What I Am Reading: "Nansen" by Roland Huntford

Every summer since 2016, when it becomes sufficiently hot, I read a polar book. My first, discovered through the old Infiltration issues I was reading at the time, was Big Dead Place by Nicholas Johnson, a memoir of a seasonal worker in Antarctica. The next year, it was The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen by Stephen Bown, a contender for my favorite biography. Last year it was an Amundsen tie-in, Disaster at the Pole by Wilbur Cross, about Umberto Nobile’s ill-fated airship expedition that Amundsen was involved in (I also cheated and read a novel about Alfred Wegener in the spring that year). This year I went back a generation, and read the only biography of Amundsen’s predecessor, Fridtjof Nansen.

Obviously I have a fondness for Roald Amundsen, enigmatic and competent first man to the south pole and the second-most-famous interwar aviation disappearance. Fridtjof Nansen was interesting for another reason beyond polar exploration: after his short but important career as a polar explorer, he was a political figure in Norway as it gained its independence from the dual monarchy with Sweden; and he went on to organize the League of Nations’ refugee relief efforts in the wake of World War 1.

Nansen was a moody, overbearing figure, and wasn’t always the greatest leader of men during his two expeditions.  His real skills came as a planner, and he revolutionized polar travel in many ways. The book covers each of his expeditions in considerable detail, with over 60% of the total pagecount dedicated to them. Compared to previous efforts, Nansen’s expeditions slimmed down the headcount and mostly did away with scientific pretensions. He normalized the use of skis to travel, and was meticulous in provisioning. He crossed the Greenland ice shelf in 1888 with a half-dozen men, specifically chosen for skiing abilities. Later, he commissioned the Fram, a ship built specifically to withstand the pressures of ice, and planned to test the existence of a polar current by locking it in the ice north of Siberia from 1893 to 1896. After a few years of boredom (but no casualties), he set off with a companion to try to reach the North Pole on foot. This was aborted, and after a hair-raising journey across the ice caps, they reached Norway again safely. The book makes a day-by-day recount of the journey interesting, and not the plod it easily could have been.

After these expeditions, Nansen’s active role in polar exploration receded. Norway amicably gained its independence from Sweden in the early years of the 20th century, a task to which Nansen lent his prestige and some negotiating skills in London. He went on to be the new country’s first ambassador to Britain, leaving after a treaty of territorial recognition was enacted. After this, he seemed adrift for a few years, working on some scientific endeavors (in the first part of his career, he was a pioneering neurologist), some Arctic endeavors, and the occasional political intrigue. Restless and gloomy (as ever), he finally found a challenge to occupy his time with the League of Nations.

Nansen first became involved in the diplomacy and logistics of returning Central Powers POWs from Russia, and segued from there into his main pursuit, Russian famine relief. From there, he was appointed High Commissioner of Refugees, and worked mainly on settlement of White Russians. His role was somewhat informal – the League of Nations appointment was mainly a way to gain the legitimacy to fundraise and coordinate third parties such as the Red Cross. As he had in Norway, he mainly just served as a legitimizing figurehead, and much of his work was carried out by his staff, such as future UK Labour party official Philip Noel-Baker. Each of his projects were criticized as inept by outside observers compared to other humanitarian actors. His final project was the planning of a controversial population swap between Greece and Turkey, with forced resettlement of Thracian Turks and Anatolian Greeks who had settled during the Ottoman Empire. All of this took place in the early 1920s.

Nansen’s record in office as Refugee Commissioner is shakier than I had hoped when I started the book. The population swap could likely be considered a form of ethnic cleansing, and most of his efforts at Russian famine relief made him the patsy of early Soviet propaganda efforts. However, he does have the legacy of the Nansen Passport, an identifying document issued to stateless persons that allowed them to legally cross borders. Perhaps his operation’s limitations were understandable considering the lack of official funding. But there was so much postwar population chaos (as seen in the ever-relevant Paris 1919) that it just seems like an opportunity was missed; his only work is that mentioned above and a failed effort to get help to the Armenians. I’ve read Samantha Powers’ biography of Sergio Viera de Mello, and this early League work (naturally) doesn’t compare to the more robust apparatus, imperfect as it may have been, that the UN eventually put in place. The problems are multifaceted, and it’s not fair to simply blame Nansen, or even to simply blame the League. The United States certainly could have done more for refugees and the League, and persuasion efforts to have us let even White Russian refugees in failed. A familiar story with a familiar ending.

The literary comparison that Huntford continuously makes is to Goethe’s Faust, but the comparison that I’ve reached is a bit more contemporary: I think that Nansen is something like the real-life version of Lord Asriel, from the His Dark Materials series. A scientist, arctic explorer, and political mover-and-shaker, Asriel carries the same stern and intimidating presence that Nansen did, and is similarly able to bend people to his will through sheer force of personality. Asriel shows the same irreverence toward authority that Nansen came to show toward his own government, and the same concern for the downtrodden (providing political support for the Gyptians). They both got up to plenty of international intrigue, though Asriel’s is mixed in more closely with his polar work, while Nansen’s came in a second career.