Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen was a Norwegian polymath and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He gained prominence at various points in his life as an explorer, scientist, diplomat, and humanitarian. He led the team that made the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888, traversing the island on cross-country skis. He won international fame after reaching a record northern latitude of 86°14′ during his Fram expedition of 1893—1896. Although he retired from exploration after his return to Norway, his techniques of polar travel and his innovations in equipment and clothing influenced a generation of subsequent Arctic and Antarctic expeditions.
Franz Josef Land, Frantz Iosef Land, Franz Joseph Land or Francis Joseph's Land is a Russian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. It is inhabited only by military personnel. It constitutes the northernmost part of Arkhangelsk Oblast and consists of 192 islands, which cover an area of 16,134 square kilometers (6,229 sq mi), stretching 375 kilometers (233 mi) from east to west and 234 kilometers (145 mi) from north to south. The islands are categorized in three groups separated by the British Channel and the Austrian Strait. The central group is further divided into a northern and southern section by the Markham Sound. The largest island is Prince George Land, which measures 2,741 square kilometers (1,058 sq mi), followed by Wilczek Land, Graham Bell Island and Alexandra Land.
Fredrik Hjalmar Johansen was a Norwegian polar explorer. He participated on the first and third Fram expeditions. He shipped out with the Fridtjof Nansen expedition in 1893–1896, and accompanied Nansen to notch a new Farthest North record near the North Pole. Johansen also participated in the expedition of Roald Amundsen to the South Pole in 1910–1912.
Fram ("Forward") is a ship that was used in expeditions of the Arctic and Antarctic regions by the Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup, Oscar Wisting, and Roald Amundsen between 1893 and 1912. It was designed and built by the Scottish-Norwegian shipwright Colin Archer for Fridtjof Nansen's 1893 Arctic expedition in which the plan was to freeze Fram into the Arctic ice sheet and float with it over the North Pole.
Otto Neumann Knoph Sverdrup was a Norwegian sailor and Arctic explorer.
Fridtjof Nansen was the first ship in the Norwegian armed forces to be built specially to perform coast guard and fishery protection duties in the Arctic. She saw service in the Second World War with the Royal Norwegian Navy until she ran aground on an unmarked shallow at Jan Mayen in November 1940.
Jason was a Norwegian whaling vessel laid down in 1881 by Rødsverven in Sandefjord, Norway, the same shipyard which later built Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance. The ship, financed by Christen Christensen, an entrepreneur from Sandefjord, was noted for his participation in an 1892-1893 Antarctic expedition led by Carl Anton Larsen.
Gunnar Hansen Horn was a Norwegian petroleum geologist and Arctic explorer. He is most renowned as the leader of the Bratvaag Expedition that found the long-lost remains of S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 at Kvitøya in 1930. The headland Hornodden of Kvitøya is named after him.
Nansen Island is an island in Franz Josef Land, Russia. The island is partly glaciated and its area is 164 km2 (63 sq mi). The highest point of the island is 372 m (1,220 ft).
Belaya Zemlya is a group of three cold, glaciated islands. It is a geographical subgroup of Franz Josef Land, Russian Federation.
Adolf Hoel was a Norwegian geologist, environmentalist and Polar region researcher. He led several scientific expeditions to Svalbard and Greenland. Hoel has been described as one of the most iconic and influential figures in Norwegian polar exploration in the first half of the 20th century, alongside Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen. His focus on and research of the polar areas has been largely credited as the reason Norway has sovereignty over Svalbard and Queen Maud Land in the Antarctica. Hoel was the founding director of the Norwegian Polar Institute and served as rector of the University of Oslo and as President of the Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature.
The Quisling regime or Quisling government are common names used to refer to the fascist collaborationist government led by Vidkun Quisling in German-occupied Norway during the Second World War. The official name of the regime from 1 February 1942 until its dissolution in May 1945 was Den nasjonale regjering. Actual executive power was retained by the Reichskommissariat Norwegen, headed by Josef Terboven.
