If you really sit down and look at the history
of exploration, I mean, really look at the popular
narrative of it, you start to notice a very specific
aesthetic. You definitely do. It's particularly
true of the so -called heroic age at the turn
of the 20th century. You usually see a lot of
tragedy. Oh, absolutely. It was almost a cultural
requirement of the time, especially in, you know,
the British tradition. Right. You see starving
men dragging these heavy wooden sledges through
blizzards, ships getting crushed by pack ice,
poets dying in tents, and just this general vibe
of romantic heroic doom. It was this idea that
the struggle itself was the point. If you weren't
suffering, if you weren't fighting nature with,
I don't know, grit and wool sweaters, were you
really exploring? It was exploration as a sort
of moral play. Exactly. It's like they wanted
it to be hard. But then there's this one guy,
a guy who looked at the most hostile environments
on Earth places that had literally killed hundreds
of people before him. And he didn't just survive
them. No, he mastered them. He mastered them.
He turned the struggle into a logistic spreadsheet.
It really is a different caliber of success.
We are talking about a man who essentially looked
at the globe and said, checkmate. Checkmate.
That is the perfect way to put it. We are diving
deep today into the life of Roald Amundsen. And
the more I looked into his resume for this, the
more I found myself just shaking my head in disbelief.
It's pretty wild. It reads like an adventure
novel that a publisher would reject for being
too unrealistic. Yeah. He wasn't just the first
to the South Pole, which is, you know. the headline
everyone knows. That's a big one. He was the
first to navigate the Northwest Passage. Yeah.
If you look at the fine print of history, he
was arguably the first verified person to reach
a North Pole, too. That's a bold claim, but the
data really backs it up. And we'll get into why
the other claimants fall short later. But what's
so fascinating about Amundsen is that he represents
this massive shift in the philosophy of exploration.
How so? He is a figure of transition. He bridges
the gap between that romantic heroic age and
the modern mechanical age. He wasn't just brave.
He was a meticulous. planner. He treated exploration
not as some poetic struggle against the elements,
but as a scientific problem to be solved. A problem
with a solution. I love that. So our mission
today is to unpack exactly how a boy from Norway
became the most successful polar explorer in
history by doing the exact opposite of what everyone
else was doing. Yeah, we're going to see how
he traded romance for efficiency and how that
decision, that mindset, made all the difference
between life and death. Okay. So to get to the
method, we have to understand the obsession.
You do. And to do that, we have to go back to
the beginning. We need to start in Borgia, Norway
in the late 19th century. Right. Born in 1872.
And the funny thing is, for a guy who became
the ultimate sailor and explorer, his start was,
well, let's call it reluctant. That's a good
word for it. He came from a family of ship owners
and captains. You'd think he'd be on a boat from
day one, hauling ropes and tying knots. But there
was a pretty big obstacle. His mother. She had
seen what the sea does to men. The shipwrecks,
the drownings, the endless absences. She wanted
a very different life for her fourth son. She
made him promise to avoid the maritime trade
entirely. What did she want for him instead?
She wanted him to be a doctor. The classic be
a doctor pressure. It's universal. And honestly,
it makes sense given the era. Being a ship captain
was high status, but high risk. Being a doctor
was pure safety. It was. And Amundsen, being
a dutiful son, actually kept that promise. He
went to university. He studied medicine. He was
on track for a safe, respectable life on land.
But his heart wasn't in it. Not at all. The sources
tell us that even while he was memorizing anatomy,
his mind was elsewhere. He was sleeping with
his windows open in the freezing Norwegian winter,
supposedly to harden his constitution. He was
secretly training. That is incredible dedication.
It really speaks to a repressed obsession, doesn't
it? And he wasn't just studying medicine. He
had been reading the narratives of Sir John Franklin.
Okay, so Franklin was the British explorer who
famously disappeared. with two ships and 129
men trying to find the Northwest Passage in the
1840s. The very same. And most people would read
about Franklin. We're talking starvation, lead
poisoning, cannibalism, freezing to death and
think, wow, I'm definitely staying inside where
it's warm. Not Amundsen. He read them with, and
this is his quote, fervid fascination. He decided
that suffering in the Arctic was his destiny.
That fervid fascination is key. He wasn't looking
for comfort. He was looking for the crucible.
