Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Sair Dowdy and I'm Deblin to truck Reboarding and Deblina.
Speaker 1: We're going to pick up where we left up last
Speaker 1: time with the Norwegian explorer slash diplomat Ritchie Off Nonsen,
Speaker 1: and we've already talked on the last episode a little
Speaker 1: bit about nonsense upbringing and his pretty impressive scientific studies.
Speaker 1: His first adventures there was this trek across Norway on skis,
Speaker 1: followed by another trek across all of Greenland on skis,
Speaker 1: but baby part one in two exactly crazy part one
Speaker 1: and two. But where we left off last time was
Speaker 1: aboard the from which was of course the ice ship
Speaker 1: that Nonsen had commissioned specifically for this journey over the
Speaker 1: North Pole. And in case you missed the last episode,
Speaker 1: just to give you a little recap of his motivations,
Speaker 1: he was operating under the observation that currents move east
Speaker 1: to west over the Arctic Ocean, so he had helped
Speaker 1: design this specially built ship that could withstand being frozen
Speaker 1: in the middle of the ice pack and would be
Speaker 1: purposely frozen into the ice pack, and then once they're
Speaker 1: the plan was to sort of just ride the current
Speaker 1: over the North Pole, or at least get really close
Speaker 1: to it. And it worked, or at least the first
Speaker 1: part of it worked. The From, which set off from
Speaker 1: oslo In, withstood the ice and was comfy and cozy
Speaker 1: to boot. It had a fully stocked library, as you
Speaker 1: may remember, a windmill that generated light during those Arctic nights,
Speaker 1: and a saloon. But after a couple of years at sea,
Speaker 1: Nonson was ready to leave the From behind. He had
Speaker 1: realized that the projected four to five year trip might
Speaker 1: take something more like six to seven years, and also
Speaker 1: it was clear that the ship wasn't going to travel
Speaker 1: far enough north to actually hit the pole. If he
Speaker 1: were to achieve that record, he'd have to make a
Speaker 1: dash basically head out with kayaks, skis, sleds, dogs and
Speaker 1: just one companion. But there's a crazy part three to
Speaker 1: this whole scheme. He wouldn't just be able to dash
Speaker 1: out and then return to the coziness of the ship
Speaker 1: with its windmill and its library and everything. Leaving the
Speaker 1: From meant that he'd never be able to return to
Speaker 1: it because locating the ship in the middle of the
Speaker 1: Arctic wilderness and catching up with it again too, because
Speaker 1: of course the ship would be drifting all this time,
Speaker 1: would be impossible. So instead he was going to have to,
Speaker 1: after trying to make it to the pole, find solid
Speaker 1: land and from there try to locate a settlement and
Speaker 1: hazard ice flows and polar bears and temperatures in the
Speaker 1: negative thirties along the way. No problem, right, sounds easy.
Speaker 1: But first, nonsen he never sets off without a plan, right,
Speaker 1: So his first concern was who was going to go.
Speaker 1: It was going to be either Nonson or Captain Auto
Speaker 1: swa Edrop. He decided quickly enough that square Drop was
Speaker 1: going to be responsible for the trip, so he would
Speaker 1: stay behind, and Nonson was going to be responsible for
Speaker 1: the mission as a whole, so spare Drop would stay
Speaker 1: with the from Nonson would go out on the ice,
Speaker 1: he'd take along Yalmar Johansson, a famous gymnast who was
Speaker 1: really good with the sled dogs and seemed like he
Speaker 1: could hold up under the physical and mental strain that
Speaker 1: they were going to say, it would be the major
Speaker 1: qualification for your dash to the North Pole part. Indeed,
Speaker 1: so we talked a little bit in the last episode
Speaker 1: about how Nonson differed from many other explorers, how he
Speaker 1: sort of considered the risks carefully. He observed nature the
Speaker 1: whole getting purposely packed in the ice flow is one
