Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sair Dowdy and I'm Deblin to truck Reboarding and Deblina. We're going to pick up where we left up last time with the Norwegian explorer slash diplomat Ritchie Off Nonsen, and we've already talked on the last episode a little bit about nonsense upbringing and his pretty impressive scientific studies. His first adventures there was this trek across Norway on skis, followed by another trek across all of Greenland on skis, but baby part one in two exactly crazy part one and two. But where we left off last time was aboard the from which was of course the ice ship that Nonsen had commissioned specifically for this journey over the North Pole. And in case you missed the last episode, just to give you a little recap of his motivations, he was operating under the observation that currents move east to west over the Arctic Ocean, so he had helped design this specially built ship that could withstand being frozen in the middle of the ice pack and would be purposely frozen into the ice pack, and then once they're the plan was to sort of just ride the current over the North Pole, or at least get really close to it. And it worked, or at least the first part of it worked. The From, which set off from oslo In, withstood the ice and was comfy and cozy to boot. It had a fully stocked library, as you may remember, a windmill that generated light during those Arctic nights, and a saloon. But after a couple of years at sea, Nonson was ready to leave the From behind. He had realized that the projected four to five year trip might take something more like six to seven years, and also it was clear that the ship wasn't going to travel far enough north to actually hit the pole. If he were to achieve that record, he'd have to make a dash basically head out with kayaks, skis, sleds, dogs and just one companion. But there's a crazy part three to this whole scheme. He wouldn't just be able to dash out and then return to the coziness of the ship with its windmill and its library and everything. Leaving the From meant that he'd never be able to return to it because locating the ship in the middle of the Arctic wilderness and catching up with it again too, because of course the ship would be drifting all this time, would be impossible. So instead he was going to have to, after trying to make it to the pole, find solid land and from there try to locate a settlement and hazard ice flows and polar bears and temperatures in the negative thirties along the way. No problem, right, sounds easy. But first, nonsen he never sets off without a plan, right, So his first concern was who was going to go. It was going to be either Nonson or Captain Auto swa Edrop. He decided quickly enough that square Drop was going to be responsible for the trip, so he would stay behind, and Nonson was going to be responsible for the mission as a whole, so spare Drop would stay with the from Nonson would go out on the ice, he'd take along Yalmar Johansson, a famous gymnast who was really good with the sled dogs and seemed like he could hold up under the physical and mental strain that they were going to say, it would be the major qualification for your dash to the North Pole part. Indeed, so we talked a little bit in the last episode about how Nonson differed from many other explorers, how he sort of considered the risks carefully. He observed nature the whole getting purposely packed in the ice flow is one good example of that, and observed natural conditions, and also really learned from the people who lived in the north, you know, adopting things like kayaks, uh, and knowing when to turn back to But I read some of nonsense account Farthest North, which is uh, some worry of this whole journey, And there's a passage that I think really emphasizes the care that he took, and it's it takes place when he's telling the men about his plan to make a dash for the pole, and this is what he writes. I impressed on them, however, that while it was unquestionably a fine thing to push on as far as possible towards the north, it was no whit less honorable and undertaking to bring the from safe and sound right through the polar sea and out on the other side, or if not the from at all events themselves, without any loss of life. I mean, it sounds like not the kind of speech you expect from the leader of the polar expedition, who's usually like, let's do it, you know, let's make it all the way, especially because you don't think that the rest of the crew would be clamoring to go exactly. I mean, I don't know if I would be. Some of them were actually they really wanted to go on the dash, but that he emphasized, uh, try to stay alive guys. Seems like a really important difference between him and a lot of his contemporaries. He wasn't all motivational speeches, though. He also got really busy getting together his supplies that he would need. In addition to their regular scientific observations, the guys aboard the from started preparing gear, started helping him get everything ready. This included silk tents, sewing, sleeping bags. One person even copied Johanson and Nonsense Journal and their research so that they would have twice the chance the information would have twice the chance, that is, of making it back to the outside world. Nonsen, in the meantime, worked on building bamboo frame kayaks, which were covered in canvas thirty six pounds apiece and they really look kind of funny too. They're they're not long and narrow like kayaks traditionally are because they were afraid that something like that would get bumped around so much they break their kayaks before they needed them. But if you read far this north, this is kind of the fun part of nonsense account, you know, getting ready and all the preparations, and it's before the monotony of the ice starts, where it's just cold day, one cold day after another. Um At this point he's still wondering if it will even get cold enough to warrant bringing the wolf skin clothes he's considering, and he hosts a big party to aboard the ship when it reaches the highest recorded northern latitude. So there's sort of a sense of anticipation and celebration at this point, but he's also trying to psych himself up for what's coming around New Year's Eve. He says, never before have I had such strange feelings at the commencement of the new year. It cannot fail to bring some momentous events and will possibly become one of the most remarkable years in my life, whether it leads me to success or destruction. Years come and go unnoticed in this world of ice, and we have no more knowledge here of what these years have brought to humanity than we know of what the future ones have in store. So heavy thoughts before embarking on this journey, but it does