He was. But he respected the promise to his mother.
He stayed in school until he was 21 years old.
And then his mother passed away. And this is
the part that I find so relatable in a kind of
a dark way. It's that moment where the external
pressure valve just releases. Yeah. The second
he was released from that promise, he quit university.
Dropped out. Immediately. Traded the stethoscope
for the sea. He didn't hesitate. He signed on
to various ships to get his hours in to learn
the ropes. But he knew he needed real polar experience.
You don't just, you know, walk to the North Pole.
So where does he get it? In 1897, he signs on
as first mate on the Belgian Antarctic expedition
aboard a ship called the Belgica. And this voyage,
the Belgica, this isn't just a job for him. This
is the training ground. This is where he earns
his stripes. But it sounds like a complete nightmare.
It was a trial by fire, or I guess a trial by
ice. The expedition was led by Adrian de Gerlache,
a Belgian officer. They went down to the Antarctic
Peninsula for scientific research, but they made
a critical error. What was that? They stayed
too late in the season. They became the first
expedition in history to overwinter in Antarctica.
They got locked in the sea ice at 70 degrees
south. And just to clarify for everyone listening.
Overwintering in Antarctica isn't like renting
a cabin for the season. We're talking about the
ship being frozen solid into the drifting pack
ice. You are completely trapped. Trapped in total
darkness for months. The sun goes down in May
and it doesn't come back until July or August.
The temperature drops to 40 below zero. And the
noise, the ice is constantly shifting and grinding
against the hull. It must sound like the ship
is being chewed up. That's what they said. The
psychological toll was just immense. I can't
even imagine. And the crew. Was not prepared.
They didn't have the right clothing. They didn't
have enough food. And morale just, it collapsed.
Men were going insane. The commander, Digger
Losh, fell ill. But the real killer was scurvy.
Which is a death sentence in those days. Yeah.
We know now it's a vitamin C deficiency. But
back then, the science was still pretty murky.
Right. They knew fresh food helped, but they
didn't really understand why. They were relying
on European preserved foods, canned meats, dried
biscuits. These have zero vitamin C. So what
happens to them? The men's gums started swelling,
their teeth loosened, old wounds reopened, and
they became lethargic. They were dying. And this
is where we see the first aha moment for Amundsen.
And strangely, it comes from the ship's doctor,
an American named Frederick Cook. Frederick Cook
is a, well... He's a very complicated figure
in polar history, often remembered as a fraudster
later in life. But on the Belgica, the man was
a hero. He realized that the canned food was
killing them. He formed a hypothesis that fresh
meat, any fresh meat, would stop the scurvy.
So what was on the menu? Penguin and seal. There
were animals around the ship on the ice. Cook
ordered the crew to hunt them. But here's the
catch. He wanted them to eat the meat fresh.
And barely cooked. Oh, I can see where this is
going. And this was a huge problem for the crew.
You have to remember, these were European sailors
in the 1890s. They were used to salt beef and
bread. The idea of eating semi -raw penguin steak,
which is dark, oily, and fishy. was repulsive
to them. I can imagine. De Gerlach actually forbade
it at first. He thought it was uncivilized. Uncivilized.
That's the word that gets you killed in these
situations. Precisely. But Amundsen didn't care
about being civilized. He cared about surviving.
He saw that the men who ate the fresh meat, specifically
the organ meat, the offal, were getting better.
He ate it. He ate it. He forced it down. And
he recovered. And that seems to be the light
bulb turning on. He realizes that European conventions,
this is how we do things in civilization, are
actually liabilities in the wild. Exactly. It
was his first great lesson in pragmatism over
tradition. If the local resources, even if it's
raw seal meat, keep you alive, you use them.
You ignore what is proper and you do what works.
This mindset became the foundation of his entire
career. He realized the Arctic doesn't care about
your manners. So he survives the Belgica, comes
back to Europe, and now he's ready for the big
leagues. He sets his sights on the Northwest
Passage. The Northwest Passage. The holy grail
of navigation for centuries. Right. For 400 years,
since the time of Columbus almost, sailors had
been trying to find a route over the top of Canada,
connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific. It was
the shortcut to the riches of the East. But the
map of that area is just a nightmare. It's thousands
of islands shifting ice, fog, dead ends. And
it had claimed hundreds of lives, including his
hero, Franklin. The British Royal Navy had thrown
everything at it. Massive ships, hundreds of
men, huge supplies of coal. They tried to brute
force their way through. And they failed every
time. So how does Amundsen approach this? Does
he get a bigger battleship, a bigger crew? He
does the complete opposite. And this is where
his genius for strategy starts to shine. He realized
that the massive British naval vessels failed
because they were too deep. They had deep drafts.
