen knew.
28:13This was Nansen's biggest gamble to date.
28:17It was only 30 years since the British Navy's Sir John Franklin, along with all his 134 men, had perished,
28:25whilst battling the brutal open Arctic.
28:29Nansen's new action plan was ambitious by any measure, with provisions for just 100 days.
28:35He calculated he could get to the North Pole and back to land.
28:39He'd have to face the whole unmapped polar pack, and temperatures often below, minus 45.
28:49Nansen used the dogs and sledges from the fram.
28:53They'd been brought up in case the fram was crushed in the ice, and had had to abandon ship.
28:58But now Nansen figured the fram was safe in her icy cradle.
29:05So, with the dogs in harness, Nansen was ready to start the most risky journey of his life.
29:12To conquer the top of the world, in his own, unique style.
29:18Sure, sure, fram, fram, fram, sure, sure, sure.
29:21Fram, fram, fram, sure, sure, sure.
29:24Fram, fram, fram, sure, sure, sure, sure.
29:28Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
29:55It was now almost two years since Nansen had set sail.
30:00Eva was becoming a success, her reputation as a singer growing all over Europe.
30:07She had no idea that her beloved had now left the relative safety of the fram
30:12and was risking everything in his dash for the pole.
30:16At first, everything went well.
30:33Nansen was getting into his stride, thanks to a brilliant range of innovations
30:37that kept him on the move and still work for us explorers today.
30:42It was the first time that dogs and men had worked together in the polar regions
30:47and to Nansen's joy, it was a perfect match.
30:55In eight days away from the fram, he had covered 105 kilometres
31:00and was now averaging over 13 kilometres a day towards the pole.
31:06But it was still tough going and the physical exertion would really have taken its toll
31:11were it not for a small but simple device that Nansen had spotted and decided to try out.
31:21It was a prototype stove called the Primus
31:24and Nansen immediately saw its potential to combat the dreaded arctic thirst.
31:33Strenuous exercise in dry polar air causes extreme water loss.
31:38You can lose over four litres of liquid a day, all of which needs to be replaced.
31:47Eating a bit of snow for refreshment tastes great.
31:51But it's very dangerous, it chills the central core of your body.
31:54The trick is to melt the snow and that takes a tonne of fuel.
32:00The Primus
32:05uses pressurised fuel
32:08and a clever preheating mechanism
32:12so that you burn vaporised fuel.
32:15It produces a really clean, soot-free, super hot flame.
32:21In fact, I've heard it in the old days,
32:24these original Primus stoves were used by Scandinavian women in the marketplace
32:28and they put them under their dresses to keep warm.
32:32With the fuel-efficient Primus, Nansen avoided the dangerous dehydration of arctic thirst,
32:39so he travelled light and fast, melting as much snow as he needed,
32:44going twice as far on half the fuel.
32:47Yes, come on, come on, come on, come on!
32:52By the third week into the trek for the pole, Nansen was truly pushing hard.
33:00And his remarkable talent for invention served him well.
33:04He had come up with a whole new way to allow him to travel fast over the ice.
33:11Cross-country skis.
33:15These are the very skis that he used?
33:17Yes, they are our cultural heritage.
33:22Oh, that's fantastic. It's light.
33:24Yes, it's lovely.
33:25I've got skis shorter than this that are a lot heavier, even now.
33:28I find it really interesting that he went to do the North Pole with just wood.
33:33He didn't take skis, he built skis on the way.
33:35Yes, and they had to use skis for exercising.
33:39They were very fat, so Nansen ordered his crew going around the ski to lose some weight also.
33:46And I can see it's not built for turning.
33:47I mean, there's no side cut at all or waist.
33:51It's just completely parallel.
33:53They are parallel and then they are pointed at both ends.
33:58Oh, I see, there is.
33:59Also very practical, you can see also.
34:01So the tail, the tail is cut away, isn't it?
34:04Yes, so it's lighter, more elegant and in the worst case, if one end, this end for example,
34:12broke, you can just also turn the ski and continue.
34:17And they're just incredibly designed for one single purpose.
34:21Yes.
34:21Going in a long straight line using the smallest amount of energy as possible.
34:37Inventing a new energetic style of skiing brought a fresh challenge for Nansen, overheating.
34:59Nansen's ideas were inspired by a weatherproof woolen material created by Dr. Jaeger of Germany and a ground-breaking, breathable,
35:10windproof material called Burberry cloth.
35:13And this was manufactured in a factory in Basingstoke, England.
