The Most Famous
EXPLORERS from Norway
Top 10
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Norwegian Explorers of all time. This list of famous Norwegian Explorers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Norwegian Explorers.
1. Roald Amundsen (1872 - 1928)
With an HPI of 82.24, Roald Amundsen is the most famous Norwegian Explorer. His biography has been translated into 152 different languages on wikipedia.
Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen (UK: , US: ; Norwegian: [ˈrùːɑɫ ˈɑ̂mʉnsən] ; 16 July 1872 – c. 18 June 1928) was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He was a key figure of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Born in Borge, Østfold, Norway, Amundsen began his career as a polar explorer as first mate on Adrien de Gerlache's Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897–1899. From 1903 to 1906, he led the first expedition to successfully traverse the Northwest Passage on the sloop Gjøa. In 1909, Amundsen began planning for a South Pole expedition. He left Norway in June 1910 on the ship Fram and reached Antarctica in January 1911. His party established a camp at the Bay of Whales and a series of supply depots on the Barrier (now known as the Ross Ice Shelf) before setting out for the pole in October. The party of five, led by Amundsen, became the first to reach the South Pole on 14 December 1911. Following a failed attempt in 1918 to reach the North Pole by traversing the Northeast Passage on the ship Maud, Amundsen began planning for an aerial expedition instead. On 12 May 1926, Amundsen and 15 other men in the airship Norge became the first explorers verified to have reached the North Pole. Amundsen disappeared in June 1928 while flying on a rescue mission for the airship Italia in the Arctic. The search for his remains, which have not been found, was called off in September of that year.
2. Fridtjof Nansen (1861 - 1930)
With an HPI of 75.68, Fridtjof Nansen is the 2nd most famous Norwegian Explorer. His biography has been translated into 87 different languages.
Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (Norwegian: [ˈfrɪ̂tːjɔf ˈnɑ̀nsn̩]; 10 October 1861 – 13 May 1930) was a Norwegian polymath and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He gained prominence at various points in his life as an explorer, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian and co-founded the Fatherland League. He led the team that made the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888, traversing the island on cross-country skis. He won international fame after reaching a record northern latitude of 86°14′ during his Fram expedition of 1893–1896. Although he retired from exploration after his return to Norway, his techniques of polar travel and his innovations in equipment and clothing influenced a generation of subsequent Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. He was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1897. Nansen studied zoology at the Royal Frederick University in Christiania and later worked as a curator at the University Museum of Bergen where his research on the central nervous system of lower marine creatures earned him a doctorate and helped establish neuron doctrine. Later, neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his research on the same subject. After 1896 his main scientific interest switched to oceanography; in the course of his research he made many scientific cruises, mainly in the North Atlantic, and contributed to the development of modern oceanographic equipment. As one of his country's leading citizens, in 1905 Nansen spoke out for ending Norway's union with Sweden, and was instrumental in persuading Prince Carl of Denmark to accept the throne of the newly independent Norway. Between 1906 and 1908, he served as the Norwegian representative in London, where he helped negotiate the Integrity Treaty that guaranteed Norway's independent status. In the final decade of his life, Nansen devoted himself primarily to the League of Nations, following his appointment in 1921 as the League's High Commissioner for Refugees. In 1922 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on behalf of the displaced victims of World War I and related conflicts. Among the initiatives he introduced was the "Nansen passport" for stateless persons, a certificate that used to be recognized by more than 50 countries. He worked on behalf of refugees alongside Vidkun Quisling until his sudden death in 1930, after which the League established the Nansen International Office for Refugees to ensure that his work continued. This office received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1938. His name is commemorated in numerous geographical features, particularly in the polar regions, as well as in the Gordon Setter dog Nansen.
3. Erik the Red (950 - 1003)
With an HPI of 74.14, Erik the Red is the 3rd most famous Norwegian Explorer. His biography has been translated into 63 different languages.
Erik Thorvaldsson (c. 950 – c. 1003), known as Erik the Red, was a Norse explorer, described in medieval and Icelandic saga sources as having founded the first European settlement in Greenland. Erik most likely earned the epithet "the Red" due to the color of his hair and beard. According to Icelandic sagas, Erik was born in the Jæren district of Rogaland, Norway, as the son of Thorvald Asvaldsson; to which Thorvald would later be banished from Norway, and would sail west to Iceland with Erik and his family. During Erik's life in Iceland, he married Þjódhild Jorundsdottir and would have four children, with one of Erik's sons being the well-known Icelandic explorer Leif Erikson. Around the year of 982, Erik was exiled from Iceland for three years, during which time he explored Greenland, eventually culminating in his founding of the first successful European settlement on the island. Erik would later die there around 1003 CE during a winter epidemic.
