The Culture and Sport of Skiing: From Antiquity to World War ll

Chapter 4. Fridtjof Nansen

chapter 4 Fridtjof Nansen Though we were late in learning to ski, there is some comfort in knowing that we have learned well and, even better, that we have been able to develop it to a higher level than probably any other place.—Fridtjof Nansen, Paa Ski over Grønland, 1890 What life and vigor are displayed in that snow and winter and Norwegian youth! And what a boon it has been for the nation! But if only there were less talk of sport and records imported from outside like the foreign words themselves. It shuts out the sunshine. —Fridtjof Nansen, Diary, February 1900 Nansen Sugar, Nansen North Pole Beer, Nansen Bread, The Champagne of Dr. Nansen, and a Nansen Ballet. —The use of fame after Nansen’s return Fridtjof Nansen’s great feat of crossing the southern third of Greenland on skis in 1888 was hardly utilitarian in the accepted sense of the word. Prior to his escapade, the useful-­ ness of trudging through all that ice and snow was ridiculed in the press, as well as by that enigmatic genius, Knut Hamsun. Nansen was not from the bønder, but from well-­connected Christiania circles, although the smart set never embraced him fully. Always “something of a soloist,” as a friend put it, Nansen wore his explorer’s outfit and wide-­brimmed hat around town. Yet Nansen embodied a stark form of Idræt. He was vigorous, and healthy, and appeared to be democratic, too. One could hardly find more of a social mix than among the Greenland expedition members. Nansen’s crossing of Greenland symbolized the national importance of skis, the healthy challenges of nature that would move Norwegian nationalism, the Norwegian nation and, after his polar trip, the Norwegian state to the fore and make it a political reality in 1905.1 These were immense undertakings achieved on skis, and he came home honored and bemedaled from Denmark, Sweden, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Austria-­Hungary. He had become a Norwegian icon, about whom there could be only one reading: nationalistic. Nansen was happiest meeting challenges presented by a hostile ice cap, less so in personal relationships. It took him nine months of daily arctic adven-­ fridtjof nansen 57 turing and nightly sharing a sleeping bag with Hjalmar Johansen before he suggested they used the familiar du to each other, and his record with both his wives and other women was unenviable.2 Yet, after the two great ski expe-­ ditions, he was the man chosen to deal with huge problems requiring per-­ sonal attention. He won renown as Norway’s first ambassador to the Court of St. James. When he took up his position as ambassador to England in 1906, the Bystander, a society magazine, caricatured him on skis and headlined his arrival as “The Minister from the North Pole.”3 His job in London was to insure Norway’s survival as a state, and once that had become clear, he cast about for a role on a larger scale. During the 1914–18 conflict, Nansen wrote that neutrals would be needed to “maintain the continuity of world morality,” and he led the Norwegian del-­ egation to the League of Nations. He became exactly the right man to head food relief to Russia since recognition of the Bolshevik government was quite impossible by the West. He was also given charge of the repatriation of prison-­ ers, almost half of which were Russian, and then to deal with the famine. His Russian orientation was not by chance. He had skied across Greenland’s icy wastes, and over the ice cap that was the North Pole. These outlandish places were, in some ways, similar to Mongolia where he had proposed a trip in 1917, and to much of Siberia, where he also journeyed. He drew on the expert knowledge and linguistic abilities of Vidkun Quisling. Both men were moving politically to the left, one Soviet administrator telling him he was “a Bolshevik without knowing it.”4 For someone who had much experience in the political maneuvering between Norway and Sweden twenty years before, he was curi-­ ously inept in the world of right and left ideologues. Western governments, which dominated the League of Nations and appreciated his star quality as the world’s premier civil servant, could not understand how he could be taken in by the Communist crew running the Soviet Union. He was even elected— without his knowledge—an Honorary Member of the Moscow Soviet...