Speaker 1: good example of that, and observed natural conditions, and also
Speaker 1: really learned from the people who lived in the north,
Speaker 1: you know, adopting things like kayaks, uh, and knowing when
Speaker 1: to turn back to But I read some of nonsense
Speaker 1: account Farthest North, which is uh, some worry of this
Speaker 1: whole journey, And there's a passage that I think really
Speaker 1: emphasizes the care that he took, and it's it takes
Speaker 1: place when he's telling the men about his plan to
Speaker 1: make a dash for the pole, and this is what
Speaker 1: he writes. I impressed on them, however, that while it
Speaker 1: was unquestionably a fine thing to push on as far
Speaker 1: as possible towards the north, it was no whit less
Speaker 1: honorable and undertaking to bring the from safe and sound
Speaker 1: right through the polar sea and out on the other side,
Speaker 1: or if not the from at all events themselves, without
Speaker 1: any loss of life. I mean, it sounds like not
Speaker 1: the kind of speech you expect from the leader of
Speaker 1: the polar expedition, who's usually like, let's do it, you know,
Speaker 1: let's make it all the way, especially because you don't
Speaker 1: think that the rest of the crew would be clamoring
Speaker 1: to go exactly. I mean, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: would be. Some of them were actually they really wanted
Speaker 1: to go on the dash, but that he emphasized, uh,
Speaker 1: try to stay alive guys. Seems like a really important
Speaker 1: difference between him and a lot of his contemporaries. He
Speaker 1: wasn't all motivational speeches, though. He also got really busy
Speaker 1: getting together his supplies that he would need. In addition
Speaker 1: to their regular scientific observations, the guys aboard the from
Speaker 1: started preparing gear, started helping him get everything ready. This
Speaker 1: included silk tents, sewing, sleeping bags. One person even copied
Speaker 1: Johanson and Nonsense Journal and their research so that they
Speaker 1: would have twice the chance the information would have twice
Speaker 1: the chance, that is, of making it back to the
Speaker 1: outside world. Nonsen, in the meantime, worked on building bamboo
Speaker 1: frame kayaks, which were covered in canvas thirty six pounds
Speaker 1: apiece and they really look kind of funny too. They're
Speaker 1: they're not long and narrow like kayaks traditionally are because
Speaker 1: they were afraid that something like that would get bumped
Speaker 1: around so much they break their kayaks before they needed them.
Speaker 1: But if you read far this north, this is kind
Speaker 1: of the fun part of nonsense account, you know, getting
Speaker 1: ready and all the preparations, and it's before the monotony
Speaker 1: of the ice starts, where it's just cold day, one
Speaker 1: cold day after another. Um At this point he's still
Speaker 1: wondering if it will even get cold enough to warrant
Speaker 1: bringing the wolf skin clothes he's considering, and he hosts
Speaker 1: a big party to aboard the ship when it reaches
Speaker 1: the highest recorded northern latitude. So there's sort of a
Speaker 1: sense of anticipation and celebration at this point, but he's
Speaker 1: also trying to psych himself up for what's coming around
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve. He says, never before have I had
Speaker 1: such strange feelings at the commencement of the new year.
Speaker 1: It cannot fail to bring some momentous events and will
Speaker 1: possibly become one of the most remarkable years in my life,
Speaker 1: whether it leads me to success or destruction. Years come
Speaker 1: and go unnoticed in this world of ice, and we
Speaker 1: have no more knowledge here of what these years have
Speaker 1: brought to humanity than we know of what the future
Speaker 1: ones have in store. So heavy thoughts before embarking on
Speaker 1: this journey, but it does take a few more months.
Speaker 1: He has two false starts because they are so concerned
Speaker 1: about having their equipment and supply to just be flawless.
