Nansen Biography

His father, a lawyer by profession, was strict with children, but did not interfere with their games and walks. Fritiof’s mother, who loved ski campaigns, instilled in him a love of nature. He spent a lot of time on wooded hills, along with his brother lived in the forest for several days. In winter, they died fish through the holes in the ice and hunted.

Children's experience was very useful to Nansen later, during the Arctic expeditions. In the city of two years later, he admitted to the Viking commercial vessel, which was heading to the Arctic, and soon saw the ice mountains of Greenland with his own eyes. This sight prompted him to the idea of ​​his own expedition - the first foot crossing through Greenland. Developing a transition plan, Nansen decided to swim as close to the uninhabited east coast of Greenland, leave the ship off the edge of the ice fields and walk to the west through glaciers and mountains.

For a long time, Nansen could not find enough funds for the implementation of the plan, but then he managed to impress the same philanthropist from Copenhagen. In May, Nansen and five crew members began swimming. Upon reaching the ice fields, they left the ship, but it turned out that the ice shifted a lot of miles to the south. The expedition participants had to move north, which took a lot of time and deprived them of the opportunity to get to the goal before the Arctic winter.

Mountains, glaciers and low temperatures greatly made it difficult to travel, but after 37 days the expedition reached the Eskimo village on the west coast. However, the end of September was, and the navigation has already ended. Remaining to winter in the village, Nansen devoted his forced leisure to study the life of the Eskimos. Having combined his own experience with observations, he developed a classic methodology for polar skiing and dog sledges.

At the same time, he began to plan a new expedition, as a result of which he hoped the first to reach the North Pole and establish if there was a land there. Reading reports on the American research vessel, which drifted in Arctic ice for more than a year, Nansen came to the conclusion that a specially designed vessel could fall with ice to the pole. At the funds received from the Norwegian government, he built the Fram round -end ship “forward”, designed for strong pressure of ice.

Nansen sailed in the summer of G. Nansen in March and one of the crew members moved further on dog teams. Not knowing where the Fram is located, the polar experts decided to winter on the ground of Franz Joseph, they hunted walruses and white bears and lived in a tent of walrus skins. The history of the expedition N. The gained experience aroused the interest of the Norwegian in the ocean, and in the city of occupying this position, helped to establish the International Council of Study of the Sea, led his laboratories in Oslo and participated in several Arctic expeditions.

Having won international fame by that time, Nansen participated in negotiations on the separation of Norway from Sweden to the city of many Swedes resolutely opposed the termination of the Union of two peoples. Nansen went to London, where he defended Norway's right to independent existence. After the peaceful department of Norway, he became her first ambassador in the UK, holding this post in the world the world's largest polar researcher, Nansen advised the English traveler Robert Fallcon Scott, who, unfortunately, did not use his advice on the way to the South Pole.

However, Roal Amundsen is also the Norwegian thanks to the Ship of the “FMU” and the advice of his mentor reached the South Pole at the end of G. with the outbreak of World War I, Nansen again entered the public service. Norway resolutely spoke out in favor of the League of Nations, and Nansen, who headed the Norwegian League Support Society, became in the same year Philip Noel-Baker invited Nansen to take part in the control of repatriation thousand.

The task was complicated by chaos that accompanied the Russian revolution, and the decision of the Soviet government not to recognize the League of Nations. However, the international authority of the famous researcher allowed him to achieve admission to prisoners. Having neither transport, nor food supplies for repatriates, he turned to the League of Nations with a request for funds for these purposes.

Nansen convinced the Bolshevik authorities to deliver prisoners of war to the border and, with the help of captured German ships in England, took them out of the Soviet ports. By September, almost thousand. At the same time, he was engaged in solving another problem - providing housing 1.5 million. Many of them did not have personality certificates and moved from the country to the country, settling in wretched camps, where they died from hunger and typhoid.

Nansen has developed international refugee documents. Gradually, 52 countries recognized these documents, which were called "Nansen passports." It is thanks to the efforts of the Norwegian who the majority of emigrants gained shelter. During the famine, which fell upon Soviet Russia in the summer, the city of Nations rejected his request for a loan, but the United States, for example, allocated 20 million funds raised by governments and charitable organizations for these purposes, allowed to save 10 million.He also took care of refugees during the Greek-Turkish war of G.

for many years of effort to assist refugees and victims of the Wars, Nansen was awarded the Nobel Prize of the world G. The representative of the Nobel Committee Fredrick Stang, in his speech, said: “What is most amazing in it-this is the ability to devote one idea, one thought and to carry away others.” In his Nobel lecture, Nansen outlined desperate conditions that resulted in the world war, and responded about the League of Nations as the only means to prevent the tragedy of the future.

The funds received from the Nobel Committee, he transferred to the aid of refugees. In the year, the League of Nations instructed Nansen to study the issue of the possibility of arranging Armenian refugees, for which a special commission was formed with Nansen at the head. During the World War II, the persecution of Armenians in Turkey reached a monstrous size.

From the Armenians who lived in Turkey, more than one million were destroyed in the years, the rest fled abroad, partly hid in the mountains.

Nansen went to Armenia in the year, mainly in order to explore the possibility of artificial irrigation on the spot. The work of the Nansen Commission proceeded in close cooperation with the Soviet Committee on Land Management in Erivan [Yerevan]. Several tens of thousands of Armenian refugees managed to arrange in Syria. Upon returning to his homeland, he wrote complete sympathy and respect for the Armenian people the book “Armenia and the Middle East”, published in Norwegian, English, French, German and Armenian.

Attached about the Armenian people, Nansen did not leave his life until the end of his life. In the year, he performed a tour of America, during which he gave lectures in order to raise funds in favor of Armenians. Nansen had no family. Nansen was married and had five children.