Polar Exploration

I

Introduction

Polar Exploration, history of European and American attempts to reach the North Pole and the South Pole, and the exploration of the surrounding Arctic and Antarctic regions.

In the 1400s Europeans set out to explore the world, launching the great Age of Exploration. Europeans eventually mapped most of the globe. However, the polar regions remained a mystery. For centuries Europeans imagined—and to some extent, feared—what would be found there. The Age of Exploration had long since begun by the time explorers set their sights on reaching the poles. It was not until the 18th century that explorers ventured with any real success into the Arctic polar region. Antarctica, the last continent to be discovered, remained hidden behind barriers of fog, storm, and sea ice until it was first sighted in the early 19th century. Even today it remains largely unexplored.

The dangerous and inhospitable conditions of the polar regions demanded a special breed of explorer—those willing to risk their lives in the pursuit of knowledge and glory. While most survived against all odds, some performing seemingly superhuman feats, many lost their lives as well. As Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen wrote, “Nowhere has knowledge been purchased at greater cost of privation and suffering.”

For some ambitious and courageous explorers, the adventure outweighed the danger. During the so-called Heroic Age of exploration, from about 1900 to 1916, scientific curiosity and nationalistic rivalries often intermingled as motives. British explorer Ernest Shackleton summarized his motives for leading his second expedition to Antarctica in a 1909 National Geographic article: “Men go out into the void spaces of the world for various reasons. Some are actuated simply by a love of adventure, some have the keen thirst for scientific knowledge, and others again are drawn away from the trodden paths by the ‘lure of little voices,’ the mysterious fascination of the unknown. I think that in my own case it was a combination of these factors that determined me to try my fortune once again in the frozen south.”

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II

The Polar Terrain

The polar regions can be narrowly defined as the areas on the globe within the Arctic Circle (latitude 66°33’ north), which surrounds the North Pole, and within the Antarctic Circle (latitude 66°33’ south), which surrounds the South Pole. The Arctic and Antarctic regions encompass somewhat larger areas when more broadly defined according to temperatures and terrain.

The polar regions share features such as barren landscapes, extreme cold, and dark winters. The Arctic region consists of the Arctic Ocean surrounded by land masses, including a maze of islands known as the Arctic Archipelago above North America. The ocean’s permanent ice cover changes with the seasons and is in constant movement with the currents. Due to breaks, called leads, in the ice floes (sheets of floating ice), it is not possible to reach the North Pole in a continuous line over the ice.

The Antarctic region comprises a continental land mass, Antarctica, which covers an area of 14 million sq km (5.4 million sq mi). The continent is covered by an ice sheet with an average thickness of 2,160 m (7,090 ft), although it is more than twice as thick in some places.

III

Early Exploration

The Arctic regions of North America and Siberia (a vast region in Asia) have been populated since ancient times by indigenous peoples such as the Inuit. The Greeks of the 4th century bc were aware of the Arctic. The first Europeans to explore and settle lands in the region were the Vikings, whose own lands in Scandinavia reached into the Arctic. The Vikings, skilled navigators at sea, discovered and began to settle Iceland, which borders the Arctic Circle, in about ad 860. (According to some accounts, a colony of Irish monks was established there first, in the early 800s.) Sailing from Iceland, Vikings discovered the large ice-covered island they named Greenland, situated between the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Erik the Red established the first Viking settlement there in about 985. By the early 1400s, however, the settlements in Greenland had vanished, and all European contact with North America had been lost.

IV

The North Pole

A

The Northern Sea Passages

European interest in reaching and exploring the North Pole emerged gradually out of a stronger desire: to find new sea routes for the conduct of trade. From the late 15th century, Spain and Portugal controlled the southern sea routes between Europe and Asia. English and Dutch ships were barred from using these routes to reach ports of trade in Asia. Northern Europeans thus sought alternate sea routes from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans by way of the Arctic Ocean, thereby reaching Asia. The sea routes they sought came to be called the Northeast Passage (now known as the Northern Sea Route), north of Russia, and the Northwest Passage, above North America. These terms refer to any route through the areas concerned, rather than any particular route.

The search for a northern sea route began in the late 1490s with the voyages of Italian explorer John Cabot, sailing on behalf of England. Cabot navigated a northern route across the Atlantic and in 1497 became the first European since the Vikings to reach North America, which he initially believed to be Asia. Thereafter, finding a northern sea route captured the imagination of many famous explorers, including Sir Martin Frobisher, John Davis, William Baffin, Henry Hudson, and Sir John Franklin.

For centuries the Northwest Passage remained elusive in the ice-choked maze of islands, straits, and bays of the Arctic Archipelago. Each expedition built on the knowledge gained before, and the area was charted in the process. However, all attempts failed, and some ended in disaster, until Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen made the first complete transit of the Northwest Passage from 1903 to 1906. Finding a passage north of Russia was similarly challenging, and it was not until the 1870s that a complete Northeast Passage was finally navigated by Swedish explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskjöld.

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