4. Thor Heyerdahl (1914 - 2002)
With an HPI of 71.63, Thor Heyerdahl is the 4th most famous Norwegian Explorer. His biography has been translated into 76 different languages.
Thor Heyerdahl KStJ (Norwegian pronunciation: [tuːr ˈhæ̀ɪəɖɑːɫ]; 6 October 1914 – 18 April 2002) was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer with a background in biology with specialization in zoology, botany and geography. Heyerdahl is notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947, in which he drifted 8,000 km (5,000 mi) across the Pacific Ocean in a primitive hand-built raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands. The expedition was supposed to demonstrate that the legendary sun-worshiping red-haired, bearded, and white-skinned "Tiki people" from South America drifted and colonized Polynesia first, before actual Polynesian peoples. His hyperdiffusionist ideas on ancient cultures has been widely rejected by the scientific community, even before the expedition. Heyerdahl made other voyages to demonstrate the possibility of contact between widely separated ancient peoples, notably the Ra II expedition of 1970, when he sailed from the west coast of Africa to Barbados in a papyrus reed boat. He was appointed a government scholar in 1984. He died on 18 April 2002 in Colla Micheri, Italy, while visiting close family members. The Norwegian government gave him a state funeral in Oslo Cathedral on 26 April 2002. In May 2011, the Thor Heyerdahl Archives were added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register. At the time, this list included 238 collections from all over the world. The Heyerdahl Archives span the years 1937 to 2002 and include his photographic collection, diaries, private letters, expedition plans, articles, newspaper clippings, and original book and article manuscripts. The Heyerdahl Archives are administered by the Kon-Tiki Museum and the National Library of Norway in Oslo. Heyerdahl was born in Larvik, Norway, the son of master brewer Thor Heyerdahl (1869–1957) and his wife, Alison Lyng (1873–1965). As a young child, Heyerdahl showed a strong interest in zoology, inspired by his mother, who had a strong interest in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. He created a small museum in his childhood home, with a common adder (Vipera berus) as the main attraction. He studied zoology and geography at the faculty of biological science at the University of Oslo. At the same time, he privately studied Polynesian culture and history, consulting what was then the world's largest private collection of books and papers on Polynesia, owned by Bjarne Kroepelien, a wealthy wine merchant in Oslo. (This collection was later purchased by the University of Oslo Library from Kroepelien's heirs and was attached to the Kon-Tiki Museum research department.) After seven terms and consultations with experts in Berlin, a project was developed and sponsored by Heyerdahl's zoology professors, Kristine Bonnevie and Hjalmar Broch. He was to visit some isolated Pacific island groups and study how the local animals had found their way there. On the day before they sailed together to the Marquesas Islands in 1936, Heyerdahl married Liv Coucheron-Torp (1916–1969), whom he had met at the University of Oslo, and who had studied economics there. He was 22 years old and she was 20 years old. Eventually, the couple had two sons: Thor Jr. and Bjørn. The marriage ended in divorce shortly before the 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition, which Liv had helped to organize. After the occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany, he served with the Free Norwegian Forces from 1944, in the far north province of Finnmark. In 1949, Heyerdahl married Yvonne Dedekam-Simonsen (1924–2006). They had three daughters: Annette, Marian, and Helene Elisabeth. They were divorced in 1969. Heyerdahl blamed their separation on his being away from home and differences in their ideas for bringing up children. In his autobiography, he concluded that he should take the entire blame for their separation. In 1991, Heyerdahl married Jacqueline Beer (born 1932) as his third wife. They lived in Tenerife, Canary Islands, and were very actively involved with archaeological projects, especially in Túcume, Peru, and Azov until his death in 2002. He had still been hoping to undertake an archaeological project in Samoa before he died. In 1936, on the day after his marriage to Liv Coucheron Torp, the young couple set out for the South Pacific Island of Fatu Hiva. They nominally had an academic mission, to research the spread of animal species between islands, but in reality they intended to "run away to the South Seas" and never return home. Aided by expedition funding from their parents, they nonetheless arrived on the island lacking "provisions, weapons or a radio". Residents in Tahiti, where they stopped en route, did convince them to take a machete and a cooking pot. They arrived at Fatu Hiva in 1937, in the valley of Omo‘a, and decided to cross over the