Scientist and polar oracle Nansen's first task on his return was to write his account of the voyage. This he did remarkably quickly, producing 300,000 words of Norwegian text by November 1896; the English translation, titled
Farthest North, was ready in January 1897. The book was an instant success, and secured Nansen's long-term financial future. Nansen included without comment the one significant adverse criticism of his conduct, that of Greely, who had written in ''
Harper's Weekly'' on Nansen's decision to leave
Fram and strike for the pole: "It passes comprehension how Nansen could have thus deviated from the most sacred duty devolving on the commander of a naval expedition." During the 20 years following his return from the Arctic, Nansen devoted most of his energies to scientific work. In 1897 he accepted a professorship in zoology at the
Royal Frederick University, which gave him a base from which he could tackle the major task of editing the reports of the scientific results of the
Fram expedition. This was a much more arduous task than writing the expedition narrative. The results were eventually published in six volumes, and according to a later polar scientist,
Robert Rudmose-Brown, "were to Arctic oceanography what the
Challenger expedition results had been to the oceanography of other oceans." In 1900, Nansen became director of the Christiania-based International Laboratory for North Sea Research, and helped found the
International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Through his connection with the latter body, in the summer of 1900 Nansen embarked on his first visit to Arctic waters since the
Fram expedition, a cruise to Iceland and Jan Mayen Land on the oceanographic research vessel
Michael Sars, named after Eva's father. Shortly after his return he learned that his Farthest North record had been passed, by members of
the Duke of the Abruzzi's Italian expedition. They had reached 86°34′N on 24 April 1900, in an attempt to reach the North Pole from Franz Josef Land. Nansen received the news philosophically: "What is the value of having goals for their own sake? They all vanish ... it is merely a question of time." at
Polhøgda Nansen was now considered an oracle by all would-be explorers of the north and south polar regions. Abruzzi had consulted him, as had the Belgian
Adrien de Gerlache, each of whom took expeditions to the Antarctic. Although Nansen refused to meet his own countryman and fellow-explorer
Carsten Borchgrevink (whom he considered a fraud), he gave advice to
Robert Falcon Scott on polar equipment and transport, prior to the 1901–04
Discovery expedition. At one point Nansen seriously considered leading a South Pole expedition himself, and asked Colin Archer to design two ships. However, these plans remained on the drawing board. By 1901 Nansen's family had expanded considerably. A daughter, Liv, had been born just before
Fram set out; a son, Kåre was born in 1897 followed by a daughter, Irmelin, in 1900 and a second son
Odd in 1901. The family home, which Nansen had built in 1891 from the profits of his Greenland expedition book, was now too small. Nansen acquired a plot of land in the
Lysaker district and built, substantially to his own design, a large and imposing house which combined some of the characteristics of an English
manor house with features from the
Italian renaissance. The house was ready for occupation by April 1902; Nansen called it
Polhøgda (in English "polar heights"), and it remained his home for the rest of his life. A fifth and final child, son Asmund, was born at Polhøgda in 1903.
Politician and diplomat , last king of the union of Sweden and Norway. He remained Sweden's king after Norway's independence in 1905.