take a few more months. He has two false starts because they are so concerned about having their equipment and supply to just be flawless. But they finally left the From for good March fourteenth eight, and they had twenty eight dogs with them, those two bulky kayaks but lightweight kayaks, three fleds, and for a very short time a few extra companions who just sort of tagged along for a little while to wish them wish them off well. Things got off to a difficult start though. There were not as many level patches of ice as they were hoping there would be these ridges, and when they came across a ridge it would mean they'd have to drag the sleds over the uneven surface and then constantly disentangle all of the dog harnesses too, And the dogs weren't behaving very well because they had of course also been stuck aboard the From for months and months and not getting all the exercises that exercise that this tyle Library and Entertainment, the Windmill didn't do it for the dogs, so they weren't too far in when they had to kill the first dog, though it was what Nonson called some of the most disagreeable work they had to do on their entire journey. When they killed the dog, they fed it to the others because they needed something to feed the dogs anyway. They were starting to run low and provisions and um, we'll talk about this a little more, but his account of dealing with the dogs and gradually having to kill them is pretty heartbreaking and um it was one of the more disturbing parts of his trip. It seems so Nonson and Johansen themselves that would get so tired from this dash to the poll that sometimes they'd fall asleep while they were on their skis, but they still did maintain this kind of routine. They would stop for the day and Johansen would tend to the dogs, feed them, make sure they were all, you know, tied up put away. Nonson meanwhile, would pitch the tent and get dinner going, and then they would just crawl into their sleeping bags while dinner was cooking and thaw out. Nonson describes their clothes just from the um I guess from sweat combined with little drops of moisture getting stuck in their clothes would turn them into quote complete suits of ice armor, which I don't know that sounds really really uncomfortable because nonsense account also expresses how they look forward to dinner. All day long. They had three meals pemmican with dried potatoes, fish meal, flour and butter, and pea bean or lentil soup. And as a kind of nightcap, they'd have some white powder in boiling water. In the morning they'd have breakfast, some which sometimes included chocolate sounds better than fish meal, and they would journal before they headed out. And they had a plan too for going about this race to the pole. Originally Nonsen planned to reach the pole or go for fifty days before turning around, but by early April he was starting to reconsider, starting to think they were going to have to turn back earlier than that. So in April eighth they decided they were going to have to turn back, and they celebrated achieving at that point the northernmost record. It was only two miles from the pole. They had a big banquet, maybe a little extra chocolate or way powder, or something, and Johanssen wrote that he should have liked it if we could have got further. It has our consolation that we have done what we could, and that we have even lifted a little more of the veil which conceals this part of our planet. So kind of an understatement for disappointment. I mean, it doesn't sound too bad. They must have been upset that they couldn't actually get there. I was disappointed to what I got to this point in the story because I really thought that they were going to make it. But it turned out to be a really smart decision for them to turn around. Their new southern goal Franz Joseph Lynn was six hundred miles away, and they had to get there before the ice broke up, so they get stuck on the ice. It was a race, so the turnaround was easy. At first they had nice even ice to travel on, but things got rough as the men were driven off course by open handels and ice ridges. They kept a break neck pace, though sometimes they went for thirty six hour stretches at a time, and by mid May there were only twelve of the twenty eight dogs still alive. By June, there were only six left Nonson at one point writes about how hard it was to kill a dog that had actually been born aboard the from um so when you know, a dog he had raised. And the men themselves were at this point reduced to eating a gruel made with the dog's blood and just barely barely scraping by. They really didn't know if they were going to make it. Um Nonsen writes about how horribly he felt for treating the exhausted dog, you know, just trying to make them keep going, because it was a matter of life or death for the men. At this point, he wrote, it is the sad part of expeditions of this kind that one systematically kills all better feelings until only hard hearted egoism remains. So by late June, the slushy ice meant that the men had to start using their kayak X, carrying the two surviving dogs on top of their kayaks, so every time they hit solid ice again they had to haul the kayaks up and start over on foot. When they stopped for the night, there was the risk that they'd drift north again or a flow would open up by their tent, which you wouldn't want at all, No, because your tent could go in the water, and the I use drifting north again too. That erases any progress that you make during the day. Rock Bottom was probably when Johansen was attacked by a polar bear. You would expect that means that was the end of Johansen. He miraculously survived the attack. The polar bear hit his face and kind of must have grazed it um and jumped on top of him before Nonsen shot it um. Finally, to another Rocko attom moment, the men had to kill the last two dogs. They shot each other's. They hadn't use bullets on the dogs until this point, but they didn't have the heart to to do it anyway for these last survivors. Finally they reached land after a whole summer of looking for it. They hit an island and started to hop their way south, hunting bears along the way. They actually got a taste for polar bear cubs during this time and walruses. They did not get a taste for walruses. That the statement kind of ran together. They got a taste for polar bear cubs, but they hunted both polar bear cubs and walruses to be clear, but you can't island hot through an arctic winter, so they had to make a camp. So they used a sled runner to heck out a little ditch and build a small stone hut with moss lining and a walrus skin roof, and they modified their sleeping bags to fit to and stored up on walrus blubber and use that for fuel. So they lived in what they called