Otto Sverdrup

Fram, a three-masted schooner of 402 tons with auxiliary steam power, was the first vessel designed to winter in the polar pack ice, her hull being so shaped that no matter how strong the pressure of the ice she would lift free of it. The brainchild of the Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen, the Fram was first employed on his famous drift across the Arctic Ocean in 1893–6. In 1898–1902 Otto Sverdrup used her to explore the islands north-west of Greenland. In 1910 she was taken by Roald Amundsen to the Antarctic where he and four companions successfully reached the South Pole.

Today the Fram is preserved as a national monument in a building specially constructed for her near Oslo.

See also ship preservation.

Otto Sverdrup , 1855-1930, Norwegian arctic explorer. A companion of Fridtjof Nansen on the voyage across Greenland in 1888 and on Nansen's later (1893-96) polar expedition, Sverdrup was leader of an arctic expedition (1898-1902) that attempted to reach the North Pole by way of Smith Sound but failed because of ice in Kennedy Channel. However, valuable topographical observations were made in N Greenland; the unknown western part of Ellesmere Island was explored and charted, and Axel Heiberg Island and other areas were discovered. His New Land (tr. 1904) described this expedition. His later arctic expeditions included a voyage to the Kara Sea in 1920 and a searching trip for the Italian explorer Umberto Nobile's Italia in 1928.