Nansen realised that the situation
was becoming dire: if the men were
pulled even farther out into the north
Atlantic, they would not only lose their
chance to cross Greenland’s ice but
might even perish in the rough surf.
“The breakers seem to be drawing
nearer; their roar grows louder,” Nansen
noted in his journal. “The situation
promises before long to be critical.”
By luck, in the middle of that night
the currents turned, and the following
day the expedition could resume rowing
toward the shore. Finally, after 12 days
at sea, Nansen and his colleagues land-
ed on a beach on Greenland’s eastern
shore, just north of Cape Tordenskjold.
The extended time at sea, and
diversions forced by the ice floes, had
landed them much farther south than
they had planned, however, so they
began working their way north up
the frozen coast by boat – a plodding,
tiring effort that was brightened only
by friendly encounters with native Inuit
kayakers and a stay at an Inuit encamp-
ment at Cape Bille.
About a week later, they reached
a point from where Nansen could see
that the inland ice would be easily
accessible from the coastal rocks. On
11 August, near a small mountain
named Kiatak, he decided to stop
rowing north, make a final camp on
the shore, and ready his team for their
journey west across the ice. Four days
later, they departed inland.
On the coasts, Greenland’s calving
glaciers can drop an iceberg and trigger
a massive wave that can swamp a boat
and drown its people without warning
- a concern that had kept Nansen and
his men in a constant state of worry as
they rowed up the coast past icy tongues
protruding from these thick frozen
rivers. As the team journeyed into the
inland ice, however, Nansen discovered
the perils of crevasses – deep cracks
formed as the massive ice sheet, pulled
by gravity, flows over bumps and hills,
causing strains that split the ice.
What makes crevasses particularly
hazardous is that they are sometimes
obscured by fresh snow. As Nansen
moved up the eastern slope of the ice,
his team encountered many narrow fis-
sures that could be forded with a stride
or a jump, but others were hidden from
sight, leading the men to plunge up to
their armpits, their legs dangling over
an abyss. Other cracks were easy to spot
but too wide to jump across.
For that reason, the expedition’s
route up onto the ice sheet was not a
straight line. They were forced to zig
and zag around hazards until they
reached a smoother, safer surface at
a higher altitude.Violent storms
The team faced other problems, too.
Several times in late August the men
were confined to their tent by violent
storms lasting for days. But even on
days of fair weather when they could
move for ward, they were beset by a
thirst that seemed unquenchable.
Originally, Nansen proposed that each
man should fill a flask of snow each
morning, allowing the heat from their
bodies to melt it into drinking water.
Yet this wasn’t nearly enough to hydrate
the men, and their thirst persisted all
day, every day. To frequently stop and
use a cooking stove to melt snow was
considered by Nansen to be impractical.
Time was precious. They had to keepGreenland’s calving
glaciers can drop an
iceberg and trigger
a massive wave that
can swamp a boat
and drown its people
without warning
moving across the ice sheet before colder
weather set in.
The men subsisted on pea soup, bis-
cuits, hot chocolate and canned pemmi-
can, a calorie-rich concoction of dried
meat, berries and suet. But the arduous
trek left them in a constant state of hun-
ger, exacerbated by the heavy burden of
their sleds. Packed with food and gear,
the sleds’ weight – each at least 100kg –
made them extraordinarily difficult to
pull up the slope. The ropes with which
they hauled the sleds burned into the
men’s shoulders. Nansen felt that the
task was akin to hauling dead weight
through sand.
At the end of August, having reached
an altitude of 1,800m, Nansen an-
nounced that the expedition would take
a shorter route across the ice so that they
would arrive at a town farther south on
the west coast than originally intended.
Their delays and the threat of colder
weather had led him to think that it
would be folly to pursue a longer course.
The revised destination was Godthaab
(now called Nuuk, Greenland’s capital),
shaving a distance of nearly 100 miles
off their journey. The rest of the party,
in a state of near-exhaustion, cheered
the news. “They seemed to have already
had more than enough of the inland
ice,” Nansen noted.
On 2 September, the team discerned
an encouraging sign: the ice beneath
their feet had begun to level out, and
they were able to don their skis. What
followed were days of satisf ying progress
interspersed with nights of bitter cold
and snowstorms, sometimes leaving
them tent-bound.
Huddled in reindeer sleeping bags,
the men passed time by sleeping or read-
ing books. In the evenings, tempera-
tures usually dropped to around –20°C
to –30°C. On 11 September, though,
Nansen noted that the thermometer he
kept under his pillow at night measured
–35°F (–37°C) – but that was the lower
limit of the instrument’s measurement
scale ; he surmised that the mercur yJOURNEYS In the footsteps of Nansen’s traverse of the Greenland Ice Sheet