a den for the next nine months. That's really hard for for me to wrap my mind around. It's one thing to be aboard the ship that's frozen in at least has the library and the little newspaper. But to be in this hut for nine months, it found very very bleak. But it also doesn't sound like what you might expect. You might think that they would, um, sort of go lord of the flies, start hating each other, start bickering constantly, maybe go a little bit crazy. They really maintained their sanity and their camaraderie to they had this almanac with them. For a little bit of entertainment. They would eat bear broth and bear steaks and blubber cakes, which were a special treat. And um, this, I guess this sort of show is how Nonsen still maintain his sanity, but it's also a sad marker if this is the best you can do. He wrote about celebrating Christmas by changing his underpants and then using the old pair as a bath sponge, and that was, you know, a real celebratory way to mark the holiday for him. Shows you what state they were at by this point. But by mid May it was warm enough finally to leave that hut and head south like in so months of hut living, though meant that they were out of shape and pretty slow, so they couldn't travel necessarily at the same pace that they had before. At one point they almost lost their kayaks, which at that point was their main method of transportation. They would have been out of luck. And then by June they were gearing up for an open water kayak journey to Spitzbergen, and they were hoping that by doing that they might find a ship along the way. But on June sevent eight, ninety six, Nonson heard barking. By pure chance, they had managed to run into the British expedition of Frederick G. Jackson, and this is kind of how their meeting went down. Jackson said, aren't you Nonson? Nonson answered yes, I am, and then Jackson replies by jove, I am glad to see you. Where have you come from now? So Jackson's careful at this point though, even while they're having this exchange not to mention the From around Nonson and Johansson. He figures that they must have been the only two survivors from some disaster. But miraculously, only days after Nonson and Johansson returned to Norway, the From and her complete crew arrived as well, having come clear of the ice pack finally at almost the exact same time. Pretty amazing, and it must have been especially amazing to Notason, considering how long he thought that it might take the From to get through. So this time, with this whole reunited From crew back in Norway, Nonson became an international celebrity. We talked about after his Greenland trip. He was a pretty big deal back home, but this time he's an international celebrity, and he started teaching oceanography at the University of Oslo. He wrote Farthest North, the one we've been quoting from a bit, and did this huge lecture tour to support it, and just by the bye, it kind of seems like farthest north is still like a boy's handbook for young adventures in Norway almost. I don't know if you could maybe kind of like into the Wild or something like that. I don't know if it's a false comparison, but something a lot of kids in Norway still read today. Uh nonsense. Prominence though in his country, came at a really great time for national politics, because the country was ready to finally become independent from Sweden and needed some kind of national hero like this guy. Yeah. Nonson was actually part of the secret delegation sent to Copenhagen in nineteen o five to feel out the Danish Prince carl On whether he was interested in becoming King of Norway. The country achieved independence in nineteen o five, and Nonson became its first ambassador to Great Britain, but he didn't take his family with him. Ava by this point had five kids with him, and she stayed behind um. He always intended on returning to a Norway in a short time, and when he finally returned to Norway in nineteen o seven, his wife died suddenly of pneumonia. Their relationship had actually been strained for some time. All that living apart probably added a lot to it, but it's safe to assume that there are two things we can know about them, and that is that she very likely helped keep him alive out on the ice. He wrote of her a lot in his diary, and he had promised her that he'd come back alive, and he was intent on keeping that promise also without her. The home life that he envisioned, five kids living together in this big house didn't really happen until his children were grown and married and he was old. Yah, his kids ended up living more with relatives and friends while he embarked on this really ambitious post explorer career, and he didn't end up remarrying until nineteen nineteen. But so moving on to that post explorer career, we alluded to it a little bit in the beginning, and it's really impressive how broad its scope. So it all starts though with World War One. Nonson accepted that further polar explorations were going to be an impossibility, so he got to work ending the Allied Blackade against neutral Norway. He wanted at least vital supplies like food and things to be able to come through, so out of this whole thing he came out of the war as the president of the Norwegian Union for the League of Nations. He was a huge League of Nations supporter, and this is where Nonson's great humanitarian career kind of kicked off. And it's a bit strange that he got so involved in this world of tricky post war negotiating, considering that he was by training a scientist, and he he was interested in returning to his science after so many years as a diplomat and as an explorer. But he was also such a star at this point that people from all over Europe were willing to hear him out. You know, he was the one guy who everybody was okay talking to. In he went to work repatriating prisoners of war, people who had waited for years for someone to help them get home again. So who was going to be paying for this? Who was going to be helping them? So when Notson was appointed to the League of Sations High Commissioner or appointed as the League of Nations High Commissioner, i should say, for prisoners of war, Nonson helped return four hundred and fifty thousand prisoners of war from twenty six countries, keeping the cost to only about one pound per prisoner. During his travels for the Pow job, he saw that many in Europe were starving, especially in the Soviet Union. So Nonson started to raise money for a relief, but he found it difficult to get governmental support for the Soviets governments weren't interested in, you know, by helping out the starving people by extension, helping out the Soviet government. Nonson turned to private donors instead, appealing to humanity over politics. He was kind of