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Otto Neumann Sverdrup
31st October 1854, in Bindal, Norway - 26th November 1930, in Sandvika, Norway
Interesting Trivia:
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During an 1898-1902 Arctic expedition, he discovered three islands in what is now the Canadian territory of Nunavut
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On March 26, 2004, Norway, Greenland and Canada jointly issued a series of five postage stamps and other related products to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Arctic explorer Otto Sverdrup
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He published New Land: Four Years in the Arctic Regions
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Norwegian Air Shuttle has honored their native son by painting a huge portrait of him on the tail of one of their Boeing 737-300 jets
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Surprisingly, Sverdrup is little known outside his native country, where he is a national hero
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Canada bought the records of Sverdrup's expeditions in 1931 for $67000 (they are now archived in the National Archives of Canada)
His Story:
He was born in 1854 and at the tender age of 17, joined the merchant fleet as a seaman for his uncle. With this, he started to travel abroad and by the time he turned 23, he was a captain of a steamboat that belonged to one of his mother’s relatives. Around that time he met the explorer Fridtjof Nansen. The seed was planted for future explorations.
But it was not until 1888 that he joined Nansen on his first Arctic exploration across Greenland. His accomplishments got him hired as captain of a newly built ship, the Fram. He had put his experiences as a captain to good use and had helped design and rig this ship. In 1893, he set out with Nansen again on the Fram in an, albeit unsuccessful, attempt to reach the North Pole. However, they broke the “furthest north” record.
In 1898, he set out again, this time on a journey which was going to take him till 1902. He wanted to get as far as possible up the west coast of Greenland and then circumnavigate the island. Due to the packs of ice, this proved impossible and he headed west into Canada’s Arctic Archipelago.
He achieved great things on his expeditions, such as the mapping of the west and south coasts of Ellesmere Island and the discovery of the three islands in what is now the Canadian territory of Nunavut (Axel Heiberg Island, the Ringnes Islands (Amund and Ellef), known as the Sverdrup Islands). The reason that many fjords and peninsulas in the Canadian Arctic carry Norwegian names is thanks to Sverdrup and his crew as they gave the then uncharted areas the names. He did not only named the area, but also claimed it as property of Norway. It was not until 1930 when Norway “sold” the islands back to Canada. No less that 260,000 square km were charted by him, a record in itself.
In 1921 he started his fourth and last expedition into the Arctic Siberian waters. It was an experiment with 5 cargo ships who were trying to get trough the Kara Sea. He commanded the successful journey.
He also participated in search-and-rescue missions, one of them being the search for the Italian explorer Umberto Nobile's who had gone missing with his balloon Italia in 1928.
Te Papa Whale exhibition in Washington, DC