NANSEN, FRIDTJOF

(b. Store-Fröen, near Oslo, Norway, 10 October 1861; d. Oslo, 13 May 1930)

zoology, oceanography.

Nansen was the son of Baldur Fridtjof Nansen, a lawyer, and Adelaide Johanne Thekla Isidore wedel-Jarlsberg. An avid outdoorsman from an early age, he excelled at skiing and won several prizes in Norwegian competitions. Although interested in mathematics and physics when he entrolled at the University of Christiania (now Oslo) in 1880, he decided to specialize in zoology, believing that this discipline would afford greater opportunity for outdoor work. In 1882, on the advice of Robert collett, professor of zoology at the university, Nansen joined the four-and-a-half-month expedition of the sealer viking. The trip was of seminal influence. He was introduced to the harsh condition of the Arctic as the ship sailed north almost to Svalbard and then west, where it froze fast in the ice and drifted south for several weeks along the eastern shore of Greenland. Nansen’s diary of the voyage eloquently describes the regions, and many of his drawings and sketches were later used to illustrate his works.

In 1882 Collect obtained for Nansen the post of curator at the Bergen Museum. He first took up the study of myzostomes, a small group of parasitic worms of unusual appearance. His results, published in 1885, are still a basic reference and in 1886 earned Nansen the Joachim Friele Gold Medal of the Bergen Museum. The following year he traveled to Germany and Italy, visiting the newly established marine biological station at Naples and Golgi’s laboratory in Pavia, where he observed the technique of silver impregnation of nerve cells. In 1888 Nansen received the Ph.D. at Oslo for a thesis on the central nervous system in which he demonstrated how the nerve fibers, after entering the lower root of the spinal column, divide into T formations. Although this finding was of great importtance for the study of nerve fibers, some of his other observations proved to have been based on artificial products that arose from the coloring and fixing processes that he had used.

Nansen’s fascination with the unknown interior behind the ice-covered coast of Greenland was sparked by Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld’s return in 1883 from an expedition to its west coast. Two Lapps who had accompanied him ascended to the high interior plateau, describing it as an endless snowfield. Many others, however, believed that the interior was ice-free and that temperatures were relaively high; there was even talk of oases. Nordenskiöld himself believed that the Lapps had seen only a snow belt and that the interior was mainly ice, free of snow. Nansen, who had shortly before established himself as a pioneer of high-mountain skiing on a three-day trip from Bergen to Oslo, conceived the idea that it should be possible to skiacross Greenland.

On 17 July 1888 a Norwegian sealer carried Nansen and his five-man party as near the east coast of Greenland as the ice permitted, and the group set off in their boats. Driven by adverse currents, they were unable to land until 16 August. After an extremely difficult ascent to the plateau, which reaches a height of almost 9,000 feet, they journeyed across the ice through arduous snow conditions, night temperatures as low as -50°C., snowstorms, and fog, until they reached the village of Godthaab, on the west coast, on 3 October. Having missed the last ship home, the group spent the winter there, making friends with the Eskimos and learning their way of life. The expedition confirmed that Greenland is completely covered with ice, and its meticulous meteorological observations have remained basic to an understanding of the influence of weather conditions in northern Europe and the United States. On his return to Norway in 1889, Nansen married Eva Sars, daughter of the zoologist Michael Sars, and was appointed curator at the University of Christiania.

Nansen subsequently developed a theory that there exists a current from Siberia, across the Archtic Sea, to Greenland. This conjecture was based on his observation that much of the driftwood found in Greenland came from Siberian trees and from the discovery in Greenland of wreckage of the Jeanette expedition (1879-1880), which had been trapped north of the Chukchi Sea. In his proposal to the Norwegian Geographic Society and the Royal Geographic Society of London, Nansen planned to drift with the ice current in a specially constructed ship-rather than fighting it, as all polar explorers had previously done. Although his theory was criticized by many, financing was obtained for the Fram (“Forwar”), the first vessel expressly constructed to withstand the pressure of ice.

Short and broad, the three-master had a powerful engine and a twelve-man crew. On 24 June 1893 it sailed eastward from Oslofjord, skirting the ice packs along the Siberian coast. On 10 September it passed Cape Chelyuskin, the northernmost point on the Siberian coast. Nine days later it set course straight north in open water; but on 22 September the ice closed in, and the Fram was made fast at 78°50’ N. lat. After drifting north to 85°55’ N. lat., Nansen and F. Hjalmar Johansen left the Fram on 14 March 1895, hoping to make a dash for the North Pole. The way proved more difficult than anticipated, and they were forced to turn back at 86°14’ N. lat., 268 miles from their goal but the farthest north ever attained by an explorer. A malfunctioning chronometer and an inaccurate map obliged them to halt for the winter. For the next nine months they lived in a small hut that they had built of whalebones, bearskins, and sleds, shooting polar bears and walrus for food before being rescued by an English expedition. In the meantime, on 19 May 1896 the Fram started south. It became free of the ice north of Svalbard and reached Norway on 19 June, after almost three years at sea. On his return Nansen received a nonteaching chair in zoology at the University of Christiania. The Fram is still preserved in the Fram Museum, Oslo.