Nansen's Fram expedition of 1893–1896 was an attempt by the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen to reach the geographical North Pole by harnessing the natural east–west current of the Arctic Ocean. In the face of much discouragement from other polar explorers, Nansen took his ship Fram to the New Siberian Islands in the eastern Arctic Ocean, froze her into the pack ice, and waited for the drift to carry her towards the pole. Impatient with the slow speed and erratic character of the drift, after 18 months Nansen and a chosen companion, Hjalmar Johansen, left the ship with a team of Samoyed dogs and sledges and made for the pole. They did not reach it, but they achieved a record Farthest North latitude of 86°13.6′N before a long retreat over ice and water to reach safety in Franz Josef Land. Meanwhile, Fram continued to drift westward, finally emerging in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Nansenflua is an undersea rock in the northern part of Rekvedbukta off the southeastern coast of Jan Mayen in the Arctic Ocean. The shoal is named after the ship HNoMS Fridtjof Nansen, which sank after striking the previously uncharted rock in November 1940. Nansenflua is the only obstruction in Rekvedbukta. The name Nansenflua was introduced in charts published by the Norwegian Polar Institute in 1955, and is included as a recognized name in Anders K. Orvin's 1960 paper The place-names of Jan Mayen. It follows a convention based on two then in force Orders in Council, dated 28 April 1933 and 31 May 1957, of using the Nynorsk grammatical form. The suffix "-a" in the feminine definite form was chosen, as no local dialect existed on Jan Mayen. The last part of the name, "flu(a)", means "rock awash", or "sunken rock". The geographical location is given by Orvin as 70°57′N08°28′W, with an exactitude of 1'. The rock, located two meters under the surface, has a small top area and vertical sides of about twenty meters. It is located about one nautical mile from Eggøykalven and 1.7 nautical miles west-southwest of the peninsula Eggøya. In anything but completely calm weather conditions, Nansenflua is visible by waves being broken against it. The rock is part of the remains of a crater.
Franz Josef Land, an uninhabited archipelago located in the Arctic Ocean, Barents Sea and Kara Sea, may have been discovered by the 1865 expedition of the Norwegian sealing vessel Spidsbergen captained by Nils Fredrik Rønnbeck. However, the discovery was never announced and the existence of the territory only came to public notice following the Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition of 1872, which named the archipelago in honor of Franz Joseph I of Austria. Benjamin Leigh Smith led the next expedition in 1880, which continued the work of the first expeditions in investigating the southern and central parts of the archipelago. Concurrent expeditions followed in 1896, Nansen's Fram expedition and the Jackson–Harmsworth Expedition, which met by accident. These two journeys explored the northern area and the flanks of Franz Josef Land.
Eivind Astrup was a Norwegian explorer and writer. Astrup participated in Robert Peary's expedition to Greenland in 1891–92 and mapped northern Greenland. In the follow-up Greenland expedition by Peary during 1893–94 he explored and mapped Melville Bay on the north-west coast of Greenland. Among his works is Blandt Nordpolens Naboer from 1895. He was awarded the Knight of the Order of St. Olav in 1892.
King Frederick VI Coast is a major geographic division of Greenland. It comprises the coastal area of Southeastern Greenland in Sermersooq and Kujalleq municipalities fronting the Irminger Sea of the North Atlantic Ocean. It is bordered by King Christian IX Land on the north and the Greenland Ice Sheet to the west.
Bell Island is a small island in the south-west of the Franz Josef Land archipelago in Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. The island was named by the English explorer Benjamin Leigh Smith for its bell-shaped mountain which rises steeply from the island's southern coast with the Barents Sea.
Finn Devold was a Norwegian Arctic explorer, marine biologist and meteorologist. His father was parish priest Harald Ophus Devold. Together with his brother Hallvard Devold, Finn shared an interest in the Arctic areas and in the expansion of Norwegian sovereignty across Greenland.
