Why Are We Still Fascinated by Polar Exploration?
Updated: Oct 2
"Man wants to know and when man no longer wants to know,- he will no longer be man." Fridtjof Nansen 1
There is something difficult to forget about the people who boarded ships for polar expeditions knowing how little they understood about what lay ahead. The likelihood of returning was sometimes uncertain from the beginning. Crews accepted extraordinary hardship, extreme weather and the possibility of becoming trapped far from home.
The reasons for going changed over time. Early (16th and 17th century) exploration was closely connected to the search for trade routes. Later expeditions increasingly connected exploration with scientific discovery and mapping. Reading about what these people went through gives a very different impression of the Arctic than simply looking at a route on a modern map. Exploration was not simply about going somewhere first. It was also about making the unknown knowable.
When Ernest Shackleton planned his Antarctica trip, he searched for volunteers his add in the newspaper didn't lie:
"Men wanted for Hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success" 2
Hundreds applied...
The Arctic Was Never Empty
There is an important part of this history that is easy to overlook.
European explorers described places as though they were discovering them, but the Arctic was already inhabited. Indigenous communities had lived in these regions for centuries and had developed detailed knowledge of the environment around them.
In the Canadian Arctic, Inuit knowledge was particularly important to understanding the fate of the Franklin expedition. The Canadian Museum of History has documented how Inuit oral histories describing encounters with Franklin's men and an abandoned ship contributed to understanding what happened and eventually helped locate HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.
European exploration history and Indigenous knowledge are not separate stories. They intersect. Inuit knowledge of sea ice, weather, geography and movement through the Arctic was developed through generations of living in that environment.
When the Landscape Becomes Part of the Story
Modern travelers have something the original explorers did not: considerably more knowledge and technology, along with much more comfortable vessels.
The conditions themselves have not become completely different. The Arctic can still bring extreme weather and difficult ice conditions. The difference is what modern expedition vessels and teams can provide around those conditions.
The historical stories become particularly interesting when the places themselves are part of them.
Franklin's Northwest Passage expedition is one example. The landscape around King William Island was not simply the setting for the story. It was part of the reason the expedition unfolded as it did.
Amundsen's history offers another perspective, particularly because of what he learned from earlier expeditions and from Indigenous Arctic practices.
Nansen connects Greenland and the Fram with scientific exploration. Shackleton's story brings leadership and survival into the picture. Scott raises questions around exploration, national prestige and science. Charcot connects French expedition history with mapping and scientific work in Antarctica.
The strongest stories are the ones where the physical location makes the history tangible.
Comfortable Exploration
There is a striking contrast between historical exploration and the way we can experience the polar regions today.
Barentsz is a good example. After his vessel became trapped in pack ice, he and his crew had to build a shelter from the ship's materials to survive. Barentsz himself did not make it home, although some of his crew did.
Today, travelers can enter polar environments with a level of comfort that would have been unimaginable to those early explorers. That does not make the historical experience irrelevant. Quite the opposite. Knowing how earlier crews coped with the same environment gives another perspective to the landscape and the conditions around us. For us, the way people responded to difficult situations is often more interesting than simply knowing how their stories ended.
Why History Belongs on an Expedition
History should be part of the expedition because it gives context to what travelers are seeing. A guide who can connect a location with the people who passed through it can make the landscape easier to understand.
That is also where local knowledge matters. The more we understand what we are looking at, the more we actually see. A good expedition does not simply take us through a historic region. It gives us another way to understand it. Even explorers in the past did this, and relied heavily upon local knowledge. Although language has changed from the colonial 'Eskimo' to the modern 'Inuit', we have preserved the original text of E.K. Kane, in search for the Franklin expedition, who wrote the following:
My resolve was to practise on the lessons we had learned from the Esquimaux. I had studied them carefully, and determined that their form of habitation and their peculiarities of diet, without their unthrifty and filth, were the safest and best to which the necessity of our circumstances invited us. 3
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For travelers interested in polar exploration, we would look closely at the historical interpretation offered on board and at the local knowledge involved. The names of famous explorers may attract us to a destination, but the stories become much more interesting when we understand the people, decisions and knowledge behind them.
Interested in exploring remote regions with the preparation and knowledge to understand them more deeply? Discover our approach to Expedition Travel.
Bain, J. A. (1900). Life and adventures of Fridtjof Nansen. Scott. P.xiv
McCarthy, T. (Ed.). (2004). The greatest polar exploration stories ever told. Lyons Press. P.VII
Ibid P.46
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