FRIDTIOF NANSEN.*
Mn. WILLIAM ARCHER, in whose debt we were already for the way in which he has widened our view to the North, has now increased our sense of obligation by translating into admirable and living English prose the life of Dr. Nansen by his friends, Messrs. W. C. Bragger and Nordahl Rolfsen. This weighty—it is a real test of strength to raise the book in one hand—and cheerful biography begins with Hans Nansen, the explorer's ancestor, three hundred years ago and ends when one has seen Nansen safely on board the 'Feast' en route for that "inclement Pole," his return whence we are even now celebrating. Toe hasty and incautious purchaser who may have believed that he was getting the history of that crown upon Dr. Nansen's achievement for his money, may tear • Pridtiof Ramses?, 1861-1893. By W. 0. Bragger stnd Etrdahl Rolfsen. Translated by William Archer. London: Longmans and Co. his hair as he beholds the curtain fall upon the last act, repre- senting Dr. Nansen and Sverdrup bidding farewell in the stern. boat of the 'Fram' to Mr. Bragger. "Continents and conti- nental oceans intervene," and our purchaser must pay again as that curtain rises upon the completed story ; but we hasten to add that be will speedily find his first disbursement justified. Here is the very whet and preparation we all needed for Dr. Nansen's own narrative,—nor is this first volume compacted of hors ereeuvres only ; it is a table loaded with that "fine confused feeding" which modern tastes approve. No haggis served on St. Andrew's Day has elements more various and substantial. There is enough of Nansen's ancestry and boyhood to furnish a text-book for sucking explorers, and the most complete and informing history of his later education. There are stirring narratives of his former expeditions, as the one across Greenland, for example ; such an intricate account of his domestic relations as would sound " im- possible " in the biography of any living Englishman, but which here seems merely quaint and charming in the life it portrays; while as if all this were not enough, there are chapters by experts "on Fridtiof Nansen as a Biologist ;" on Mrs. Nan sen, by an interviewer ; on Arctic expeditions from the earliest times ; on "New Siberia and the North Pole ; " on "The Contributions of Norwegian Seamen to Arctic Geography ; " and generally on every topic directly or indirectly connected with the biographee. It is magnificent and it is biography, as well as biology, journalism, history, and geology, but no mortal reviewer can hope to touch even superficially on its ingredients. We solemnly avow that we have read it, and advise others to do likewise, but a "bird's-eye view," in the space permitted, were another matter.
Nan sen comes of a stock of Arctic skippers. Hans Nansen, mentioned above, was placed by King Christian IV.. "at the head of an expedition to the fur regions about the Petschora," and he compiled a commonplace book which records how on Good Friday, 1296, "a Dutch woman in her forty-second year gave birth to three hundred and forty-six children, half of them boys and half of them girls." Of such are travellers' tales. Nansen's father was a lawyer, and of considerable repute for strength of character and the use of the birch, while his mother was "devoted to snow-shoeing" when that sport was not held convenable. The boy had a hard up - bringing at Great Firaen, a small place, the property of his mother. He learned early to shoot, fish, snow-shoe, and "fend" for himself in solitary expeditions. It was the ideal home of the North, and an ideal training for an explorer. "The man who was to become the friend and historian of the Eskimos had early experience both of fasting and voracity. Their unsavoury domestic arrange- ments could not dismay one who had himself, during his nocturnal meals in the forest, many a time picked up a stick from the ground and stirred his coffee with it, and who, in somewhat riper years, was able to devour the raw and not over-tempting trout on the kitchen bench."
As his biographers remark, Neilsen came to his own by easy transitions He was a student of science, and in January, 1882, he consulted Professor Collett upon his future. Collett recommended an Arctic voyage, and on March 11th of that year Nansen sailed for Greenland in the • Viking.' He came back with a reputation for pluck, and an ambition to cross Greenland. At twenty-one he became Dr. Danillssen's assistant, the Director-in-Chief of the Bergen Museum. Here he approved himself an "investigator of note "—the phrase is a technical authority's—" in the world of the microscope," while he did not neglect the art of hill-climb. ing. From Bergen Nansen went to Naples to the famous Zoological Station, that "creation of a single man's"—Dr. Anton Dohrn's—" inspired thought and indomitable energy," in order to familiarise himself with Professor Solgi's "chromic silver method of staining the nerve-fibres." Dohrn's per- sonality had its part in the making of Nansen, who was presently, moreover, to carry Dohrn's doctrines into practical effect in his own country. "It seems indubitable," the biography says, "that a virtue burst forth from the associa- tion with Dohrn, however little he and those about him may have divined the true strength of Nansen's character." In 1887 Nansen had finished his great essay on the histological elements of the central nervous system, and was free to carry out the plan, which had long possessed him, of crossing
Greenland. He came to Stockholm and saw Professors Briigger and Nordenskiold on the subject :— "I looked him in the eyes," writes one of them. "There he stood, with the kindly smile on his strongly cut, massive face, his complete self-confidence awakening confidence in others. Although his manner was just the same all the time—calm, straightforward, perhaps even a little awkward—yet it seemed as if he grew with
every word This man, whose name I had never so much as heard until a couple of hours before, had in those few minutes—quite naturally and inevitably as it seemed—made me feel as though I had known him all my days ; and, without rtflecting how it happened, I knew I should be proud and happy to be his friend through life."