35:18And this layer principle was an inspired idea by Nansen.
35:22It meant he could travel in the cold and across the snow and ice at the very limits of human
35:27endurance.
35:28These days, we use the layer principle without even thinking about it.
35:33But it's all thanks to Nansen.
35:44After one month on the ice, they were halfway to the pole, but conditions were worsening.
35:52Even with all Nansen's ingenuity, the extreme environment was now punishing their bodies.
36:00At minus 45 degrees Celsius, skin will freeze within seconds.
36:08Tuesday, minus 45.
36:11We don't sleep at all because of the cold.
36:14We work a lot and suffer much.
36:17My God.
36:18Icy sleeping bags, heavy loads, but onward we must go.
36:23My fingers are all destroyed.
36:25All mittens are frozen stiff.
36:28It is becoming worse and worse.
36:30God alone knows what will happen to us.
36:33It's not pleasant to be a human being here.
36:36There must surely be an end to it.
36:43The problem were these hellish contortions in the pack ice.
36:46There's nothing worse for a polar traveller.
36:49And up here in the Arctic, the constant movement of the sea buckles and shatters the frozen surface
36:55and forces it into thousands of hummocks and these big pressure ridges.
37:00Some of them can be 10 metres high, making them completely insurmountable.
37:10And now the dogs were also suffering, as Nansen recorded.
37:15The dogs are becoming almost impossible to drive ahead, the more tanglements and other devilments
37:21that appear in them.
37:38In the growing chaos, the lead dog team fell into a crack in the sea ice
37:43and had to be pulled out of the water one by one.
37:46A sledge had gone in as well and had to be manhauled out.
37:51The mood darkened even more when they had to begin slaughtering some of the dogs to feed the others.
37:58And although they'd planned this, it felt like murder and depressed them immensely.
38:04But on they went.
38:25After battling the ice for five weeks, their pace was slowing.
38:30The past 12 days had only achieved 75 kilometres.
38:36They were running out of time and supplies.
38:49Nansen also had a sense of unease.
38:51Something else wasn't right with their progress.
38:55So he stopped to take a precise star fix.
39:01The results came as a terrible shock.
39:04They showed that the last 75 tortuous kilometres hadn't gotten any closer to their goal.
39:11Nansen was distraught as he realised that the ice was playing a terrible trick.
39:16As they hauled northwards, the whole of the pack ice was drifting southwards.
39:21It was as if they were on a giant running machine.
39:23They were almost going backwards.
39:26It was a gut-wrenching blow.
39:33After 175 kilometres of painfully hard slog since they'd left the Fran,
39:38Nansen, frozen, exhausted and utterly demoralised, reflected on the note Ever had written in his diary.
39:48My beloved boy, God grant that health, happiness and good luck will follow you.
39:57Nansen?
39:57The ice is growing worse and worse.
39:59Yesterday it brought me to the brink of despair.
40:02We have advanced hardly a mile.
40:05There seems little sense in carrying on any longer.
40:08We sacrificed the precious days for too little.
40:14Nansen's North Pole ambition was over.
40:29It was time to turn back.
40:32They got further north than anyone before them.
40:34But the North Pole was out of reach.
40:38They were exhausted, conditions were worsening and their rations were dangerously low.
40:45Nansen knew in the shifting ice he could never find the fram again.
40:51Now his challenge was not reaching the pole, but surviving.
41:12A month after turning and heading south for land,
41:15the sun was rising higher in the sky
41:18and the sea ice was melting under them.
41:23Having turned, they were searching for a glimpse of land that might help them get their bearings.
41:32By late May, Nansen was becoming more and more disorientated.
41:37Both their watches had stopped, which meant that they completely lost track of time.
41:42And Nansen was navigating by guesswork.
41:46All he had was the sun, his compass and this hand-drawn map.
41:52But what he didn't know was the map was wrong.
41:56It looked as if they were tantalizingly close to a large group of islands.
42:01But as it was, they were searching for some phantom land.
42:19After a hundred days, the maximum Nansen had allowed, they'd completely run out of provisions.
42:26The two dogs that were left were no use to them, because from now on, they would have to kayak.
42:33Out of compassion, they agreed to each shoot each other's dogs.
42:37And they used two precious bullets to dispatch them quickly.
42:41And they used the dog's blood to moisten the last of the dry dregs of the meat paste.
42:55Still pressing south, and now four and a half months away from the fram, the terrain began to change.
43:03Now desperately hungry, the starving men shot everything possible.