The union between Norway and Sweden, imposed by the Great Powers in 1814, had been under considerable strain through the 1890s, the chief issue in question being Norway's rights to its own
consular service. Nansen, although not by inclination a politician, had spoken out on the issue on several occasions in defence of Norway's interests. As of 1898 Nansen was among the contributors of
Ringeren, an anti-Union magazine established by
Sigurd Ibsen. However, at Michelsen's request he went to Berlin and then to London where, in a letter to
The Times, he presented Norway's legal case for a separate consular service to the English-speaking world. On 17 May 1905, Norway's Constitution Day, Nansen addressed a large crowd in Christiania, saying: "Now have all ways of retreat been closed. Now remains only one path, the way forward, perhaps through difficulties and hardships, but forward for our country, to a free Norway". He also wrote a book,
Norway and the Union with Sweden, to promote Norway's case abroad. On 23 May the Storting passed the Consulate Act establishing a separate consular service. King Oscar refused his assent; on 27 May the Norwegian cabinet resigned, but the king would not recognise this step. On 7 June the Storting unilaterally announced that the union with Sweden was dissolved. In a tense situation the Swedish government agreed to Norway's request that the dissolution should be put to a referendum of the Norwegian people. Nansen was successful; shortly after the second referendum Charles was proclaimed king, taking the name Haakon VII. He and his wife, the British princess
Maud, were crowned in the
Nidaros Cathedral in
Trondheim on 22 June 1906. His main task was to work with representatives of the major European powers on an Integrity Treaty which would guarantee Norway's position. Nansen was popular in England, and got on well with King Edward, though he found court functions and diplomatic duties disagreeable; "frivolous and boring" was his description. A few weeks later, still in England as the king's guest at
Sandringham, Nansen received word that Eva was seriously ill with
pneumonia. On 8 December he set out for home, but before he reached Polhøgda he learned, from a telegram, that Eva had died.
Oceanographer and traveller was used to sample seawater temperature at specific depths After a period of mourning, Nansen returned to London. He had been persuaded by his government to rescind his resignation until after King Edward's state visit to Norway in April 1908. His formal retirement from the diplomatic service was dated 1 May 1908, the same day on which his university professorship was changed from zoology to oceanography. This new designation reflected the general character of Nansen's more recent scientific interests. In 1905, he had supplied the Swedish physicist
Walfrid Ekman with the data which established the principle in oceanography known as the
Ekman spiral. Based on Nansen's observations of ocean currents recorded during the
Fram expedition, Ekman concluded that the effect of wind on the sea's surface produced currents which "formed something like a spiral staircase, down towards the depths". In 1909 Nansen combined with
Bjørn Helland-Hansen to publish an academic paper,
The Norwegian Sea: its Physical Oceanography, based on the
Michael Sars voyage of 1900. Nansen had by now retired from polar exploration, the decisive step being his release of
Fram to fellow Norwegian
Roald Amundsen, who was planning a North Pole expedition. When Amundsen made his controversial change of plan and
set out for the South Pole, Nansen stood by him. Between 1910 and 1914, Nansen participated in several oceanographic voyages. In 1910, aboard the Norwegian naval vessel
Fridtjof, he carried out researches in the northern Atlantic, and in 1912 he took his own yacht,
Veslemøy, to
Bear Island and
Spitsbergen. The main objective of the
Veslemøy cruise was the investigation of
salinity in the North Polar Basin. One of Nansen's lasting contributions to oceanography was his work designing instruments and equipment; the "
Nansen bottle" for taking deep water samples remained in use into the 21st century, in a version updated by
Shale Niskin. At the request of the Royal Geographical Society, Nansen began work on a study of Arctic discoveries, which developed into a two-volume history of the exploration of the northern regions up to the beginning of the 16th century. This was published in 1911 as
Nord i Tåkeheimen ("In Northern Mists").
Louisa Young, in her biography of Lady Scott, rejects the claim. Many women were attracted to Nansen, and he had a reputation as a womaniser. His personal life was troubled around this time; in January 1913 he received news of the suicide of
Hjalmar Johansen, who had returned in disgrace from Amundsen's successful South Pole expedition. In March 1913, Nansen's youngest son Asmund died after a long illness. The life and culture of the Russian peoples aroused in Nansen an interest and sympathy he would carry through to his later life. Immediately before the
First World War, Nansen joined Helland-Hansen in an oceanographical cruise in eastern Atlantic waters.