island's mountainous interior to settle in one of the small, nearly abandoned, valleys on the eastern side of the island. There, they made their thatch-covered stilted home in the valley of Uia. Living in such primitive conditions was a daunting task, but they managed to live off the land, and work on their academic goals, by collecting and studying zoological and botanical specimens. They discovered unusual artifacts, listened to the natives' oral history traditions, and took note of the prevailing winds and ocean currents. It was in this setting, surrounded by the ruins of the formerly glorious Marquesan civilization, that Heyerdahl first developed his theories regarding the possibility of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact between the pre-European Polynesians, and the peoples and cultures of South America. Despite the seemingly idyllic situation, the exposure to various tropical diseases and other difficulties caused them to return to civilisation a year later. They worked together to write an account of their adventure. The events surrounding his stay on the Marquesas, most of the time on Fatu Hiva, were told first in his book På Jakt etter Paradiset (Hunt for Paradise) (1938), which was published in Norway but, following the outbreak of World War II, was never translated and remained largely forgotten. Many years later, having achieved notability with other adventures and books on other subjects, Heyerdahl published a new account of this voyage under the title Fatu Hiva (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974). The story of his time on Fatu Hiva and his side trip to Hivaoa and Mohotani is also related in Green Was the Earth on the Seventh Day (Random House, 1996). In 1947 Heyerdahl and five fellow adventurers sailed from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands, French Polynesia in a raft that they had constructed from balsa wood and other native materials, christened the Kon-Tiki. The Kon-Tiki expedition was inspired by old reports and drawings made by the Spanish Conquistadors of Inca rafts, and by native legends and archaeological evidence suggesting contact between South America and Polynesia. The Kon-Tiki smashed into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotus on 7 August 1947 after a 101-day, 4,300-nautical-mile (5,000-mile or 8,000 km) journey across the Pacific Ocean. Heyerdahl had nearly drowned at least twice in childhood and did not take easily to water; he said later that there were times in each of his raft voyages when he feared for his life. Heyerdahl's book about The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas has been translated into 70 languages. The documentary film of the expedition entitled Kon-Tiki won an Academy Award in 1951. A dramatised version was released in 2012, also called Kon-Tiki, and was nominated for both the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards and a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 70th Golden Globe Awards. It was the first time that a Norwegian film was nominated for both an Oscar and a Golden Globe. In 1955–1956, Heyerdahl organised the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island. The expedition's scientific staff included Arne Skjølsvold, Carlyle Smith, Edwin Ferdon, Gonzalo Figueroa and William Mulloy. Heyerdahl and the professional archaeologists who travelled with him spent several months on Easter Island investigating several important archaeological sites. Highlights of the project include experiments in the carving, transport and erection of the notable moai, as well as excavations at such prominent sites as Orongo and Poike. The expedition published two large volumes of scientific reports (Reports of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island and the East Pacific) and Heyerdahl later added a third (The Art of Easter Island). Heyerdahl's popular book on the subject, Aku-Aku was another international best-seller. In Easter Island: The Mystery Solved (Random House, 1989), Heyerdahl offered a more detailed theory of the island's history. Based on native testimony and archaeological research, he claimed the island was originally colonised by Hanau eepe ("Long Ears"), from South America, and that Polynesian Hanau momoko ("Short Ears") arrived only in the mid-16th century; they may have come independently or perhaps were imported as workers. According to Heyerdahl, something happened between Admiral Roggeveen's discovery of the island in 1722 and James Cook's visit in 1774; while Roggeveen encountered white, Indian, and Polynesian people living in relative harmony and prosperity, Cook encountered a much smaller population consisting mainly of Polynesians and living in privation. Heyerdahl notes the oral tradition of an uprising of "Short Ears" against the ruling "Long Ears." The "Long Ears" dug a defensive moat on the eastern end of the island and filled it with kindling. During the uprising, Heyerdahl claimed, the "Long Ears" ignited their moat and retreated behind it, but the "Short Ears" found a way around it, came up from behind, and pushed all but two of the "Long Ears" into the fire. This moat was found by the Norwegian expedition and it was partly cut down into the rock. Layers of fire were revealed but no fragments of bodies. The basis of the Kon-Tiki expedition was Heyerdahl's belief that the original inhabitants of Easter Island (and the rest of Polynesia) were the "Tiki people", a race of "white bearded men" who supposedly originally sailed from Peru. He described these "Tiki people" as being a sun-worshipping fair-skinned people with blue eyes, fair or red hair, tall statures, and beards. He further said that these people were originally from the Middle East, and had crossed the Atlantic earlier to found the great Mesoamerican civilizations. By 500 CE, a branch of these people were supposedly forced out into Tiahuanaco where they became the ruling class of the Inca Empire and set out to voyage into the Pacific Ocean under the leadership of "Con Ticci Viracocha". Heyerdahl said that when the Europeans first came to the Pacific islands, they were astonished that they found some of the natives to have relatively light skins and beards. There were whole families that had pale skin, hair varying in colour from reddish to blonde. In contrast, most of the Polynesians had golden-brown skin, raven-black hair, and rather flat noses. Heyerdahl claimed that when Jacob Roggeveen discovered Easter Island in 1722, he supposedly noticed that many of the natives were white-skinned. Heyerdahl claimed that these people could count their ancestors who were "white-skinned" right back to the time of Tiki and Hotu Matua, when they first came sailing across the sea "from a mountainous land in the east which was scorched by the sun". The ethnographic evidence for these claims is outlined in Heyerdahl's book Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island. He argued that the monumental statues known as moai resembled sculptures more typical of pre-Columbian Peru than any Polynesian designs. He believed that the Easter Island myth of a power struggle between two peoples called the Hanau epe and Hanau momoko was a memory of conflicts between the original inhabitants of the island and a later wave of "Native Americans" from the Northwest coast, eventually leading to the annihilation of the Hanau epe and the destruction of the island's culture and once-prosperous economy. Heyerdahl described these later "Native American" migrants as "Maori-Polynesians" who were supposedly Asians who crossed over the Bering land bridge into Northwest America before sailing westward towards Polynesia (the westward direction is because he refused to accept that Polynesians were capable of sailing against winds and currents). He associated them with the Tlingit and Haida peoples and characterized them as "inferior" to the Tiki people. Despite these claims, DNA sequence analysis of Easter Island's current inhabitants indicates that the 36 people living on Rapa Nui who survived the devastating internecine wars, slave raids, and epidemics of the 19th century and had any offspring were Polynesian. Furthermore, examination of skeletons offers evidence of only Polynesian origins for Rapa Nui living on the island after 1680. Heyerdahl's hypothesis of Polynesian origins from the Americas is considered pseudoscientific, racially controversial, and has not gained acceptance among scientists (even prior to the voyage). It is overwhelmingly rejected by scientists today. Archaeological, linguistic, cultural, and genetic evidence all support a western origin (from Island Southeast Asia) for Polynesians via the Austronesian expansion. "Drift voyaging" from South America was also deemed "extremely unlikely" in 1973 by computer modeling. The 1976 voyage of the Hōkūleʻa, a performance-accurate replica of a Polynesian double-hulled wa'a kaulua voyaging canoe, from Hawaiʻi to Tahiti was partly a demonstration to prove that Heyerdahl was wrong. The Hōkūleʻa sailed against prevailing winds and exclusively used wayfinding and celestial Polynesian navigation techniques (unlike the modern equipment and charts of the Kon-Tiki). Hōkūleʻa also remains fully operational, and has since completed ten other voyages, including a three-year circumnavigation of the planet from 2014 to 2017, with other sister ships. Heyerdahl's hypothesis was part of early Eurocentric hyperdiffusionism and the westerner disbelief that (non-white) "stone-age" peoples with "no math" could colonize islands separated by vast distances of ocean water, even against prevailing winds and currents. He rejected the highly skilled voyaging and navigating traditions of the Austronesian peoples and instead argued that Polynesia was settled from boats following the wind and currents for navigation from South America. As such, the Kon-Tiki was deliberately a primitive raft and unsteerable, in contrast to the sophisticated outrigger canoes and catamarans of the Austronesian people. Anthropologist Robert Carl Suggs included a chapter titled "The Kon-Tiki Myth" in his 1960 book on Polynesia, concluding that "The Kon-Tiki theory is about as plausible as the tales of Atlantis, Mu, and 'Children of the Sun.' Like most such theories, it makes exciting light reading, but as an example of scientific method it fares quite poorly." Anthropologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis also criticised Heyerdahl's theory in his 2009 book The Wayfinders, which explores the history of Polynesia. Davis says that Heyerdahl "ignored the overwhelming body of linguistic, ethnographic, and ethnobotanical evidence, augmented today by genetic and archaeological data, indicating that he was patently wrong." In 1969 and 1970, Heyerdahl built two boats from papyrus and attempted to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Morocco in Africa. Based on drawings and models from ancient Egypt, the first boat, named Ra (after the Egyptian Sun god), was constructed by boat builders from Lake Chad using papyrus reed obtained from Lake Tana in Ethiopia and launched into the Atlantic Ocean from the coast of Morocco. The Ra crew included Thor Heyerdahl (Norway), Norman Baker (US), Carlo Mauri (Italy), Yuri Senkevich (USSR), Santiago Genovés (Mexico), Georges Sourial (Egypt), and Abdullah Djibrine (Chad). Only Heyerdahl and Baker had sailing and navigation experience. Genovés would go on to head the Acali Experiment. After a number of weeks, Ra took on water. The crew discovered that a key element of the Egyptian boatbuilding method had been neglected, a tether that acted like a spring to keep the stern high in the water while allowing for flexibility. Water and storms eventually caused it to sag and break apart after sailing more than 6,400 km (4,000 miles). The crew was forced to abandon Ra, some hundred miles (160 km) before the Caribbean islands, and was saved by a yacht. The following year, 1970, a similar vessel, Ra II, was built from Ethiopian papyrus by Bolivian citizens Demetrio, Juan and José Limachi of Lake Titicaca, and likewise set sail across the Atlantic from Morocco, this time with great success. The crew was mostly the same; though Djibrine had been replaced by Kei Ohara from Japan and Madani Ait Ouhanni from Morocco. The boat became lost and was the subject of a United Nations search and rescue mission. The search included international assistance including people as far afield as Loo-Chi Hu of New Zealand. The boat reached Barbados, thus demonstrating that mariners could have dealt with trans-Atlantic voyages by sailing with the Canary Current. The Ra II is now in the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, Norway. The book The Ra Expeditions and the film documentary Ra (1972) were made about the voyages. Apart from the primary aspects of the expedition, Heyerdahl deliberately selected a crew representing a great diversity in race, nationality, religion and political viewpoint in order to demonstrate that, at least on their own little floating island, people could co-operate and live peacefully. Additionally, the expedition took samples of marine pollution and presented its report to the United Nations. Heyerdahl built yet another reed boat in 1977, Tigris, which was intended to demonstrate that trade and migration could have linked Mesopotamia with the Indus Valley civilization in what is now Pakistan and western India. Tigris was built in Al Qurnah Iraq and sailed with its international crew through the Persian Gulf to Pakistan and made its way into the Red Sea. After about five months at sea and still remaining seaworthy, the Tigris was deliberately burnt in Djibouti on 3 April 1978 as a protest against the wars raging on every side in the Red Sea and Horn of Africa. In his Open Letter to the UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, Heyerdahl explained his reasons: Today we burn our proud ship ... to protest against inhuman elements in the world of 1978 ... Now we are forced to stop at the entrance to the Red Sea. Surrounded by military airplanes and warships from the world's most civilised and developed nations, we have been denied permission by friendly governments, for reasons of security, to land anywhere, but in the tiny, and still neutral, Republic of Djibouti. Elsewhere around us, brothers and neighbours are engaged in homicide with means made available to them by those who lead humanity on our joint road into the third millennium. To the innocent masses in all industrialised countries, we direct our appeal. We must wake up to the insane reality of our time ... We are all irresponsible, unless we demand from the responsible decision makers that modern armaments must no longer be made available to people whose former battle axes and swords our ancestors condemned. Our planet is bigger than the reed bundles that have carried us across the seas, and yet small enough to run the same risks unless those of us still alive open our eyes and minds to the desperate need of intelligent collaboration to save ourselves and our common civilisation from what we are about to convert