Otto Sverdrup

Photograph of Otto Sverdrup on the first journey of Fram.

Otto Neumann Sverdrup (31 October 1854 – 26 November 1930) was a native of Bindal, Nordland county, Norway, known for his achievements within the areas of Arctic science and exploration.

Early life

His father was born on Buøy in Nærøy municipality, at that time Kolvereid municipality. As oldest son he was heir to the Sverdrup properties at Buøya. However, he left it all to his younger brothers and went to Åbygda in Bindal, to the farm named Hårstad, where Otto Sverdrup was born. In 1872, at the age of 17, Otto Sverdrup returned to Nærøy, to Ottersøy where his uncle Søren worked in transportation with his own vessels. Here Sverdrup started his career as a seaman and after a while he was sailing abroad. In 1875 he passed his mate's examination, and some years later the shipmaster's examination.

In 1877 Sverdrup's parents moved from Bindal to the farm Trana situated outside Steinkjer. At this time O.T. Olsen, a teacher and employee in the bank at Kolvereid and a relative of his mother, had purchased the steamboat TRIO. Sverdrup was employed as captain. Around this time Sverdrup also met the lawyer Alexsander Nansen who lived in Namsos. He was the brother of Fridtjof Nansen and through him Sverdrup and Fridtjof Nansen learned to know each other.

Expeditions

Sverdrup joined Fridtjof Nansen's expedition of 1888 across Greenland. In 1893 he was given command of the Fram, and in 1895 he was left in charge of it while Nansen attempted to reach the North Pole. Setting out in 1898, Sverdrup attempted to circumnavigate Greenland via Baffin Bay but failed to make it through the Nares Strait. Forced to overwinter on Ellesmere Island, he and his crew explored and named many uncharted fjords and peninsulas on the western shores of the island, explaining the Norwegian names, such as Hoved Island ("main island"), in the Canadian Arctic.

Between 1899 to 1902, he overwintered three more times on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic, continuing to explore and map, culminating in the discovery of the islands to the west of Ellesmere Island, namely Axel Heiberg, Amund Ringnes and Ellef Ringnes, collectively known as the Sverdrup Islands. In adopting Inuit methods, Sverdrup and his crew were able to chart a total of 260,000 square kilometers - more than any other polar exploration. Upon his return in Norway, he was treated as a national hero. However, he remains relatively unknown in North America, and relatively unknown for his Canadian exploration in Norway.

Sverdrup claimed all three islands he discovered for Norway, setting off a sovereignty dispute with Canada, which was not settled until 1930 when Norway ceded its claim. The Canadian Government bought the records of Sverdrup's expeditions in 1931 for $67,000 Canadian dollars and are now archived in the National Archives of Canada. Sverdrup died just two weeks after his deal with the Canadian Government was signed.

One of Sverdrup's lesser known exploits was a search-and-rescue expedition aboard ship Eklips in the Kara Sea in 1914-15. His aim was to search for two missing Arctic expeditions, that of Captain Brusilov on the St. Anna and that of Vladimir Rusanov on the Gerkules.

Sverdrup’s fourth and last expedition in Arctic Siberian waters was in 1921, when, from the bridge of the Soviet Icebreaker Lenin, he commanded a convoy of five cargo ships on an experimental run through the Kara Sea to the mouths of the Ob and Yenisei. The ships reached their destinations and returned safely. This was considered an important step in the development of the Kara Sea sector of the Northern Sea Route (Fairley, p. 272).

The last years of his life he lived in Sandvika, a township outside Oslo, Norway.

References

• Gerard Kenney Ships of Wood and Men of Iron: A Norwegian-Canadian Saga of Exploration in the High Arctic, ISBN 0-88977-168-5, 1984

• Guldborg Søvik og Lars Hole Der isen aldri går. Et år i Otto Sverdrups rike ISBN 978-82-91948-08-9, 2001. http://home.monet.no/~sverdrup/

• William Barr, Otto Sverdrup to the rescue of the Russian Imperial Navy.

• T. C. Fairley, Sverdrup’s Arctic Adventures. London 1959.
• Otto Sverdrup - ExploreNorth at www.explorenorth.com

External links

• Otto Sverdrup Centennial Expedition
• Official site of the Fram Museum (Frammuseet)