Statesman and humanitarian League of Nations On the outbreak of war in 1914, Norway declared its neutrality, alongside Sweden and Denmark. Nansen was appointed as the president of the Norwegian Union of Defence, but had few official duties, and continued with his professional work as far as circumstances permitted. Within a few months of the war's end in November 1918, a draft agreement had been accepted by the
Paris Peace Conference to create a
League of Nations, as a means of resolving disputes between nations by peaceful means. The foundation of the League at this time was providential as far as Nansen was concerned, giving him a new outlet for his restless energy. He became president of the Norwegian League of Nations Society, and although the Scandinavian nations with their traditions of neutrality initially held themselves aloof, his advocacy helped to ensure that Norway became a full member of the League in 1920, and he became one of its three delegates to the League's General Assembly. In April 1920, at the League's request, Nansen began organising the repatriation of around half a million prisoners of war, stranded in various parts of the world. Of these, 300,000 were in Russia which, gripped by revolution and civil war, had little interest in their fate. Nansen continued this work for a further two years until, in his final report to the Assembly in 1922, he was able to state that 427,886 prisoners had been repatriated to around 30 different countries. In paying tribute to his work, the responsible committee recorded that the story of his efforts "would contain tales of heroic endeavour worthy of those in the accounts of the crossing of Greenland and the great Arctic voyage."
Nansen Mission The
Nansen Mission is the colloquial term used by inhabitants of former
Soviet Socialist Republics to describe the series of humanitarian initiatives undertaken by the
International Committee of the Red Cross and headed by Fridtjof Nansen. This international effort included the involvement of the Swiss, Swedish, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and German branches of the Red Cross, the Swiss and Italian Children's Aids, the Seventh-day Adventist Society, as well as many other organisations. The mobilisation effort began in August 1921 and the first programmes in Russia began soon after, with the signing of an agreement of assistance between Nansen and
Georgy Chicherin, which provided aid to mitigate starvation in Russia and Ukraine.
Russian famine Even before this work was complete, Nansen was involved in a further humanitarian effort. On 1 September 1921, prompted by the British delegate
Philip Noel-Baker, he accepted the post of the League's High Commissioner for Refugees. His main brief was the resettlement of around two million Russian refugees displaced by the upheavals of the
Russian Revolution. At the same time he tried to tackle the urgent problem of
famine in Russia; following a widespread failure of crops around 30 million people were threatened with starvation and death. Despite Nansen's pleas on behalf of the starving, Russia's revolutionary government was feared and distrusted internationally, and the League was reluctant to come to its peoples' aid. Nansen had to rely largely on fundraising from private organisations, and his efforts met with limited success. While attending the
Conference of Lausanne in November 1922, Nansen learned that he had been awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize for 1922. The citation referred to "his work for the repatriation of the prisoners of war, his work for the Russian refugees, his work to bring succour to the millions of Russians afflicted by famine, and finally his present work for the refugees in Asia Minor and Thrace". Nansen donated the prize money to international relief efforts. Despite some controversy over the principle of a population exchange, His goal was the establishment of a national home for these refugees, within the borders of
Soviet Armenia. His main assistant in this endeavour was
Vidkun Quisling, the future
Nazi collaborator and head of a
Norwegian puppet government during the
Second World War. After visiting the region, Nansen presented the Assembly with a modest plan for the irrigation of on which 15,000 refugees could be settled. The plan ultimately failed, because even with Nansen's unremitting advocacy the money to finance the scheme was not forthcoming. Despite this failure, his reputation among the Armenian people remains high. The book was translated into many languages. After his visit to Armenia, Nansen wrote two additional books:
Across Armenia (1927) and
Through the Caucasus to the Volga (1930). Within the League's Assembly, Nansen spoke out on many issues besides those related to refugees. He believed that the Assembly gave the smaller countries such as Norway a "unique opportunity for speaking in the councils of the world." He believed that the extent of the League's success in reducing armaments would be the greatest test of its credibility. He was a signatory to the
Slavery Convention of 25 September 1926, which sought to outlaw the use of forced labour. He supported a settlement of the
post-war reparations issue and championed Germany's membership of the League, which was granted in September 1926 after intensive preparatory work by Nansen. == Later life ==