I have been thinking about Roald Amundsen. Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer, born in 1872, who is best remembered for his famous race to the South Pole against Robert Scott in 1911.
His exploits in the northern hemisphere some years earlier, however, were in fact of more historical significance. In 1905 he realised a dream that had been centuries old: he successfully navigated the elusive Northwest Passage.
The passage was a sea-route that had long been presumed to exist from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific around the north of Canada. Martin Frobisher had tried and failed to find it in 1576; Sebastian Cabot was also unsuccessful around the same time; and the list of other adventurers who tried to identify the elusive pathway over the years contains many names that have since become familiar - Henry Hudson, William Barents and William Baffin, just to name a few.
Before Amundsen, John Ross was the one who had come nearest to the goal. In 1818 he turned into what is now known as Lancaster Sound, the last link in the chain of narrow waterways; he looked ahead and saw nothing but a great bank of cloud, and under the impression that it was a range of mountains barring his way, he turned back - a decision that he was to regret for the remainder of his life.
Amundsen's voyage began in 1903. Two years later, in December 1905, having been icebound for long periods en route, he sailed his frail fishing-craft, the Gjoa, into the harbour at Fort Egbert in northern Alaska, and it was apparent that the Northwest Passage had been conquered.
Amundsen continued exploring for the remainder of his life. By the 1920s he was devoting himself to the aerial exploration of the polar regions. Then, when the airship Italia was wrecked in May 1928, returning from a voyage over the North Pole, Amundsen volunteered to go in search of it.
He left the Norwegian town of Bergen by aeroplane on June 17th, 1928, bound for the little island of Spitzbergen, 80 degrees north latitude and as close to the Pole as it is normally possible to go.
And this is why, at this time, I think of Roald Amundsen. Amundsen never made it to Spitzbergen; he was never heard of again, being presumed to have perished in the Arctic Ocean. And when I have finished writing this, I, too, leave for Spitzbergen in an aircraft. If I survive this long journey into the white North, the story will unfold from there in Weather Eye during the coming days.