Polar Husky A to Z

You have maybe heard of Marco Polo, Columbus, and other explorers - but what is an explorer and what do they do?

Vitus

Explorers are travelers. In times past, they went to places previously uncharted by the culture from which they came. Explorers had many motives: scientific curiosity, economic gain, religious conversion, or political domination. Today's definition is now more like a person who travels to places most people do not go to... Why do you think this has changed with time?
The first Europeans to "visit" the Arctic were believed to be Irish monks in the 8th and 9th centuries.
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For hundreds of years, the Arctic remained unknown to most of the world, despite countless efforts to explore the region. European and American explorers tried again and again to find a northern passage across the Arctic to Asia. By the time the earliest Europeans discovered the Arctic, non-European Inuit had already lived there for two or three thousand years.

Europe's first overseas explorers were probably Irish monks of the 7th and 8th centuries, who set sail from Britain in tiny ox-hide curaghs (Irish for boats sealed with tar) in search of solitude. The monks were soon followed by the Vikings, people of Scandinavian origin who explored and colonized the North Atlantic Ocean from the late 8th century onward. They navigated ice-bound waters in open boats, penetrated the Arctic Ocean colonized Iceland and Greenland, and explored the coast of North America far beyond the Arctic Circle. Vikings were the first Europeans to encounter the Inuit who, by this time, were established as the true people of the far north.

From the 14th century onward, a new type of European explorer appeared along the Arctic Coasts.

Chukotka and Alaska!

Vitus Bering was born in Denmark in 1681. In 1703, he entered the Russian navy. After a series of explorations of the north coast of Asia -part of a far-reaching plan devised by Peter the Great- Bering made his first voyage to the Russian Far East sailing the shores of Kamchatka and Chukotka. He later returned to map Chukotka and explore the area. During a storm Bering sighted the southern coast of Alaska, and a landing was made at or near Kayak Island. This discovery of today's Alaska made these voyages -a major part of Russian exploration efforts in the North Pacific- known as the Great Northern Expedition.

Bering was soon forced to return across what is today known as the Bering Sea. His ship was soon blown off course by fierce winter storms and the crew became so seriously ill with scurvy (a disease common to past explorers caused from a lack of Vitamin C) that only three men were able to work on deck. With their sails and rigging splitting apart from repeated storms, the exhausted crew was forced to find refuge on an uninhibited island in the southwest of the Bering Sea. Bering died here -on December 19, 1741- as did half of his men. A few survivors finally made it back to Russia in the fall of 1472, telling of Bering's final expedition and discoveries. While the value of Bering's work was not fully recognized for many years, Captain Cook was able to prove that Bering's observations as an explorer were accurate. Today, the Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, The Bering Island and the Bering Land Bridge bear his name.

The Long Sled Journey...

Knud Rasmussen was born in Jakobshavn, Greenland in 1879. Team member Mille's favorite explorer Knud Rasmussen was part Inuit, part Danish. He was brought up in Greenland, absorbing the Inuit languages and skills of living off the land and dealing with the cold. He went to live in Denmark and, after graduating from high school, he returned to spend much of his life on expeditions as an ethnologist to various parts of Greenland.

Knud Rasmussen spent 30 years exploring the Arctic and conducting ethnological studies of the Inuit - gathering information on their life and culture. One of the most important things he did was to collect Inuit folk tales, songs, and poetry. Thanks to his efforts to record and translate them, we still have these songs and stories today.

In 1910, Knud established the Thule Trading Station at Cape York, Greenland, as a base for expeditions, using the profits to finance more expeditions. In 1912, he traveled over the ice sheets of Viscount Melville Sound and became the first man to cross the Northwest Passage by dogsled.

The South Pole

Roald Amundsen was a Norwegian polar explorer born in Borge in 1872. Roald entered the Norwegian navy in 1894 and spent the following nine years studying science.

From 1903 to 1906, Amundsen led his first important expedition. He took a Gjoa -a 70 foot (21 m) yacht- through the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, and determined the position of the north magnetic pole.

In 1910, Amundsen started his next expedition sailing in a larger ship, the Fram, destined for the South Pole. He lived with his traveling companions in Antarctica for more than a year, conducting explorations and scientific investigations, then gaining fame as one of the most successful undertakings in the history of Antarctic exploration. On the 14th of December, 1911, Amundsen and his party reached the South Pole, dog sledding across the Ross Ice Shelf and up the Axel Heiberg Glacier, becoming the first person to have accomplished this feat.

Amundsen's competitor, Robert Falcon Scott, reached the Pole a month later. On the return trip, Scott and his four companions all died of hunger and extreme cold. Then in 1914, British explorer Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition set out to cross Antarctica via the South Pole. The team's ship, the Endurance, became frozen in pack-ice and sank 11 months later.

The North Pole

Robert Peary was an American explorer born in 1856 in Cresson, Pennsylvania, Robert Peary is generally credited with leading the first party to reach the close vicinity of the North Pole. Admiral Robert Peary twice tried to reach the North Pole (he lost eight toes due to bad weather conditions on his first expedition) without success before he and his team, African-American Matthew A. Henson and four Inuit either reached or came very close to it on April 6, 1909.

On September 6, 1909, on the day Peary announced his achievement, he learned that the North Pole's discovery had been claimed five days earlier by an American explorer and surgeon by the name of Frederick Albert Cook. Expert examinations determined that the doctor's claim was probably false, after which Peary's records were accepted as genuine.

The scientific community still debates today whether Peary actually reached the exact location of the North Pole ... Its first undisputed sighting was on May 12, 1926 by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his American sponsor, Lincoln Ellsworth, from the airship (or blimp) Norge.

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