like, these are just people who need help regardless, don't have any politics. So he raised enough money and gathered enough supplies to save and estimated seven to twenty two million people according to his Nobel Prize biography. Then in nineteen one, he used his experience repatrioting POWs to start helping settle stateless refugees. So all these people left after World War One with maybe not a country or a country they couldn't return to. And the first step was creating identities for a lot of people who had lost their papers, you know, running away from their country or in some kind of wartime trauma, and we're just stuck in limbo, no papers, nowhere they could go. So he formed something called Nonson passports, which were eventually issued and recognized by fifty two governments, something I thought was pretty remarkable, and they helped hundreds of thousands of people resettle, including some pretty famous names like Igor Stravinsky and Anna Pavlovo. We talked about both of them in our Right of Spring episode uh Sergei, Rachmaninov, Mark Chical, So a lot of big names and then a lot of other people too who were just stuck with nowhere to go in the Greek government asked Nonson to figure out an unsub hordable influx of Greek refugees from Asia Minor after the Greek's defeat by the Turks. So with the League of Nations approval, Nonson arranged a swap of one million, two hundred fifty thousand Greek Turks for five hundred thousand Turkish Greeks with compensation to start new lives. And I think that was kind of a controvert. I mean, it sounds controversial. It's easy to imagine, like will switch our ethnic Greeks for your ethnic Turks, and people will move from place that they've lived for maybe generations. But it seemed to work in this case, and Nonson ended up getting a lot of credit for it in the end. Then, on December tenth nWo, Nonson won the Nobel Peace Prize. His biographer Roland Huntford wrote that quote, Nonson is among the few really worthy winners of the Peace Prize, although he is probably the one who spent the shortest time earning it. A Danish publisher actually ended up doubling the prize money that Nonson got, and Nonson spent it on Greek refugees and on to model farms in the Ukraine and by the Volga, so he brought them their first tractors in the area. It was a big deal. And then by the late nineteen twenties knots and began experiencing heart problems and on May thirteenth, nineteen thirty, he died of a heart attack at home. He's buried or he was buried May seventeen, on Norway's Constitution Day. And I think it is important to mention that amidst all of this nonsen of fandom sort of you know, people who were willing from people from a lot of different countries who are willing to work with him and listen to him. He did have his critics. He was accused by a lot of people of being a Russia worshiper because he was trying to help people who were starving there, and some folks interpreted that as him working with the Soviets, and he did get some criticism for that when he won the Nobel Prize. It was something he worked hard to deny, you know, say that was not his motive, but it was still out there. But he did have a certain agenda. He had certain goals, and I think appeal to people is best translated by this quote that you have here on your outline. He says, it is within us all. It is our mysterious longing to accomplish something, to fill life with something more than a daily journey from home to the office and from the office home again. It is our ever present longing to surmount difficulties and dangers, to see that which is hidden, and seek the places lying away from the beaten track. It is the call of the unknown, the longing for the land beyond, the divine power deeply rooted within the soul of man. It is this spirit which drove the first hunters to new places, and the incentive for perhaps our greatest deeds the force of human thought, which spreads its wings and flies where freedom knows no bounds. Spirit of adventure absolutely, and I think people of any time can relate to this. I think so and wanting to do something bigger with your life. And I think that maybe the most interesting point of Nonsense life is he is famous for being an explorer, but he ultimately did do something bigger with his life than achieve a polar record or something like that. A remarkable feat of endurance. He went on to actually really help a lot of people, and he did that by not dying out there on the ice. But there's although I love this um how he says home to the office and from the office home again, it doesn't seem like for him ifice. Maybe he worked in the lab for a few years, but no, he certainly wasn't in a cube for any of his days. There's a lot of ways to learn more about Nonsense today. He is a really celebrated figure in Norway. There's the fram Museum which is in Oslo, and then the fritchi Off Nonsen Institute, which focuses on environmental politics and bio diversity, those kinds of things. Or if you are actually an explorer. Somebody can who can handle this, You can learn about him by getting out there on the ice, and it seems that a lot of people do just that. I read a recent story about a Norwegian living in Maine who had cross Greenland on skis, and he said that quote, if you're Norwegian, you love to walk in the footsteps of your country's explorers. And then there was another story recently in National Geographic that featured two Norwegian adventurers who were retracing Nonson and Johansson's polar trip using para sales fortunately instead of dogs, but realizing that it was still a really difficult journey and they knew where they were going this time. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's anything I would take on probably at any point. I don't. Polar exploration has no real appeal for me. No, but it doesn't make for a really good story and a really great podcast. So I think that's one that was frequently requested as well, was it not? It was? And really all sorts of these Polar Explorer episodes are very frequently suggested, So let us know what once you really really want to hear about, or they don't have to be exploring ac regions that can be um any part of the world. Just let us know where History podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter at miss in history, and we're on Facebook. Those are two really great ways to reach out to it. And if you think you know a lot about one of the topics we discussed on this podcast, which is dogs and sleds, we have an awesome idd or odd quiz on our website and you can check it out by visiting our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how stupp Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. 