They got stuck in the shallow, uncharted channels
of the archipelago. Okay, so he needs a smaller
boat. A much smaller boat. Amundsen bought a
tiny 47 -foot fishing sloop called the Jija.
47 feet? That is incredibly small for an Arctic
expedition. That's smaller than many recreational
yachts today. It was tiny. It was 45 tons. It
had a crew of only six men. plus Amundsen, and
it had a shallow draft, meaning it could ride
high in the water and hug the coast, slipping
over rocks that would tear the bottom out of
a larger ship. Did have an engine. It even had
a small 13 horsepower kerosene engine. 13 horsepower.
My lawnmower might have more power than that.
It was modest, just enough to push them through
calm water or help steer in the ice. But the
ship was only half the story. The real breakthrough
of the Northwest Passage Expedition, which launched
in 1903, was what happened when they stopped.
Where did they stop? They spent two full winters
at King William Island in a small natural harbor
now known as Gijoa Haven. And this is what I
like to call his Inuit MBA. That's a fantastic
way to describe it. He didn't just sit on the
boat waiting for the ice to melt, playing cards
and eating biscuits. He went ashore and lived
with the local Netsilik Inuit. So this was the
key. This was arguably the most important period
of his life. He approached them not as a superior
European who had come to civilize them, but as
a student who knew nothing. So what specifically
did he learn? Because this is the stuff that
ends up winning him the South Pole later, right?
Oh, directly. The first major lesson was clothing.
The British explorers were obsessed with wool.
They wore layers of heavy wool and windproof
gabardine cloth. Which sounds warm. It is until
it's not. Wool has a fatal flaw in the Arctic.
When you work hard -hauling sleds, building camps,
you sweat. Wool absorbs that moisture. When you
stop moving, that wet wool freezes. It becomes
like a suit of ice armor, hard and cold. It sucks
the heat right out of your body. So while the
British are freezing in their damp wool sweaters,
what are the Inuit wearing? Loose -fitting animal
furs? Caribou skin, mostly. The Inuit design
was ingenious. It was loose so air could circulate.
As you moved, the warm air stayed in, but the
moisture could vent out through the neck and
the openings. It created a perfect microclimate
around the body. So it was lighter, warmer, and
crucially, it kept you dry. Exactly. Amenson
swapped his wool for fur immediately. He essentially
adopted the local technology. And what was the
second thing? Transport. The Inuit taught him
how to manage dog teams. Now, Europeans had used
dogs before, but usually pretty badly. The Inuit
taught him the nuance, how to feed them high
-fat diets to keep their energy up, how to breed
them, how to hitch them. The Inuit used a fan
hitch where the dogs spread out, which is much
safer on thin ice. And you have to contrast that
with the British method. Well, the British often
preferred manhauling. Which is exactly what it
sounds like. It is literally strapping men into
harnesses and having them pull the sleds like
horses. They thought it was more noble. It showed
the superiority of the human spirit. But Amazon
just thought it was inefficient. Completely.
Why burn your own calories when a dog can do
the work better? There's that word again. Efficient.
He doesn't care about looking noble. He cares
about calories and speed. And that efficiency
paid off. The Guerra successfully navigated the
passage. It took three years, weaving through
the islands, mapping the magnetic pole as they
went. They finally cleared the archipelago in
August 1905. They saw a whaling ship from San
Francisco, and they knew they had made it. They
had connected the oceans. But he couldn't just
tweet about it. And this leads to one of my favorite
anecdotes about his obsession. He completes this
historic feat, something people have died trying
to do for centuries. But he's frozen in the ice
near the finish line in Alaska for the winter.
He needs to tell the world. So what does he do?
He can't sit still. He travels 500 miles over
land in the dead of winter from the ship to a
telegraph station in Eagle, Alaska. 500 miles
just to send a telegram. On skis and dog sleds.