Speaker 1: But they finally left the From for good March fourteenth eight,
Speaker 1: and they had twenty eight dogs with them, those two
Speaker 1: bulky kayaks but lightweight kayaks, three fleds, and for a
Speaker 1: very short time a few extra companions who just sort
Speaker 1: of tagged along for a little while to wish them
Speaker 1: wish them off well. Things got off to a difficult
Speaker 1: start though. There were not as many level patches of
Speaker 1: ice as they were hoping there would be these ridges,
Speaker 1: and when they came across a ridge it would mean
Speaker 1: they'd have to drag the sleds over the uneven surface
Speaker 1: and then constantly disentangle all of the dog harnesses too,
Speaker 1: And the dogs weren't behaving very well because they had
Speaker 1: of course also been stuck aboard the From for months
Speaker 1: and months and not getting all the exercises that exercise
Speaker 1: that this tyle Library and Entertainment, the Windmill didn't do
Speaker 1: it for the dogs, so they weren't too far in
Speaker 1: when they had to kill the first dog, though it
Speaker 1: was what Nonson called some of the most disagreeable work
Speaker 1: they had to do on their entire journey. When they
Speaker 1: killed the dog, they fed it to the others because
Speaker 1: they needed something to feed the dogs anyway. They were
Speaker 1: starting to run low and provisions and um, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about this a little more, but his account of dealing
Speaker 1: with the dogs and gradually having to kill them is
Speaker 1: pretty heartbreaking and um it was one of the more
Speaker 1: disturbing parts of his trip. It seems so Nonson and
Speaker 1: Johansen themselves that would get so tired from this dash
Speaker 1: to the poll that sometimes they'd fall asleep while they
Speaker 1: were on their skis, but they still did maintain this
Speaker 1: kind of routine. They would stop for the day and
Speaker 1: Johansen would tend to the dogs, feed them, make sure
Speaker 1: they were all, you know, tied up put away. Nonson meanwhile,
Speaker 1: would pitch the tent and get dinner going, and then
Speaker 1: they would just crawl into their sleeping bags while dinner
Speaker 1: was cooking and thaw out. Nonson describes their clothes just
Speaker 1: from the um I guess from sweat combined with little
Speaker 1: drops of moisture getting stuck in their clothes would turn
Speaker 1: them into quote complete suits of ice armor, which I
Speaker 1: don't know that sounds really really uncomfortable because nonsense account
Speaker 1: also expresses how they look forward to dinner. All day long.
Speaker 1: They had three meals pemmican with dried potatoes, fish meal,
Speaker 1: flour and butter, and pea bean or lentil soup. And
Speaker 1: as a kind of nightcap, they'd have some white powder
Speaker 1: in boiling water. In the morning they'd have breakfast, some
Speaker 1: which sometimes included chocolate sounds better than fish meal, and
Speaker 1: they would journal before they headed out. And they had
Speaker 1: a plan too for going about this race to the pole.
Speaker 1: Originally Nonsen planned to reach the pole or go for
Speaker 1: fifty days before turning around, but by early April he
Speaker 1: was starting to reconsider, starting to think they were going
Speaker 1: to have to turn back earlier than that. So in
Speaker 1: April eighth they decided they were going to have to
Speaker 1: turn back, and they celebrated achieving at that point the
Speaker 1: northernmost record. It was only two miles from the pole.
Speaker 1: They had a big banquet, maybe a little extra chocolate
Speaker 1: or way powder, or something, and Johanssen wrote that he
Speaker 1: should have liked it if we could have got further.
Speaker 1: It has our consolation that we have done what we could,
Speaker 1: and that we have even lifted a little more of
Speaker 1: the veil which conceals this part of our planet. So
Speaker 1: kind of an understatement for disappointment. I mean, it doesn't
Speaker 1: sound too bad. They must have been upset that they
Speaker 1: couldn't actually get there. I was disappointed to what I
Speaker 1: got to this point in the story because I really
Speaker 1: thought that they were going to make it. But it
Speaker 1: turned out to be a really smart decision for them
Speaker 1: to turn around. Their new southern goal Franz Joseph Lynn
Speaker 1: was six hundred miles away, and they had to get
Speaker 1: there before the ice broke up, so they get stuck
Speaker 1: on the ice. It was a race, so the turnaround
Speaker 1: was easy. At first they had nice even ice to
Speaker 1: travel on, but things got rough as the men were
Speaker 1: driven off course by open handels and ice ridges. They
Speaker 1: kept a break neck pace, though sometimes they went for
Speaker 1: thirty six hour stretches at a time, and by mid
Speaker 1: May there were only twelve of the twenty eight dogs
Speaker 1: still alive. By June, there were only six left Nonson
Speaker 1: at one point writes about how hard it was to
Speaker 1: kill a dog that had actually been born aboard the
Speaker 1: from um so when you know, a dog he had raised.