43:09Seagulls, seals, evil walruses were now in their sights.
43:16Despite the huge body and deformed appearance, there was something gently pleading and helpless in the round eyes.
43:23It seemed mostly like murder.
43:29I put an end to it with a bullet behind the ear, but those eyes pursue me even now.
43:41After another two weeks, they were exhausted, and the struggle was unrelenting.
43:46Now winter was closing in, making travel impossible.
43:52In the dying rays of the brief Arctic summer, their hope also faded.
43:58They battled aimlessly south, making little headway in the closing ice.
44:04Temperatures were plummeting.
44:08Against all the odds, they had crossed 480 kilometres of the unforgiving polar wastes.
44:15But now they were spent.
44:17It would be foolish to proceed.
44:20In desperation, they prepared for another Arctic winter at the mercy of the ice.
44:32In the early 1990s, one of the most extraordinary sites in the history of polar exploration was unearthed.
44:40When it was first discovered, all that remained was a shallow, scraped hole.
44:45Some used gun cartridges and a scattering of bones.
44:48And it was all that remained of Nansen's most unwelcome adventure.
44:54So it's here in the high Arctic where they built this winter cabin.
44:59Yeah, cabin or cabin, a hole in the ground, or even more so, a hole in the permafrost.
45:04Because you have to remember, the ground is frozen from about, in some of the top 30 centimetre defrosts.
45:10And from there down to 600 metres, it's frozen ice.
45:12And there's basically a log above a small hole in the ground.
45:18They dug a hole into the permafrost, laid a single driftwood log across the top.
45:23The walrus that they'd killed for food, they put the hides from over top with rocks holding down the hide
45:29and they crawled in this hole in the ground.
45:31Wow.
45:32Definitely not a cabin.
45:33They then started sharing the same sleeping bag to stay warm.
45:38They burnt the walrus blubber for lighting, because you have to remember that area,
45:43it's four and a half months to five months of total darkness throughout the winter.
45:46And they would have laid in the cabin for that winter in nearly a state of hibernation.
45:55All that was keeping Nansen alive were the survival techniques he'd learnt from the Inuit in Greenland.
46:04I live their life, I eat their food.
46:08I learn to appreciate the inventions the Eskimos have made to secure life's necessities.
46:21The men were just surviving.
46:24They did little and spoke less, holding on to the last flames of optimism.
46:33It is miserable.
46:35One feels bitter and depressed.
46:38Monotony has told on both of us and we both have our dark moments.
46:43If we did not have the certainty of returning to the world, this existence would be unbearable.
46:55Back in Oslo, three years had passed with no word of the expedition.
47:02But Eva refused to give up hope.
47:06Together, she and Liv faced their third Christmas alone.
47:14Most people had given Nansen up for lost.
47:17Others believed he was already dead.
47:20In your life, with the paradise strength,
47:27And what you see from us,
47:31You are dead.
47:47Incredibly, they had survived.
47:50Although buried alive in their hole in the ground,
47:53Nansen and Johansen also marked Christmas,
47:56In their own special way.
47:58To celebrate, Johansen turned his grease ridden shirt inside out.
48:03And Nansen changed his underpants for the first time that year.
48:13As the dead of winter passed,
48:16A scattering of life slowly returned to the frozen wastes.
48:23They managed to kill a lot of walrus on the beach straight down from where they built the hole in
48:27the ground.
48:29And they put all that meat as a stash right next to their cabin, if you like to call it.
48:36And then, of course, the bears started coming.
48:38So then they started just shooting the bears as they come.
48:41And they couldn't eat the food faster than they managed to replenish.
48:44And so I noticed you're wearing a gun.
48:46Is that for the same reason?
48:47We've got the gun because a bear could pop up anywhere.
49:02After eight months of total isolation, the men broke from their dark, cold, stony prison to struggle south again.
49:11They were still hopelessly disorientated.
49:17The islands Nansen hoped he was heading for were in fact over 800 kilometres away, an impossible distance to kayak.
49:28Nansen could not know this, so with blind faith and little choice, they went on.
49:44For over a month, they'd skied, clambered and kayaked over the unforgiving terrain.
49:50At last, they reached some open water, so they rigged their two kayaks together, kind of a catamaran style, rigged
49:57up a sail and carried on.
50:00It worked great until they went ashore to stretch their tired bodies.
50:04A wind came up, caught the craft and it began to drift away.
50:10On board was their food, clothing, ammunition, everything on which their lives depended.