And then, after sending the message, he traveled
500 miles back to the ship. That's just unbelievable.
It shows his drive for recognition. He needed
to be the one to break the news. And the political
context is interesting here, too. Norway had
just dissolved its union with Sweden in 1905.
It was a brand new independent country with a
new king, Hakon VII. So he dedicates the win
to the new king. He does. It was a massive moment
for Norwegian national identity. So he's a national
hero. He's conquered the Northwest Passage. He's
got the Inuit survival skills. Naturally, he
thinks, OK, I've done the West. Let's go north.
He wants the North Pole. That was the original
dream. He spent years preparing to drift a ship
across the North Pole. He had the funding. He
had the ship, the famous Fram, which was. designed
by Fritjof Nansen to withstand ice pressure.
But then in 1909, everything changed. The news
drops. The news drops. Americans Frederick Cook,
his old doctor friend from the Belgica, and Robert
Peary both claim to have reached the North Pole.
We'll talk about the validity of those claims
later because that's a whole other can of worms.
But for Amundsen, at that moment, the prize was
gone. The shop was closed. Right. And most explorers
would have canceled the expedition, or they would
have gone anyway just for the science. But Amundsen
wasn't just a scientist. He was a conqueror.
He needed a first. So he pivoted. Instantly.
If he couldn't be first to the north, he would
be first to the south. But he didn't tell anyone,
did he? This famous South Pole deception. It
was a massive secret. He knew that Robert Falcon
Scott, the British explorer, was publicly preparing
for a South Pole run. Scott had announced it.
He was raising money for it. Amundsen feared
that if he announced his plans, the Norwegian
government might stop him to avoid a diplomatic
incident with Britain. Or his backers might pull
out because they paid for a North Pole trip.
Exactly. So he lied. He literally set sail from
Norway in the Fram, heading south, and his crew
still thought they were going around Cape Horn
to get to the Bering Strait and then the Arctic.
Imagine that. You're on the ship thinking you're
heading for the North Pole drift. Yeah. And he
only told them the truth when they reached Madeira.
an island off the coast of Africa. He gathered
the men on deck and revealed the new plan. The
North Pole is gone. We're going to Antarctica.
We're racing Scott. And their crew to the Muni.
They were Vikings at heart. They cheered. They
were competitive. They agreed to the change.
And then he sends that famous telegram to Sky.
It's so cold. So to the point. Beg to inform
you, frame preceding Antarctic. That's it. Polite,
curt, and devastating. Scrape was still making
his preparations in Australia when he got that.
He suddenly realized he wasn't on a scientific
survey with a bit of exploration on the side.
He was in a race. And he was racing against the
fastest polar traveler on Earth. The race is
on. 1911. Amundsen sets up base camp. And again,
he breaks the rules. Scott sets up at McMurdo
Sound on solid volcanic rock. Safe. secure. While
Amundsen sets up at the Bay of Wales, which was
on the floating ice shelf, this is a huge gamble.
The British had looked at that area and said,
no way. The ice could break off and float out
to sea. If that happened, the base and everyone
in it would be lost. So why take the risk? Because
it was 60 miles closer to the pole than Scott's
camp. He started the race with a 60 mile head
start just by choosing a riskier parking spot.
He called the camp Framheim. And now we see the
Inuit MBA in full effect during the preparation.
Oh, absolutely. While Scott was bringing motorized
sledges that broke down almost immediately in
the cold and ponies, Manchurian ponies that sank
into the snow and sweat through their coats.
Amundsen had dog teams. Greenland dogs. And he
dressed. his men in those loose furs the whole
system was tested and proven. We have to talk
about the dogs though because this is the part
of the story that usually makes modern listeners
uncomfortable but it is the mathematical reason
he won. It is difficult to hear, but we have
to look at it through Amundsen's lens of cold,
hard efficiency. He started with 52 dogs. He
planned the route mathematically. He created
a schedule. He calculated exactly how much weight
the dogs could pull and how much food they needed.
And the equation didn't balance if he kept all
the dogs alive, did it? It did not. As the sleds
got lighter because the men were eating the supplies,
they needed less pulling power. So the plan included
killing the weaker dogs at specific milestones.