Speaker 1: And the men themselves were at this point reduced to
Speaker 1: eating a gruel made with the dog's blood and just
Speaker 1: barely barely scraping by. They really didn't know if they
Speaker 1: were going to make it. Um Nonsen writes about how
Speaker 1: horribly he felt for treating the exhausted dog, you know,
Speaker 1: just trying to make them keep going, because it was
Speaker 1: a matter of life or death for the men. At
Speaker 1: this point, he wrote, it is the sad part of
Speaker 1: expeditions of this kind that one systematically kills all better
Speaker 1: feelings until only hard hearted egoism remains. So by late June,
Speaker 1: the slushy ice meant that the men had to start
Speaker 1: using their kayak X, carrying the two surviving dogs on
Speaker 1: top of their kayaks, so every time they hit solid
Speaker 1: ice again they had to haul the kayaks up and
Speaker 1: start over on foot. When they stopped for the night,
Speaker 1: there was the risk that they'd drift north again or
Speaker 1: a flow would open up by their tent, which you
Speaker 1: wouldn't want at all, No, because your tent could go
Speaker 1: in the water, and the I use drifting north again too.
Speaker 1: That erases any progress that you make during the day.
Speaker 1: Rock Bottom was probably when Johansen was attacked by a
Speaker 1: polar bear. You would expect that means that was the
Speaker 1: end of Johansen. He miraculously survived the attack. The polar
Speaker 1: bear hit his face and kind of must have grazed
Speaker 1: it um and jumped on top of him before Nonsen
Speaker 1: shot it um. Finally, to another Rocko attom moment, the
Speaker 1: men had to kill the last two dogs. They shot
Speaker 1: each other's. They hadn't use bullets on the dogs until
Speaker 1: this point, but they didn't have the heart to to
Speaker 1: do it anyway for these last survivors. Finally they reached
Speaker 1: land after a whole summer of looking for it. They
Speaker 1: hit an island and started to hop their way south,
Speaker 1: hunting bears along the way. They actually got a taste
Speaker 1: for polar bear cubs during this time and walruses. They
Speaker 1: did not get a taste for walruses. That the statement
Speaker 1: kind of ran together. They got a taste for polar
Speaker 1: bear cubs, but they hunted both polar bear cubs and
Speaker 1: walruses to be clear, but you can't island hot through
Speaker 1: an arctic winter, so they had to make a camp.
Speaker 1: So they used a sled runner to heck out a
Speaker 1: little ditch and build a small stone hut with moss
Speaker 1: lining and a walrus skin roof, and they modified their
Speaker 1: sleeping bags to fit to and stored up on walrus
Speaker 1: blubber and use that for fuel. So they lived in
Speaker 1: what they called a den for the next nine months.
Speaker 1: That's really hard for for me to wrap my mind around.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to be aboard the ship that's frozen
Speaker 1: in at least has the library and the little newspaper.
Speaker 1: But to be in this hut for nine months, it
Speaker 1: found very very bleak. But it also doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: what you might expect. You might think that they would, um,
Speaker 1: sort of go lord of the flies, start hating each other,
Speaker 1: start bickering constantly, maybe go a little bit crazy. They
Speaker 1: really maintained their sanity and their camaraderie to they had
Speaker 1: this almanac with them. For a little bit of entertainment.
Speaker 1: They would eat bear broth and bear steaks and blubber cakes,
Speaker 1: which were a special treat. And um, this, I guess
Speaker 1: this sort of show is how Nonsen still maintain his sanity,
Speaker 1: but it's also a sad marker if this is the
Speaker 1: best you can do. He wrote about celebrating Christmas by
Speaker 1: changing his underpants and then using the old pair as
Speaker 1: a bath sponge, and that was, you know, a real
Speaker 1: celebratory way to mark the holiday for him. Shows you
Speaker 1: what state they were at by this point. But by
Speaker 1: mid May it was warm enough finally to leave that
Speaker 1: hut and head south like in so months of hut living,
Speaker 1: though meant that they were out of shape and pretty slow,
Speaker 1: so they couldn't travel necessarily at the same pace that
Speaker 1: they had before. At one point they almost lost their kayaks,
Speaker 1: which at that point was their main method of transportation.
Speaker 1: They would have been out of luck. And then by
Speaker 1: June they were gearing up for an open water kayak
Speaker 1: journey to Spitzbergen, and they were hoping that by doing
Speaker 1: that they might find a ship along the way. But
Speaker 1: on June sevent eight, ninety six, Nonson heard barking. By
Speaker 1: pure chance, they had managed to run into the British
Speaker 1: expedition of Frederick G. Jackson, and this is kind of
Speaker 1: how their meeting went down. Jackson said, aren't you Nonson?
