AKA the last of the Vikings, Roald Amundsen was a heroic Norwegian explorer of the polar regions.\u00a0 He was the first to reach both the north and south poles and the first to traverse the Northwest Passage (the stretch of Canada between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans).\u00a0 His success in these endeavors is even more apparent\u00a0considering the\u00a0failure of those before him.\u00a0 Amundsen made quite the name for Norway in terms of exploration of extreme regions.\u00a0 Unfortunately, his last whereabouts were on a rescue mission of 3 other explorers who crashed on their way back from the north pole.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Amundsen, one of four brothers, was born into a family of Norwegian shipowners and captains in a small town called Borge, which lies between Fredrikstad and Sarpsborg.\u00a0 While his 3 older brothers entered the maritime industry, his mother’s desire was to keep Roald out of it; she wanted him to become a doctor.\u00a0 Being the good son he was, he kept his promise to his mother until she died when he was just 21 years old.\u00a0 At this point, he left the university and took to a life at sea.\u00a0 Amundsen’s secret desire was fueled by Fritjof Nansen’s (another famous Norwegian explorer) crossing of Greenland in 1888.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Amundsen was 25 years old, he was first mate on a Belgian Antarctic Expedition on a ship called Belgica, <\/em>which became frozen in sea ice off of Alexander Island near the Antarctic Peninsula.\u00a0 The crew endured a tough winter and barely survived to return home.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since the time of Christopher Columbus, he and others had attempted to traverse the Northwest Passage.\u00a0 It wasn’t until 1903 that this mission was accomplished by Roald Amundsen with a small crew in a seal hunting ship called Gj\u00f8a.\u00a0 <\/em>The trip took several years, during which time Amundsen learned important survival skills from the natives, including the use of sled dogs and animal skins (rather than a cumbersome parka) to keep warm.\u00a0 It wasn’t until December of 1905, after having\u00a0successfully traversed the Northwest Passage and on his\u00a0way back,\u00a0that Amundsen was able to send a telegraph to Norway announcing his triumph.\u00a0 At this point Amundsen was informed of the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden; Norway was fully independent with her own king!\u00a0 Amundsen was ecstatic and fueled his drive even more to explore new territory as a proud subject of the king of Norway.<\/p>\n In 1910, Amundsen left Oslo heading south for Antarctica on Fram, <\/em>the ship\u00a0that Fritjof Nansen had used in an earlier expedition.\u00a0 After one failed attempt to reach the pole, Amundsen’s success was made public on March 7, 1912.\u00a0 The expedition certainly did not happen without hardship.\u00a0 Of the 52 dogs the group originally started with, only 11 survived the trip.\u00a0<\/p>\n Amundsen endured other polar adventures throughout his life, and as mentioned earlier, the arctic claimed his life when\u00a0the plane he was in\u00a0went down while flying over the Arctic Ocean\u00a0on a rescue mission (1928).\u00a0 He had always said that he wanted\u00a0to do in the\u00a0arctic.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n \ufffd<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AKA the last of the Vikings, Roald Amundsen was a heroic Norwegian explorer of the polar regions.\u00a0 He was the first to reach both the north and south poles and the first to traverse the Northwest Passage (the stretch of Canada between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans).\u00a0 His success in these endeavors is even more…<\/p>\n