50:16And of course, it would have been complete madness for either one of them to have jumped in the icy
50:20water after it.
50:29The water was icy cold and it was exhausting to swim with clothes on.
50:34The kayaks drifted further and further away.
50:37It seemed more than doubtful whether I would manage it.
50:41But there drifted all our hope.
50:43If only I could hold out, we were saved.
50:46So I forced myself on.
50:48At long last, I could stretch out my hand and grasp the ski that lay across the kayaks.
50:58Nansen was numb with cold and soaked through.
51:02I never could have done this if I hadn't had a safety backup team.
51:06But Nansen had saved their provisions.
51:09He'd saved their lives.
51:11He'd saved the expedition.
51:18It was the luckiest of escapes.
51:21But if you thought that was lucky, what was about to be fallen beggars belief.
51:29They were about to experience one of the most extraordinary and fortuitous coincidences in the history of exploration.
51:40Over 15 months since Nansen had walked away from the relative comfort of the fram,
51:45and nearly a year since his provisions ran out,
51:49in the middle of nowhere, lost, on an unknown arctic island, he heard the distant sounds of dogs barking.
52:01Suddenly I was certain that I heard a strange voice.
52:05The first for three years.
52:11Behind that single human voice, in the middle of this wilderness of ice,
52:15lay home and she who was waiting at home for me.
52:30Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello!
52:36I waved my hat. He did the same.
52:47I came closer and believed that I recognized Mr. Jackson.
52:56How do you do?
52:57How do you do?
52:58How do you do?
53:00Aren't you Nansen?
53:01Yes, yes, I am.
53:03The man in black was a fellow explorer, the Englishman Frederick George Jackson,
53:09who Nansen had turned down for the voyage over three years before.
53:14Undaunted, he'd organized his own expedition, but he'd been misled by the very same bad map as Nansen.
53:22There was one crucial difference between the two men's predicament.
53:26Jackson had a ship and knew the way home.
53:32By Jove, I'm glad to see you.
53:34I'm glad to see you too.
53:36It was a bittersweet moment.
53:39Nansen's ordeal was over.
53:41But he was returning home with his dreams of conquering the North Pole for Norway in tatters.
54:02In a final coincidence, on the 19th of May, exactly the same day that Nansen and Johansen
54:09left their winter lair, the Fram at last broke free from the ice.
54:14And she sailed here to the most northerly inhabited place on earth, the islands of Svalbard in the high arctic.
54:22And from a telegraph station that was just over there,
54:25they sent the first message for over three and a half years to say they were safe.
54:52In an emotional reunion, Nansen rejoined the rest of the Fram crew for the final leg.
54:58And they fought back tears of joy as they sailed south for home.
55:02They were re-entering the land of the living.
55:07And not only had Nansen survived over three years in the arctic wastes,
55:10he'd come home.
55:40of the family.
55:41The family
56:07Transcription by CastingWords
56:17Although the expedition never achieved its goal,
56:20Nansen's legacy is phenomenal.
56:23He'd gone further north than any man before
56:26and opened up the Arctic to modern exploration.
56:30His pioneering achievements inspired Captain Scott,
56:34Shackleton, Peary and Roald Amundsen.
56:38Amundsen even took the fram when he beat Scott to the South Pole.
56:43In a spectacular series of journals,
56:46Nansen detailed hundreds of groundbreaking scientific observations
56:50still used today.
56:54Whilst trapped in the ice cap,
56:56he discovered a new magnificent ocean,
56:59developed the theory of polar drift
57:01and launched the global science of oceanography
57:04into the 20th century.
57:09Nansen went on to be an ambassador for Norway
57:13and in 1922, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
57:24He passed away peacefully on this balcony in May 1930
57:28and is buried in the grounds of the house he'd designed and built here in Oslo.
57:32And long after he died, Nansen's innovations affect us all, even today.
57:41He will never be forgotten.
57:44Two mountains bear his name
57:46and even on the moon and Mars,
57:48you'll find a Nansen crater.
57:54Nansen was forever seeking results,
57:57whether in science, politics or exploration.
58:00He was inspirational and driven to the end.
58:03Few men in history can match him in stature.
58:05And for me, he'll always be the original incarnation
58:09of polar explorer as hero.
58:11His expedition that never reached the North Pole
58:14was truly the most successful failure ever.
58:27Coming up on BBC4,
58:28one of the most famous ships in the world,
58:31the Cutty Sark,
58:32Clyde built, next.
58:59The Cutty Sark,