So they kill the dogs and then... They fed the
carcasses to the remaining dogs. And to be clear,
the men ate the dog meat as well. Wow. He called
the main depot the butcher shop, didn't he? He
did. It sounds horrific to us. But look at the
thermodynamics of it. It ensured a constant supply
of fresh meat for the dogs, keeping the engine
of the expedition strong. It provided fresh meat
for the men, which prevented scurvy, and it kept
the load light. And you have to compare that
to Scott. Scott refused to use dogs in this way.
He relied on manhauling for the final push. His
men were dragging hundreds of pounds of supplies.
They were burning something like 6 ,000 calories
a day and eating maybe 4 ,000. They were literally
starving. Their bodies were consuming their own
muscle mass. Exactly. Amundsen's team. They were
actually deigning weight on the return trip.
That is a staggering contrast. Scott's team is
dying of exhaustion and hunger, and Amundsen's
team is eating fresh meat and riding the sleds.
It wasn't even a contest in the end. Amundsen's
team established supply depots at 80. 81 and
82 degrees south. When they made the final push,
the weather held, the dogs performed perfectly,
and on December 14, 1911, Amundsen and his team
planted the Norwegian flag at the South Pole.
Checkmate. Checkmate. They named the camp Paulheim,
home of the Pole. And in a final gesture of confidence,
or perhaps insurance, Amundsen left a small tent.
Inside was some gear, a letter addressed to King
Hakon, and a note for Scott. What did the note
say? He essentially asked Scott to do him a favor.
Please deliver this letter to the king of Norway
if we perish on the way back. Imagine being Scott.
You arrive at the pole a month later. You are
defeated, exhausted, frostbitten. You know the
return journey is going to be hell. And you find
a tent with a note from the guy who beat you
asking you to be his postman. It must have been
psychologically crushing. And as we know, Scott
and his party tragically died on the return journey
just 11 miles from their supply depot. While
Amundsen's return. By contrast. Was smooth. He
arrived back at Framheim on the exact day he
had scheduled. So he's done the Northwest Passage.
He's done the South Pole. He's the most famous
explorer on Earth. The world is throwing parades
for him. But he's not done. He still has that
original itch, the North Pole. The obsession
never left him. He felt like the job wasn't finished.
But this next phase, this is where things get
messy. The precision of the South Pole gives
way to a decade of chaos. In 1918, he built a
new ship, the Maud. And the plan here was the
drift, right? Yes, that's it. He wanted to replicate
what Nansen had tried years earlier, freeze the
ship into the ice north of Siberia and just let
the natural current carry it over the North Pole.
This sounds like an... agonizingly slow way to
travel. It's terrible. You are passive. You are
just sitting there. The expedition lasted from
1918 to 1925, seven years. And it was largely
a failure in terms of the primary goal. They
never got the drift trajectory right. They just
circled in the ice north of Russia. But Amundsen's
life during this time reads like an action movie
script written by a chaotic 12 -year -old. He
just could not catch a break. It really does.
In this period alone, he suffered a broken arm.
He was poisoned by carbon monoxide from a faulty
lamp and nearly died. It permanently damaged
his heart. And in one terrifying incident, he
was attacked by a polar bear. He fought a polar
bear. The bear knocked him down and mauled him.
His dog actually saved him by distracting the
bear long enough for Amundsen to escape. He survived,
but he was physically falling apart. He was aging.
And financially, he was ruined, right? Completely.
The Mon expedition was a black hole for money.
He went bankrupt. He's dodging creditors. But
amidst this chaos, there's this strange personal
story that rarely gets told. What's that? During
the drift near Siberia, he adopted or at least
took guardianship of two young indigenous girls,
Kakonita and Camilla. This is a side of him we
don't often see. The family man, Emerson. It's
strange, isn't it? He brought them back to Norway.
He sent them to school. He truly seemed to care
for them. It looked like he was trying to build
a domestic life. But when the bankruptcy hit
and he had to leave for his next expedition to
make money and restore his reputation, he sent
them back to Russia. That is heartbreaking. It
is. It's a tragic, confusing chapter. It highlights
how his obsession with the Poles always seemed
to override his personal life eventually. The
mission always came first. So the ship drift
fails. The money is gone. He's in his 50s. Most
people would retire. Amundsen looks at the calendar,
sees it's the 1920s, and says, Chips are too
slow. I need an airplane. The pivot to aviation.