Speaker 1: Nonson answered yes, I am, and then Jackson replies by jove,
Speaker 1: I am glad to see you. Where have you come
Speaker 1: from now? So Jackson's careful at this point though, even
Speaker 1: while they're having this exchange not to mention the From
Speaker 1: around Nonson and Johansson. He figures that they must have
Speaker 1: been the only two survivors from some disaster. But miraculously,
Speaker 1: only days after Nonson and Johansson returned to Norway, the
Speaker 1: From and her complete crew arrived as well, having come
Speaker 1: clear of the ice pack finally at almost the exact
Speaker 1: same time. Pretty amazing, and it must have been especially
Speaker 1: amazing to Notason, considering how long he thought that it
Speaker 1: might take the From to get through. So this time,
Speaker 1: with this whole reunited From crew back in Norway, Nonson
Speaker 1: became an international celebrity. We talked about after his Greenland trip.
Speaker 1: He was a pretty big deal back home, but this
Speaker 1: time he's an international celebrity, and he started teaching oceanography
Speaker 1: at the University of Oslo. He wrote Farthest North, the
Speaker 1: one we've been quoting from a bit, and did this
Speaker 1: huge lecture tour to support it, and just by the bye,
Speaker 1: it kind of seems like farthest north is still like
Speaker 1: a boy's handbook for young adventures in Norway almost. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you could maybe kind of like into
Speaker 1: the Wild or something like that. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's a false comparison, but something a lot of kids
Speaker 1: in Norway still read today. Uh nonsense. Prominence though in
Speaker 1: his country, came at a really great time for national politics,
Speaker 1: because the country was ready to finally become independent from
Speaker 1: Sweden and needed some kind of national hero like this guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Nonson was actually part of the secret delegation sent to
Speaker 1: Copenhagen in nineteen o five to feel out the Danish
Speaker 1: Prince carl On whether he was interested in becoming King
Speaker 1: of Norway. The country achieved independence in nineteen o five,
Speaker 1: and Nonson became its first ambassador to Great Britain, but
Speaker 1: he didn't take his family with him. Ava by this
Speaker 1: point had five kids with him, and she stayed behind um.
Speaker 1: He always intended on returning to a Norway in a
Speaker 1: short time, and when he finally returned to Norway in
Speaker 1: nineteen o seven, his wife died suddenly of pneumonia. Their
Speaker 1: relationship had actually been strained for some time. All that
Speaker 1: living apart probably added a lot to it, but it's
Speaker 1: safe to assume that there are two things we can
Speaker 1: know about them, and that is that she very likely
Speaker 1: helped keep him alive out on the ice. He wrote
Speaker 1: of her a lot in his diary, and he had
Speaker 1: promised her that he'd come back alive, and he was
Speaker 1: intent on keeping that promise also without her. The home
Speaker 1: life that he envisioned, five kids living together in this
Speaker 1: big house didn't really happen until his children were grown
Speaker 1: and married and he was old. Yah, his kids ended
Speaker 1: up living more with relatives and friends while he embarked
Speaker 1: on this really ambitious post explorer career, and he didn't
Speaker 1: end up remarrying until nineteen nineteen. But so moving on
Speaker 1: to that post explorer career, we alluded to it a
Speaker 1: little bit in the beginning, and it's really impressive how
Speaker 1: broad its scope. So it all starts though with World
Speaker 1: War One. Nonson accepted that further polar explorations were going
Speaker 1: to be an impossibility, so he got to work ending
Speaker 1: the Allied Blackade against neutral Norway. He wanted at least
Speaker 1: vital supplies like food and things to be able to
Speaker 1: come through, so out of this whole thing he came
Speaker 1: out of the war as the president of the Norwegian
Speaker 1: Union for the League of Nations. He was a huge
Speaker 1: League of Nations supporter, and this is where Nonson's great
Speaker 1: humanitarian career kind of kicked off. And it's a bit
Speaker 1: strange that he got so involved in this world of
Speaker 1: tricky post war negotiating, considering that he was by training
Speaker 1: a scientist, and he he was interested in returning to
Speaker 1: his science after so many years as a diplomat and
Speaker 1: as an explorer. But he was also such a star
Speaker 1: at this point that people from all over Europe were
Speaker 1: willing to hear him out. You know, he was the
Speaker 1: one guy who everybody was okay talking to. In he
Speaker 1: went to work repatriating prisoners of war, people who had
Speaker 1: waited for years for someone to help them get home again.