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Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sair Dowdy and I'm Deblin to truck Reboarding and Deblina. We're going to pick up where we left up last time with the Norwegian explorer slash diplomat Ritchie Off Nonsen, and we've already talked on the last episode a little bit about nonsense upbringing and his pretty impressive scientific studies. His first adventures there was this trek across Norway on skis, followed by another trek across all of Greenland on skis, but baby part one in two exactly crazy part one and two. But where we left off last time was aboard the from which was of course the ice ship that Nonsen had commissioned specifically for this journey over the North Pole. And in case you missed the last episode, just to give you a little recap of his motivations, he was operating under the observation that currents move east to west over the Arctic Ocean, so he had helped design this specially built ship that could withstand being frozen in the middle of the ice pack and would be purposely frozen into the ice pack, and then once they're the plan was to sort of just ride the current over the North Pole, or at least get really close to it. And it worked, or at least the first part of it worked. The From, which set off from oslo In, withstood the ice and was comfy and cozy to boot. It had a fully stocked library, as you may remember, a windmill that generated light during those Arctic nights, and a saloon. But after a couple of years at sea, Nonson was ready to leave the From behind. He had realized that the projected four to five year trip might take something more like six to seven years, and also it was clear that the ship wasn't going to travel far enough north to actually hit the pole. If he were to achieve that record, he'd have to make a dash basically head out with kayaks, skis, sleds, dogs and just one companion. But there's a crazy part three to this whole scheme. He wouldn't just be able to dash out and then return to the coziness of the ship with its windmill and its library and everything. Leaving the From meant that he'd never be able to return to it because locating the ship in the middle of the Arctic wilderness and catching up with it again too, because of course the ship would be drifting all this time, would be impossible. So instead he was going to have to, after trying to make it to the pole, find solid land and from there try to locate a settlement and hazard ice flows and polar bears and temperatures in the negative thirties along the way. No problem, right, sounds easy. But first, nonsen he never sets off without a plan, right, So his first concern was who was going to go. It was going to be either Nonson or Captain Auto swa Edrop. He decided quickly enough that square Drop was going to be responsible for the trip, so he would stay behind, and Nonson was going to be responsible for the mission as a whole, so spare Drop would stay with the from Nonson would go out on the ice, he'd take along Yalmar Johansson, a famous gymnast who was really good with the sled dogs and seemed like he could hold up under the physical and mental strain that they were going to say, it would be the major qualification for your dash to the North Pole part. Indeed, so we talked a little bit in the last episode about how Nonson differed from many other explorers, how he sort of considered the risks carefully. He observed nature the whole getting purposely packed in the ice flow is one good example of that, and observed natural conditions, and also really learned from the people who lived in the north, you know, adopting things like kayaks, uh, and knowing when to turn back to But I read some of nonsense account Farthest North, which is uh, some worry of this whole journey, And there's a passage that I think really emphasizes the care that he took, and it's it takes place when he's telling the men about his plan to make a dash for the pole, and this is what he writes. I impressed on them, however, that while it was unquestionably a fine thing to push on as far as possible towards the north, it was no whit less honorable and undertaking to bring the from safe and sound right through the polar sea and out on the other side, or if not the from at all events themselves, without any loss of life. I mean, it sounds like not the kind of speech you expect from the leader of the polar expedition, who's usually like, let's do it, you know, let's make it all the way, especially because you don't think that the rest of the crew would be clamoring to go exactly. I mean, I don't know if I would be. Some of them were actually they really wanted to go on the dash, but that he emphasized, uh, try to stay alive guys. Seems like a really important difference between him and a lot of his contemporaries. He wasn't all motivational speeches, though. He also got really busy getting together his supplies that he would need. In addition to their regular scientific observations, the guys aboard the from started preparing gear, started helping him get everything ready. This included silk tents, sewing, sleeping bags. One person even copied Johanson and Nonsense Journal and their research so that they would have twice the chance the information would have twice the chance, that is, of making it back to the outside world. Nonsen, in the meantime, worked on building bamboo frame kayaks, which were covered in canvas thirty six pounds apiece and they really look kind of funny too. They're they're not long and narrow like kayaks traditionally are because they were afraid that something like that would get bumped around so much they break their kayaks before they needed them. But if you read far this north, this is kind of the fun part of nonsense account, you know, getting ready and all the preparations, and it's before the monotony of the ice starts, where it's just cold day, one cold day after another. Um At this point he's still wondering if it will even get cold enough to warrant bringing the wolf skin clothes he's considering, and he hosts a big party to aboard the ship when it reaches the highest recorded northern latitude. So there's sort of a sense of anticipation and celebration at this point, but he's also trying to psych himself up for what's coming around New Year's Eve. He says, never before have I had such strange feelings at the commencement of the new year. It cannot fail to bring some momentous events and will possibly become one of the most remarkable years in my life, whether it leads me to success or destruction. Years come and go unnoticed in this world of ice, and we have no more knowledge here of what these years have brought to humanity than we know of what the future ones have in store. So heavy thoughts before embarking on this journey, but it does