This is the final act of his career. He realized
that the future of exploration was in the air.
So in 1925, he scrapes together enough money,
mostly from a wealthy American named Lincoln
Ellsworth, to buy two flying boats, the Dornier
Wall N24 and the N25. And this leads to what
I think is the most intense survival story of
his entire life. Forget the South Pole. This
is the one that gives me anxiety. It's unbelievable.
They fly these planes up to 87 degrees north.
They are hunting for the pole. They land on the
ice to take measurements. Which was a huge mistake.
A huge mistake. The leads, the patches of open
water, started to close. The ice shifted. One
plane, the Ntona 4, was damaged and rendered
useless. The other plane, the N25, was frozen
into a bowl of ice. So you have six men, one
functioning plane. And the ice is closing in.
And they are 600 miles from civilization. No
radio. No one knows where they are. They had
to get that plane into the air. But you can't
take off on jagged ice. They had to build a runway.
With what? They didn't have bulldozers? Shovels.
Wooden shovels and ice axes. For three weeks,
these six men moved 600 tons of ice and wet snow.
They had to level a strip long enough for the
plane to gain speed. And here's the kicker. What
were they eating? They had anticipated a short
flight. They were on strict rations, about half
a pound to a pound of food per day, mostly chocolate
and biscuits. Moving 600 tons of ice on a pound
of food a day. It was a desperate race against
death. If the summer melt started in earnest,
the ice would break up completely and they'd
drown or drift away. If they waited too long,
they'd starve. Finally, after several failed
attempts, they crammed all six men into the one
remaining plane. Six men in one small plane.
A brilliant pilot. Hjalmar Reiser Larsson gunned
the engine. They bounced over the uneven ice.
They cleared the ice ridge at the end of the
runway by inches, literally inches. They flew
back to Svalbard on fumes. When they returned
to civilization, everyone had assumed they were
dead. It was a resurrection. It revived Amundsen's
fame. He was back, but he still hadn't reached
the North Pole. 87 degrees is close, but it's
not the pole. He is stubborn. I'll give him that.
So this sets the stage for 1926. the airship
Norge. Now, this is a dirigible, a semi -rigid
airship. It wasn't a plane. It was a lighter
-than -air vessel. It was designed by an Italian
engineer, Umberto Nobile. This was a joint expedition.
Amundsen as the leader, Ellsworth as the financier,
and Nobile as the pilot and designer. They flew
from Svalbard over the North Pole to Alaska,
and this flight on May 12, 1926. This is the
moment that potentially rewrites the record books.
It does. Because as we touched on earlier, the
previous claims to the North Pole were shaky.
Let's quickly debunk them. Frederick Cook, 1908.
widely considered fraudulent. His descriptions
of the sun and shadows didn't match the latitude.
The Inuit guides later said they never went out
of sight of land. He faked it. Robert Peary,
1909. Heavily disputed. His navigational log
has blank pages where the critical data should
be. And his claimed speed, he claimed to travel
three times faster than he'd ever traveled before
on the return trip. It's just physically impossible.
And Admiral Byrd. He flew a plane in 1926, just
a few days before Amundsen. Modern analysis of
his flight diary suggests he turned back early
due to an oil leak. He likely fell short of the
pole. So if Cook lied, Peary missed and Byrd
fell short. Then Roald Amundsen and the crew
of the Norge are the first people to verifiably
reach the North Pole. They drop flags, Norwegian,
American, Italian down onto the ice. That is
the checkmate. He bagged the Northwest Passage,
the South Pole, and technically he is the first
true owner of the North Pole, too. He is the
undisputed king of the ice. And yet he couldn't
enjoy the victory. The aftermath of the Norwich
flight was bitter. Amundsen and Noble hated each
other. Why? What happened? It was a clash of
personalities and cultures. Noble was flamboyant.
He loved the press. He wore his uniform. Amundsen
was stoic, grim, and felt Noble was just a hired
driver. And Noble sighed. Noble Phil Amundsen
was just a passenger who did nothing but sit
there. They fought over credit in the newspapers
for years. It got very, very ugly. Which makes
the end of this story so incredibly ironic. It's
like a Greek tragedy. It is the ultimate irony.