The most important contributions of the Fram expedition were the discoveries of the great depth of the Arctic Ocean and of the locations of land and water masses; and publication of the results provided an important stimulus to physical oceanography. Nansen also discovered that the ice was drifting not in the direction of the wind but about 45° to the right of it. He explained this as an effect of the rotation of the earth. Lacking the mathematical background to work out the problem, he suggested to Vagn Walfrid Ekman that he investigate it, and the resulting Ekman spiral is a basic tenet of theoretical oceanography. From a study of the temperatures and salinity of the Arctic and Norwegian seas, Nansen surmised the existence of an underwater ridge between Greenland and Svalbard. Later investigated by oceanographic expeditions, it is now called the Nansen ridge.

On the basis of his experiences on the Fram, Nansen devised an improved water bottle consisting of an insulated bottle and a pair of specially designed thermometers attached directly to the reversing frame. The so-called Nansen bottle was in general use until the recent developement of electronic methods for determining the salinity of seawater. He also constructed an unusually sensitive pendulum-type current meter and a deep-sea bottom sampler.

Nansen explained the dead-water phenomenon on the basis of many samples taken at various depths to measure temperature and salinity. He discovered a sharp dividing line between the top layer of brackish water, which had melted from the ice, and the underlying seawater; and he described the boundary wave between the layers engendered by the motion of a vessel through the upper layer. The mathematical treatment of this work was also turned over to Ekman.

Nansen and his assitant Bjørn Helland-Hansen constructed graphs based on their own determinations of water densities, as well as on Vilhelm Bjerknes’ work in the theory of hydrodynamic forces and Knudsen’s experiments on seawater. Ekman worked out a set of equations for calculating ocean currents, later called geostrophic currents. A new study of the Norwegian Sea was initiated, and a voyage of the Michael Sars was planned and begun by Nansen and continued by Helland-Hansen. Their monograph on the Norwegian Sea became a model for oceanographic studies.

In 1908, reflecting his change of interest, Nansen was appointed to the newly established chair of oceanography at Oslo. He subsequently made various other research voyages and, in 1913, an extensive journey through Siberia. His wife died in 1907, and in 1919 he married Sigrid Sandberg Munthe.

With the outbreak of World War I, Nansen turned to humanitarian work, and in 1920 he became the first Norwegian delegate to the League of Nations, a post he held until his death. In 1921 he was appointed commissioner for refugees for the League and during this period also worked with Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration. In 1924 he was charged by the League of Nations with finding a solution for “the Armenian question” and recommended resettlement of the Armenians in a new Armenian republic, now a part of the Soviet Union. In recognition of his humanitarian work Nansen received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. For an annotated list of Nansen’s works on the polar region, see Arctic Bibliography, II (Washington, D.C., 1953), 1780–1788. A more extensive list of his publications related to research and travel can be compiled from Dartmouth College Library, Dictionary Catalog of the Stefansson Collection on the Polar Regions, VI (Boston, 1967), 150–160. There is a list of Nansen’s articles and lectures for the Norwegian Academy of Sciences in Oslo in Leiv Amundsen, Det Norske Videnskaps-akademi i Oslo, 1857–1957 (Oslo,1957), 529–531.

Nansen’s publications include Bidrag til myzostomernes anatomi og histori (Bergen, 1885), with summary in English; “The Structure and Combination of the Histological Elements of the Central Nervous System,” in Bergens museums arsberetning(1886), 27—215, his Ph.D. diss,; Eskinolir (Oslo, 1891), also in English (London, 1893); On the Development and Structure of the Whale. Part I, in On the Development of the Dolphin (Bergen, 1894), written with Gustav A. Guldberg; The Norwegian North Polar Expedition, 1893–1896, 6 vols. (Oslo, 1900–1906) ;The Norwegian Sea, Its Physical Oceanography Based Upon the Norwegian Researches, 1900–1904 (Oslo, 1909), written with B. Helland-Hansen ; “The Sea West of Spitsbergen and isostasy”, in Skrifter utgitl av det Norske videnskaps-akademi i Oslo, Math.-naturv.Kl., no. 11 (1921), 1–313: “The Eastern North Atlantic,” in Norske videnskaps-akademi i Oslo . Geolvsiske publikasjoner, 4, no. 2 (1925), 1–76, written with B . Helland-Hansen; and Steinar Kjaerheim, ed ., Fridtjof Nansen. Brev, 4 vols. (Oslo, 1961–1963), Nansen’s correspondence in Norwegian, English, and German.

II. Secondary Literature. On Nansen and his work, see Per Vogt et al., Fridtjof Nansen, liv og gjerning (Oslo, 1961), trans. as Fridtjof Nansen, Explorer, Scientist, Humanitarian (Oslo, 1961)—the English ed . includes several additional articles.

Lettie S. Multhauf