take a few more months. He has two false starts because they are so concerned about having their equipment and supply to just be flawless. But they finally left the From for good March fourteenth eight, and they had twenty eight dogs with them, those two bulky kayaks but lightweight kayaks, three fleds, and for a very short time a few extra companions who just sort of tagged along for a little while to wish them wish them off well. Things got off to a difficult start though. There were not as many level patches of ice as they were hoping there would be these ridges, and when they came across a ridge it would mean they'd have to drag the sleds over the uneven surface and then constantly disentangle all of the dog harnesses too, And the dogs weren't behaving very well because they had of course also been stuck aboard the From for months and months and not getting all the exercises that exercise that this tyle Library and Entertainment, the Windmill didn't do it for the dogs, so they weren't too far in when they had to kill the first dog, though it was what Nonson called some of the most disagreeable work they had to do on their entire journey. When they killed the dog, they fed it to the others because they needed something to feed the dogs anyway. They were starting to run low and provisions and um, we'll talk about this a little more, but his account of dealing with the dogs and gradually having to kill them is pretty heartbreaking and um it was one of the more disturbing parts of his trip. It seems so Nonson and Johansen themselves that would get so tired from this dash to the poll that sometimes they'd fall asleep while they were on their skis, but they still did maintain this kind of routine. They would stop for the day and Johansen would tend to the dogs, feed them, make sure they were all, you know, tied up put away. Nonson meanwhile, would pitch the tent and get dinner going, and then they would just crawl into their sleeping bags while dinner was cooking and thaw out. Nonson describes their clothes just from the um I guess from sweat combined with little drops of moisture getting stuck in their clothes would turn them into quote complete suits of ice armor, which I don't know that sounds really really uncomfortable because nonsense account also expresses how they look forward to dinner. All day long. They had three meals pemmican with dried potatoes, fish meal, flour and butter, and pea bean or lentil soup. And as a kind of nightcap, they'd have some white powder in boiling water. In the morning they'd have breakfast, some which sometimes included chocolate sounds better than fish meal, and they would journal before they headed out. And they had a plan too for going about this race to the pole. Originally Nonsen planned to reach the pole or go for fifty days before turning around, but by early April he was starting to reconsider, starting to think they were going to have to turn back earlier than that. So in April eighth they decided they were going to have to turn back, and they celebrated achieving at that point the northernmost record. It was only two miles from the pole. They had a big banquet, maybe a little extra chocolate or way powder, or something, and Johanssen wrote that he should have liked it if we could have got further. It has our consolation that we have done what we could, and that we have even lifted a little more of the veil which conceals this part of our planet. So kind of an understatement for disappointment. I mean, it doesn't sound too bad. They must have been upset that they couldn't actually get there. I was disappointed to what I got to this point in the story because I really thought that they were going to make it. But it turned out to be a really smart decision for them to turn around. Their new southern goal Franz Joseph Lynn was six hundred miles away, and they had to get there before the ice broke up, so they get stuck on the ice. It was a race, so the turnaround was easy. At first they had nice even ice to travel on, but things got rough as the men were driven off course by open handels and ice ridges. They kept a break neck pace, though sometimes they went for thirty six hour stretches at a time, and by mid May there were only twelve of the twenty eight dogs still alive. By June, there were only six left Nonson at one point writes about how hard it was to kill a dog that had actually been born aboard the from um so when you know, a dog he had raised. And the men themselves were at this point reduced to eating a gruel made with the dog's blood and just barely barely scraping by. They really didn't know if they were going to make it. Um Nonsen writes about how horribly he felt for treating the exhausted dog, you know, just trying to make them keep going, because it was a matter of life or death for the men. At this point, he wrote, it is the sad part of expeditions of this kind that one systematically kills all better feelings until only hard hearted egoism remains. So by late June, the slushy ice meant that the men had to start using their kayak X, carrying the two surviving dogs on top of their kayaks, so every time they hit solid ice again they had to haul the kayaks up and start over on foot. When they stopped for the night, there was the risk that they'd drift north again or a flow would open up by their tent, which you wouldn't want at all, No, because your tent could go in the water, and the I use drifting north again too. That erases any progress that you make during the day. Rock Bottom was probably when Johansen was attacked by a polar bear. You would expect that means that was the end of Johansen. He miraculously survived the attack. The polar bear hit his face and kind of must have grazed it um and jumped on top of him before Nonsen shot it um. Finally, to another Rocko attom moment, the men had to kill the last two dogs. They shot each other's. They hadn't use bullets on the dogs until this point, but they didn't have the heart to to do it anyway for these last survivors. Finally they reached land after a whole summer of looking for it. They hit an island and started to hop their way south, hunting bears along the way. They actually got a taste for polar bear cubs during this time and walruses. They did not get a taste for walruses. That the statement kind of ran together. They got a taste for polar bear cubs, but they hunted both polar bear cubs and walruses to be clear, but you can't island hot through an arctic winter, so they had to make a camp. So they used a sled runner to heck out a little ditch and build a small stone hut with moss lining and a walrus skin roof, and they modified their sleeping bags to fit to and stored up on walrus blubber and use that for fuel. So they lived in what they called