Speaker 1: So who was going to be paying for this? Who
Speaker 1: was going to be helping them? So when Notson was
Speaker 1: appointed to the League of Sations High Commissioner or appointed
Speaker 1: as the League of Nations High Commissioner, i should say,
Speaker 1: for prisoners of war, Nonson helped return four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand prisoners of war from twenty six countries, keeping
Speaker 1: the cost to only about one pound per prisoner. During
Speaker 1: his travels for the Pow job, he saw that many
Speaker 1: in Europe were starving, especially in the Soviet Union. So
Speaker 1: Nonson started to raise money for a relief, but he
Speaker 1: found it difficult to get governmental support for the Soviets
Speaker 1: governments weren't interested in, you know, by helping out the
Speaker 1: starving people by extension, helping out the Soviet government. Nonson
Speaker 1: turned to private donors instead, appealing to humanity over politics.
Speaker 1: He was kind of like, these are just people who
Speaker 1: need help regardless, don't have any politics. So he raised
Speaker 1: enough money and gathered enough supplies to save and estimated
Speaker 1: seven to twenty two million people according to his Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize biography. Then in nineteen one, he used his experience
Speaker 1: repatrioting POWs to start helping settle stateless refugees. So all
Speaker 1: these people left after World War One with maybe not
Speaker 1: a country or a country they couldn't return to. And
Speaker 1: the first step was creating identities for a lot of
Speaker 1: people who had lost their papers, you know, running away
Speaker 1: from their country or in some kind of wartime trauma,
Speaker 1: and we're just stuck in limbo, no papers, nowhere they
Speaker 1: could go. So he formed something called Nonson passports, which
Speaker 1: were eventually issued and recognized by fifty two governments, something
Speaker 1: I thought was pretty remarkable, and they helped hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of people resettle, including some pretty famous names like
Speaker 1: Igor Stravinsky and Anna Pavlovo. We talked about both of
Speaker 1: them in our Right of Spring episode uh Sergei, Rachmaninov,
Speaker 1: Mark Chical, So a lot of big names and then
Speaker 1: a lot of other people too who were just stuck
Speaker 1: with nowhere to go in the Greek government asked Nonson
Speaker 1: to figure out an unsub hordable influx of Greek refugees
Speaker 1: from Asia Minor after the Greek's defeat by the Turks.
Speaker 1: So with the League of Nations approval, Nonson arranged a
Speaker 1: swap of one million, two hundred fifty thousand Greek Turks
Speaker 1: for five hundred thousand Turkish Greeks with compensation to start
Speaker 1: new lives. And I think that was kind of a controvert.
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds controversial. It's easy to imagine, like
Speaker 1: will switch our ethnic Greeks for your ethnic Turks, and
Speaker 1: people will move from place that they've lived for maybe generations.
Speaker 1: But it seemed to work in this case, and Nonson
Speaker 1: ended up getting a lot of credit for it in
Speaker 1: the end. Then, on December tenth nWo, Nonson won the
Speaker 1: Nobel Peace Prize. His biographer Roland Huntford wrote that quote,
Speaker 1: Nonson is among the few really worthy winners of the
Speaker 1: Peace Prize, although he is probably the one who spent
Speaker 1: the shortest time earning it. A Danish publisher actually ended
Speaker 1: up doubling the prize money that Nonson got, and Nonson
Speaker 1: spent it on Greek refugees and on to model farms
Speaker 1: in the Ukraine and by the Volga, so he brought
Speaker 1: them their first tractors in the area. It was a
Speaker 1: big deal. And then by the late nineteen twenties knots
Speaker 1: and began experiencing heart problems and on May thirteenth, nineteen thirty,
Speaker 1: he died of a heart attack at home. He's buried
Speaker 1: or he was buried May seventeen, on Norway's Constitution Day.
