In 2007, a liquid gas facility was built on an island. The underwater pipeline runs for 90 miles from the Barents Sea to the island of Melkøye. The natural gas is cooled to a temperature of -261ºF to make it liquid.
It is 85⁰F in Hammerfest with full sun. We are wearing shorts. Many cruisers came here from southern Europe to escape the heat, but the heat has followed us.
In WWII, the city was bombed, and the Germans employed the scorched-earth policy.
We recorded our names into a database on a computer. Rob went to retrieve our certificates, and we learned that our memberships cost $50 each. Can we resign? We will definitely let our memberships lapse.
I have a costly miniature polar bear pin which I now proudly wear. Always read the fine print. We thought that it was free!!
Hammerfest has a population of 11,335, and in 1892 it was the first city in Norway to get electric street lights.
Adolf Lindstrøm, the famous cook for polar expeditions, is from Hammerfest. He used cloudberries for Vitamin C to prevent scurvy. He joined both the Nansen and Amundsen expeditions.
Many hairdressers are in Norway because they have a lot of hair growth due to long days of sunlight, fish consumption, fresh air, and lots of cod liver oil.
We had lectures on board which were very informative.
Fridtjof Nansen 1861-1930
- Scientist
- Explorer
- Champion skier and ice skater Diplomat
- Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1922)
- Humanitarian
Nansen was a biologist and zoologist because he loved to be outside. He was an accomplished skier and held world records. In fact, he would ski over mountains to get to the competitions and his progress would be covered by newspapers.
At the age of 18 he broke the world one-mile skating record, and in the following year won the national cross-country skiing championship. He would repeat this on 11 subsequent occasions.
Nansen is credited with crossing Greenland. He had to overwinter in Greenland and learned how to survive in the harsh snowy winters from the Inuit.
He was interested in an East-to-West route to the North Pole. No one wanted to finance his expedition.
This theory was the basis of Nansen’s Fram expedition of 1893–1896. How do you know if you haven’t tried?
A properly-constructed ship could enter the ice in the east, survive the pressure during the drift, and emerge in the Atlantic, perhaps having traversed the pole itself. This was based on the fact that an earlier ship, USS Jeanette, had been stuck in the ice found on the east coast of Greenland. The Fram was a specially made bowl-shaped ship made of strong South American Greenwood.
Nansen gathered an all Norwegian crew. Hundreds applied although success and even life was not guaranteed.
They picked up Greenland dogs (a type of husky) along the way. The dogs were eventually used for food. They started to kill them with bullets but realized that they needed to save them for the polar bears. So they started to strangle the dogs, then used a knife, but returned to bullets due to the emotional strain. These dogs had been companions and worked alongside them for this improbable journey.
When the Fram was frozen in the ice which was expected, the ship appeared to be sinking. They unloaded everything to make the vessel lighter and that worked. The crew remained busy by removing ice from around the ship and doing scientific research.
The northerly progress of the frozen Fram continued at a rate of one kilometre and a half per day, Nansen began privately to consider a new plan as at this rate it would take five years to reach the pole. They would run out of food and supplies.
One day Nansen stood up and said that he was leaving much to the surprise of the rest of the crew.
When the ship passed latitude 83°N, he and Hjalmar Johansen would leave the ship with the dogs and make for the pole while Fram continued its drift until it emerged from the ice in the North Atlantic.
The two men left on this journey. They ended up eating 15 polar bears and even gained weight. They did not get scurvy since they learned from the Inuit to not cook the polar bear meat. The two men sewed the two sleeping bags together and slept together for eight months.
They didn’t know where they were. When crossing water, they lashed their kayaks together and used the tents for sails. However, they were not lashed tight enough, and they came apart. Nansen jumped in to save the supplies as it was a matter of life and death. He barely made it back into the kayak.
During a stop for repairs after the kayaks had been attacked by a walrus, Nansen thought he heard a dog barking as well as human voices. He went to investigate, and a few minutes later saw the figure of a man approaching. It was the British explorer Frederick Jackson, who was leading an expedition to Franz Josef Land and was camped at Cape Flora on nearby Northbrook Island. The two were equally astonished by their encounter.
Nansen returned to Norway and was celebrated as the first man to travel that far north. For more details and a firsthand account, read Farthest North by Fridtjof Nansen.
Tonight I played Musical Trivia with my new friends. I knew that I needed to recruit young people from different countries if we had a chance. Good old American competitiveness was on full display. Rob was not feeling well so I was on my own.
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