a den for the next nine months. That's really hard for for me to wrap my mind around. It's one thing to be aboard the ship that's frozen in at least has the library and the little newspaper. But to be in this hut for nine months, it found very very bleak. But it also doesn't sound like what you might expect. You might think that they would, um, sort of go lord of the flies, start hating each other, start bickering constantly, maybe go a little bit crazy. They really maintained their sanity and their camaraderie to they had this almanac with them. For a little bit of entertainment. They would eat bear broth and bear steaks and blubber cakes, which were a special treat. And um, this, I guess this sort of show is how Nonsen still maintain his sanity, but it's also a sad marker if this is the best you can do. He wrote about celebrating Christmas by changing his underpants and then using the old pair as a bath sponge, and that was, you know, a real celebratory way to mark the holiday for him. Shows you what state they were at by this point. But by mid May it was warm enough finally to leave that hut and head south like in so months of hut living, though meant that they were out of shape and pretty slow, so they couldn't travel necessarily at the same pace that they had before. At one point they almost lost their kayaks, which at that point was their main method of transportation. They would have been out of luck. And then by June they were gearing up for an open water kayak journey to Spitzbergen, and they were hoping that by doing that they might find a ship along the way. But on June sevent eight, ninety six, Nonson heard barking. By pure chance, they had managed to run into the British expedition of Frederick G. Jackson, and this is kind of how their meeting went down. Jackson said, aren't you Nonson? Nonson answered yes, I am, and then Jackson replies by jove, I am glad to see you. Where have you come from now? So Jackson's careful at this point though, even while they're having this exchange not to mention the From around Nonson and Johansson. He figures that they must have been the only two survivors from some disaster. But miraculously, only days after Nonson and Johansson returned to Norway, the From and her complete crew arrived as well, having come clear of the ice pack finally at almost the exact same time. Pretty amazing, and it must have been especially amazing to Notason, considering how long he thought that it might take the From to get through. So this time, with this whole reunited From crew back in Norway, Nonson became an international celebrity. We talked about after his Greenland trip. He was a pretty big deal back home, but this time he's an international celebrity, and he started teaching oceanography at the University of Oslo. He wrote Farthest North, the one we've been quoting from a bit, and did this huge lecture tour to support it, and just by the bye, it kind of seems like farthest north is still like a boy's handbook for young adventures in Norway almost. I don't know if you could maybe kind of like into the Wild or something like that. I don't know if it's a false comparison, but something a lot of kids in Norway still read today. Uh nonsense. Prominence though in his country, came at a really great time for national politics, because the country was ready to finally become independent from Sweden and needed some kind of national hero like this guy. Yeah. Nonson was actually part of the secret delegation sent to Copenhagen in nineteen o five to feel out the Danish Prince carl On whether he was interested in becoming King of Norway. The country achieved independence in nineteen o five, and Nonson became its first ambassador to Great Britain, but he didn't take his family with him. Ava by this point had five kids with him, and she stayed behind um. He always intended on returning to a Norway in a short time, and when he finally returned to Norway in nineteen o seven, his wife died suddenly of pneumonia. Their relationship had actually been strained for some time. All that living apart probably added a lot to it, but it's safe to assume that there are two things we can know about them, and that is that she very likely helped keep him alive out on the ice. He wrote of her a lot in his diary, and he had promised her that he'd come back alive, and he was intent on keeping that promise also without her. The home life that he envisioned, five kids living together in this big house didn't really happen until his children were grown and married and he was old. Yah, his kids ended up living more with relatives and friends while he embarked on this really ambitious post explorer career, and he didn't end up remarrying until nineteen nineteen. But so moving on to that post explorer career, we alluded to it a little bit in the beginning, and it's really impressive how broad its scope. So it all starts though with World War One. Nonson accepted that further polar explorations were going to be an impossibility, so he got to work ending the Allied Blackade against neutral Norway. He wanted at least vital supplies like food and things to be able to come through, so out of this whole thing he came out of the war as the president of the Norwegian Union for the League of Nations. He was a huge League of Nations supporter, and this is where Nonson's great humanitarian career kind of kicked off. And it's a bit strange that he got so involved in this world of tricky post war negotiating, considering that he was by training a scientist, and he he was interested in returning to his science after so many years as a diplomat and as an explorer. But he was also such a star at this point that people from all over Europe were willing to hear him out. You know, he was the one guy who everybody was okay talking to. In he went to work repatriating prisoners of war, people who had waited for years for someone to help them get home again. So who was going to be paying for this? Who was going to be helping them? So when Notson was appointed to the League of Sations High Commissioner or appointed as the League of Nations High Commissioner, i should say, for prisoners of war, Nonson helped return four hundred and fifty thousand prisoners of war from twenty six countries, keeping the cost to only about one pound per prisoner. During his travels for the Pow job, he saw that many in Europe were starving, especially in the Soviet Union. So Nonson started to raise money for a relief, but he found it difficult to get governmental support for the Soviets governments weren't interested in, you know, by helping out the starving people by extension, helping out the Soviet government. Nonson turned to private donors instead, appealing to humanity over politics. He was kind of