On May 2nd, 1888, he left Christiania, taking Copenhagen, London, and Leith on his way to Iceland; and on June 11th the sealer 'Jason' brought him and his party within sight of the East Coast of Greenland.
It was a month ere they could disembark, for the 'Jason' was icebound, and when they left the ship it was to get into boats and drift with the ice for ten days. It was thus "not till July 29th that they succeeded in setting foot on dry land, and thus the beet part of the summer was already gone." At Kekertarsuak, where they landed, they had their last hot meal and henceforth "their food consisted of cold water, biscuits, and dried beef, —they could not waste time in cooking until they had in some measure made up what they had lost in the ice-drift." The account of the Greenland expedition is given in more detail than we can follow, but it was a terxible business of cold and suffering. "Good Lord !" said one of the party, "to think of men being so cruel to themselves as to go in for this sort of thing." They had "several weeks of thirst," frost-bitten hands, which even Nansen pronounced " intolerably " painful, and a perpetual sensation in the shoulders, from dragging heavy sledges, at a gradient some- times of 1 in 4,as if the ropes were burning them. On October 16th they reached Godthaab in safety, but too worn to be exultant.
Says Nansen :—" We had toiled hard, and undeniably suffered a good deal in order to reach this goal. And what were now our sensations? Were they those of the happy victor ? No; we had looked forward so long to the goal that we had discounted its attainment." The expedition had to winter at Godthaab, and Nansen repaid himself for the necessity by studies which he afterwards embodied in
Eskimo Life. He liked the Eskimos, and the barbarous people showed him no little kindness. "Now you are going
back to the Great World whence you came to us, and you will meet many people there, and learn many new things, and you will soon forget us ; but we will never forget you." Thus an Eskimo friend on taking farewell. "When I see all the wrangling and coarse abuse of opponents which form the staple of the different party newspapers at home, I now and then wonder what these worthy politicians would say if they knew anything of the Eskimo community, and whether they would
not blush before that people." The Eskimo "never utters a syllable of abuse, their very language being unprovided with words of this class, in which ours is so rich." That is Nansen's view, expressed in his Eskimo Life.
In 1892 came the christening of the now so famous, and the design upon the Pole was matured. The scepticism with which that was received is familiar enough. Mr. Archer thinks that this was "discouragement harder to face, perhaps, than the Arctic ice-pack and the month-long night." And the achievement itself is fitly summarised in the
translator's preface." While other explorers have crept, as it were, towards the Pole, each penetrating, with in- credible toil, a degree or two farther than the last, Nansen
has at one stride enormously reduced the unconquered distance, and has demonstrated the justice of his theory as to the right way of attacking the problem. Nor is this the crown of his achievement. As the Duke of Wellington "gained a hundred fights and never lost an English gun," so Nansen has now come forth victorious from two campaigns, each including many a hard-fought fray, and has never lost a Norwegian life." There is an abundant and entirely interesting account of the building, christening, and subse- quent launching and finishing of the'Fram.' Never was a Polar expedition organised with more skill and science. We hear much of the crew, who, as one took for granted, are "as hard
as nails," in the convincing vernacular. Finally, we hear a great deal of Mrs. Nansen and the explorer's home, which, in a terrible phrase of Charlotte Bronte's latest biographer, seems to be "supremely perfect." Eva Nansen—it were in- congruous to talk of this bride and no doubt mother of heroes as "Mrs,"—is plainly a heroic woman. "What must those years of separation have been to her F" is the thought that has often occurred to most of us. After what one reads of her in this biography one scarcely dares to pity. All the "domestic" part of this generous narrative is told with a curious and disarming naivet4. Not thus, if you were an English hero, would you like your biographer to admit the public gaze. There is no single error of taste, even in the re- published " interview " here given ; only the unreserve would not become our English taste. But in the case of these Norwegians, most sympathetic of races, the sole impression left is one of pure kindness and simplicity. There may not be the tact we should approve in our own biography; there is the very tact suitable to the occasion.
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