Speaker 1: And I think it is important to mention that amidst
Speaker 1: all of this nonsen of fandom sort of you know,
Speaker 1: people who were willing from people from a lot of
Speaker 1: different countries who are willing to work with him and
Speaker 1: listen to him. He did have his critics. He was
Speaker 1: accused by a lot of people of being a Russia
Speaker 1: worshiper because he was trying to help people who were
Speaker 1: starving there, and some folks interpreted that as him working
Speaker 1: with the Soviets, and he did get some criticism for
Speaker 1: that when he won the Nobel Prize. It was something
Speaker 1: he worked hard to deny, you know, say that was
Speaker 1: not his motive, but it was still out there. But
Speaker 1: he did have a certain agenda. He had certain goals,
Speaker 1: and I think appeal to people is best translated by
Speaker 1: this quote that you have here on your outline. He says,
Speaker 1: it is within us all. It is our mysterious longing
Speaker 1: to accomplish something, to fill life with something more than
Speaker 1: a daily journey from home to the office and from
Speaker 1: the office home again. It is our ever present longing
Speaker 1: to surmount difficulties and dangers, to see that which is hidden,
Speaker 1: and seek the places lying away from the beaten track.
Speaker 1: It is the call of the unknown, the longing for
Speaker 1: the land beyond, the divine power deeply rooted within the
Speaker 1: soul of man. It is this spirit which drove the
Speaker 1: first hunters to new places, and the incentive for perhaps
Speaker 1: our greatest deeds the force of human thought, which spreads
Speaker 1: its wings and flies where freedom knows no bounds. Spirit
Speaker 1: of adventure absolutely, and I think people of any time
Speaker 1: can relate to this. I think so and wanting to
Speaker 1: do something bigger with your life. And I think that
Speaker 1: maybe the most interesting point of Nonsense life is he
Speaker 1: is famous for being an explorer, but he ultimately did
Speaker 1: do something bigger with his life than achieve a polar
Speaker 1: record or something like that. A remarkable feat of endurance.
Speaker 1: He went on to actually really help a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and he did that by not dying out there on
Speaker 1: the ice. But there's although I love this um how
Speaker 1: he says home to the office and from the office
Speaker 1: home again, it doesn't seem like for him ifice. Maybe
Speaker 1: he worked in the lab for a few years, but no,
Speaker 1: he certainly wasn't in a cube for any of his days.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of ways to learn more about Nonsense today.
Speaker 1: He is a really celebrated figure in Norway. There's the
Speaker 1: fram Museum which is in Oslo, and then the fritchi
Speaker 1: Off Nonsen Institute, which focuses on environmental politics and bio diversity,
Speaker 1: those kinds of things. Or if you are actually an explorer.
Speaker 1: Somebody can who can handle this, You can learn about
Speaker 1: him by getting out there on the ice, and it
Speaker 1: seems that a lot of people do just that. I
Speaker 1: read a recent story about a Norwegian living in Maine
Speaker 1: who had cross Greenland on skis, and he said that quote,
Speaker 1: if you're Norwegian, you love to walk in the footsteps
Speaker 1: of your country's explorers. And then there was another story
Speaker 1: recently in National Geographic that featured two Norwegian adventurers who
Speaker 1: were retracing Nonson and Johansson's polar trip using para sales
Speaker 1: fortunately instead of dogs, but realizing that it was still
Speaker 1: a really difficult journey and they knew where they were
Speaker 1: going this time. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: anything I would take on probably at any point. I don't.
Speaker 1: Polar exploration has no real appeal for me. No, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't make for a really good story and a
Speaker 1: really great podcast. So I think that's one that was
Speaker 1: frequently requested as well, was it not? It was? And
Speaker 1: really all sorts of these Polar Explorer episodes are very
Speaker 1: frequently suggested, So let us know what once you really
Speaker 1: really want to hear about, or they don't have to
Speaker 1: be exploring ac regions that can be um any part
Speaker 1: of the world. Just let us know where History podcast
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter
Speaker 1: at miss in history, and we're on Facebook. Those are
Speaker 1: two really great ways to reach out to it. And
Speaker 1: if you think you know a lot about one of
Speaker 1: the topics we discussed on this podcast, which is dogs
Speaker 1: and sleds, we have an awesome idd or odd quiz
Speaker 1: on our website and you can check it out by
Speaker 1: visiting our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
Speaker 1: from the Future. Join how stupp Work staff as we
Speaker 1: explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The
Speaker 1: house stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it
Speaker 1: today on iTunes