like, these are just people who need help regardless, don't have any politics. So he raised enough money and gathered enough supplies to save and estimated seven to twenty two million people according to his Nobel Prize biography. Then in nineteen one, he used his experience repatrioting POWs to start helping settle stateless refugees. So all these people left after World War One with maybe not a country or a country they couldn't return to. And the first step was creating identities for a lot of people who had lost their papers, you know, running away from their country or in some kind of wartime trauma, and we're just stuck in limbo, no papers, nowhere they could go. So he formed something called Nonson passports, which were eventually issued and recognized by fifty two governments, something I thought was pretty remarkable, and they helped hundreds of thousands of people resettle, including some pretty famous names like Igor Stravinsky and Anna Pavlovo. We talked about both of them in our Right of Spring episode uh Sergei, Rachmaninov, Mark Chical, So a lot of big names and then a lot of other people too who were just stuck with nowhere to go in the Greek government asked Nonson to figure out an unsub hordable influx of Greek refugees from Asia Minor after the Greek's defeat by the Turks. So with the League of Nations approval, Nonson arranged a swap of one million, two hundred fifty thousand Greek Turks for five hundred thousand Turkish Greeks with compensation to start new lives. And I think that was kind of a controvert. I mean, it sounds controversial. It's easy to imagine, like will switch our ethnic Greeks for your ethnic Turks, and people will move from place that they've lived for maybe generations. But it seemed to work in this case, and Nonson ended up getting a lot of credit for it in the end. Then, on December tenth nWo, Nonson won the Nobel Peace Prize. His biographer Roland Huntford wrote that quote, Nonson is among the few really worthy winners of the Peace Prize, although he is probably the one who spent the shortest time earning it. A Danish publisher actually ended up doubling the prize money that Nonson got, and Nonson spent it on Greek refugees and on to model farms in the Ukraine and by the Volga, so he brought them their first tractors in the area. It was a big deal. And then by the late nineteen twenties knots and began experiencing heart problems and on May thirteenth, nineteen thirty, he died of a heart attack at home. He's buried or he was buried May seventeen, on Norway's Constitution Day. And I think it is important to mention that amidst all of this nonsen of fandom sort of you know, people who were willing from people from a lot of different countries who are willing to work with him and listen to him. He did have his critics. He was accused by a lot of people of being a Russia worshiper because he was trying to help people who were starving there, and some folks interpreted that as him working with the Soviets, and he did get some criticism for that when he won the Nobel Prize. It was something he worked hard to deny, you know, say that was not his motive, but it was still out there. But he did have a certain agenda. He had certain goals, and I think appeal to people is best translated by this quote that you have here on your outline. He says, it is within us all. It is our mysterious longing to accomplish something, to fill life with something more than a daily journey from home to the office and from the office home again. It is our ever present longing to surmount difficulties and dangers, to see that which is hidden, and seek the places lying away from the beaten track. It is the call of the unknown, the longing for the land beyond, the divine power deeply rooted within the soul of man. It is this spirit which drove the first hunters to new places, and the incentive for perhaps our greatest deeds the force of human thought, which spreads its wings and flies where freedom knows no bounds. Spirit of adventure absolutely, and I think people of any time can relate to this. I think so and wanting to do something bigger with your life. And I think that maybe the most interesting point of Nonsense life is he is famous for being an explorer, but he ultimately did do something bigger with his life than achieve a polar record or something like that. A remarkable feat of endurance. He went on to actually really help a lot of people, and he did that by not dying out there on the ice. But there's although I love this um how he says home to the office and from the office home again, it doesn't seem like for him ifice. Maybe he worked in the lab for a few years, but no, he certainly wasn't in a cube for any of his days. There's a lot of ways to learn more about Nonsense today. He is a really celebrated figure in Norway. There's the fram Museum which is in Oslo, and then the fritchi Off Nonsen Institute, which focuses on environmental politics and bio diversity, those kinds of things. Or if you are actually an explorer. Somebody can who can handle this, You can learn about him by getting out there on the ice, and it seems that a lot of people do just that. I read a recent story about a Norwegian living in Maine who had cross Greenland on skis, and he said that quote, if you're Norwegian, you love to walk in the footsteps of your country's explorers. And then there was another story recently in National Geographic that featured two Norwegian adventurers who were retracing Nonson and Johansson's polar trip using para sales fortunately instead of dogs, but realizing that it was still a really difficult journey and they knew where they were going this time. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's anything I would take on probably at any point. I don't. Polar exploration has no real appeal for me. No, but it doesn't make for a really good story and a really great podcast. So I think that's one that was frequently requested as well, was it not? It was? And really all sorts of these Polar Explorer episodes are very frequently suggested, So let us know what once you really really want to hear about, or they don't have to be exploring ac regions that can be um any part of the world. Just let us know where History podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter at miss in history, and we're on Facebook. Those are two really great ways to reach out to it. And if you think you know a lot about one of the topics we discussed on this podcast, which is dogs and sleds, we have an awesome idd or odd quiz on our website and you can check it out by visiting our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how stupp Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. 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