Two years later, in 1928, Noble wants to prove
he doesn't need Amundsen. He organizes a new
Italian expedition with a new airship, the Italia.
And it goes wrong. Horribly wrong. The Italia
crashes on the return from the pole. The control
car smashes onto the ice. Noble and several survivors
are stranded on the drifting pack ice, wounded,
with a radio, living in a red tent. A massive
international rescue operation is launched. Ships,
planes from everywhere. And Amundsen is sitting
in Norway. He hears that his rival, the guy he's
been trashing in the papers, the guy he despises,
is dying on the ice. And what does he do? He
stands up and volunteers. He joins the rescue
effort. Why? Was it guilt? Was it honor? What
was it? I think it was destiny. I don't think
he could resist the call. He secured a plane,
a French Latham 47 flying boat. It wasn't the
best plane for the job, but it was what he could
get. He took off from Tromsø on June 18, 1928,
heading into the Barents Sea to save Nobile.
And that's the last time anyone ever saw him
alive. The plane never arrived. Nobile was eventually
rescued by others, a Swedish pilot and a Russian
icebreaker. But Amundsen vanished. Did they find
anything? Any trace? Weeks later, a wing float
and a fuel tank washed up on the coast. The float
had been modified. It looks like someone had
tried to attach a second float to it using a
spare bolt. This suggests they survived the crash
initially. They were in the water trying to stabilize
the plane or make a raft. But the barren sea
is freezing. Hypothermia would have set in within
minutes. They likely died in the water. The search
went on for months. Modern submarines have looked
for the wreckage as recently as 2009. Nothing.
The ocean kept him. It's a heavy ending. So when
we look back at this incredible resume, Northwest
Passage, South Pole, North Pole, what is the
legacy? Well, scientifically and geographically,
it's immense. The Amundsen -Scott South Pole
Station stands there today, a permanent human
presence at the bottom of the world. There's
a crater on the moon named after him. He proved
that polar travel wasn't about fighting nature,
but adapting to it. And he validated the wisdom
of indigenous peoples. In an era when most Europeans
dismiss them as savages, that's a huge part of
it. And personally, he remains a bit of an enigma,
doesn't he? He was a lifelong bachelor. We know
now he had secret romances. He was in love with
a married woman, Kiss Bennett, for years. He
was actually engaged to an American, Besmajigids,
at the time of his death. No way. She was on
a ship to Norway to marry him when the news came
that he was lost. Oh, that's awful. And there's
that persistent rumor about descendants in the
Arctic. Yes, in Grijoa Haven. This is a sensitive
but important part of the story. There have been
claims for decades that Amundsen fathered children
with Inuit women during those two winters in
the Northwest Passage. Two men, Bob Canona and
Paul Ikulak, grew up believing they were his
sons. Did the science ever back that up? A Y
-DNA analysis was done in 2012 on the Ikulak
family line. It did not match Amundsen's direct
male lineage. So genetically, the proof isn't
there. But the stories persist in the community,
and in a way, it speaks to how deeply he integrated
with them. He wasn't just passing through. He
was part of the fabric of the place for a time.
It really does. You know, when I think about
Amundsen now, I don't just see the guy in the
fur coat with the flag. I see a guy who was almost
trapped by his own competence. He was so good
at the ice, he couldn't exist anywhere else.
I think that's a very profound observation. Amundsen
spent his entire life trying to conquer the frozen
wasteland. He sacrificed his medical career,
his financial stability, his relationships, and
eventually his life. He went to save an enemy
and died doing it. Perhaps he didn't view it
as saving an enemy. Perhaps when the call came,
he just saw an excuse to go back. To go back
to the only place where he truly made sense.
The civilization of banquets and debts and newspapers
was messy. The ice was clean. It was binary.
You survive or you don't. And here's a final
provocative thought for you to chew on. Amundsen
disappeared into the barren sea without a trace.
No body. No grave. Just gone. Was that a tragedy?
Or was that the only fitting end for a man who
felt more at home in the white silence than he
ever did in the noise of the world? A Viking
funeral provided by the Arctic itself. Exactly.
Thanks for diving deep with us today. We'll see
you on the next expedition.