Word: nansen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Though sometimes tempted, Nansen made no more Arctic voyages, handed over the Pram to Roald Amundsen. A public figure now, he was needed at home...
...Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930) was born into a carefully wealthy, sternly cultured family of Oslo, who insisted on his being a good student. With a scientific and mathematical bent. Fridtjof chose zoology as his specialty. That and his love of adventure led him into the Arctic. At 21 he made his first voyage, with the sealer Viking. Six years later he led an expedition across Greenland on skis. When he proposed to his wife he added a condition: "But I must take a trip to the North Pole." In the From, specially constructed to resist ice pressure...
...Viking ancestors would have approved the first part of the late great Fridtjof Nansen's life, would have misunderstood or laughed at the second...
Even his contemporaries may not be sure which was better: the three-year Arctic expedition in the From or the ten years as League of Nations man, during which Nansen won the Nobel Peace Prize. Biographer Sorensen is not concerned with casting up his hero's accounts: he points to all of Nansen's achievements with unwavering pride...
When Sweden and Norway separated in 1905. Nansen's diplomacy was useful in keeping the separation peaceful. He became Norway's first Minister to the Court of St. James's. During the War he served on the Norwegian Trade Commission to the U. S., helped keep his country, pinched between belligerents, from starving. After the War, as High Commissioner of the League of Nations, he soon became recognized as one of Europe's rare internationalists, helped refugees and starving populations wherever he could, regardless of political boundaries. The League credited him with repatriating nearly half...