into a sinking ship. In the years that followed, Heyerdahl was often outspoken on issues of international peace and the environment. The Tigris had an 11-man crew: Thor Heyerdahl (Norway), Norman Baker (US), Carlo Mauri (Italy), Yuri Senkevich (USSR), Germán Carrasco (Mexico), Hans Petter Bohn (Norway), Rashad Nazar Salim (Iraq), Norris Brock (US), Toru Suzuki (Japan), Detlef Soitzek (Germany), and Asbjørn Damhus (Denmark). Heyerdahl made four visits to Azerbaijan in 1981, 1994, 1999 and 2000. Heyerdahl had long been fascinated with the rock carvings that date back to about 8th–7th millennia BCE at Gobustan (about 30 miles/48 km west of Baku). He was convinced that their artistic style closely resembled the carvings found in his native Norway. The ship designs, in particular, were regarded by Heyerdahl as similar and drawn with a simple sickle-shaped line, representing the base of the boat, with vertical lines on deck, illustrating crew or, perhaps, raised oars. Based on this and other published documentation, Heyerdahl proposed that Azerbaijan was the site of an ancient advanced civilisation. He believed that natives migrated north through waterways to present-day Scandinavia using ingeniously constructed vessels made of skins that could be folded like cloth. When voyagers travelled upstream, they conveniently folded their skin boats and transported them on pack animals. On Heyerdahl's visit to Baku in 1999, he lectured at the Academy of Sciences about the history of ancient Nordic Kings. He spoke of a notation made by Snorri Sturluson, a 13th-century historian-mythographer in Ynglinga Saga, which relates that "Odin (a Scandinavian god who was one of the kings) came to the North with his people from a country called Aser." (see also House of Ynglings and Mythological kings of Sweden). Heyerdahl accepted Snorri's story as literal truth, and believed that a chieftain led his people in a migration from the east, westward and northward through Saxony, to Fyn in Denmark, and eventually settling in Sweden. Heyerdahl claimed that the geographic location of the mythic Aser or Æsir matched the region of contemporary Azerbaijan – "east of the Caucasus mountains and the Black Sea". "We are no longer talking about mythology," Heyerdahl said, "but of the realities of geography and history. Azerbaijanis should be proud of their ancient culture. It is just as rich and ancient as that of China and Mesopotamia." In September 2000 Heyerdahl returned to Baku for the fourth time and visited the archaeological dig in the area of the Church of Kish. One of the last projects of his life, Jakten på Odin, 'The Search for Odin', was a sudden revision of his Odin hypothesis, in furtherance of which he initiated 2001–2002 excavations in Azov, Russia, near the Sea of Azov at the northeast of the Black Sea. He searched for the remains of a civilisation to match the account of Odin in Snorri Sturlusson, significantly further north of his original target of Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea only two years earlier. This project generated harsh criticism and accusations of pseudoscience from historians, archaeologists and linguists in Norway, who accused Heyerdahl of selective use of sources, and a basic lack of scientific methodology in his work. His central claims were based on similarities of names in Norse mythology and geographic names in the Black Sea region, e.g. Azov and Æsir, Udi and Odin, Tyr and Turkey. Philologists and historians reject these parallels as mere coincidences, and also anachronisms, for instance the city of Azov did not have that name until over 1,000 years after Heyerdahl claims the Æsir dwelt there. The controversy surrounding the Search for Odin project was in many ways typical of the relationship between Heyerdahl and the academic community. His theories rarely won any scientific acceptance, whereas Heyerdahl himself rejected all scientific criticism and concentrated on publishing his theories in popular books aimed at the general public. As of 2024, Heyerdahl's Odin hypothesis has yet to be validated by any historian, archaeologist or linguist. In 1991 he studied the Pyramids of Güímar on Tenerife and declared that they were not random stone heaps but pyramids. Based on the discovery made by the astrophysicists Aparicio, Belmonte and Esteban, from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias that the "pyramids" were astronomically orientated and being convinced that they were of ancient origin, he claimed that the ancient people who built them were most likely sun worshippers. Heyerdahl hypothesised that the Canarian pyramids formed a temporal and geographic stopping point on voyages between ancient Egypt and the Maya civilization, initiating a controversy in which historians, esoterics, archaeologists, astronomers, and those with a general interest in history took part. Between 1991 and 1998, archaeological excavations of the site were conducted by archaeologists of the University of La Laguna. Preliminary findings were presented at a colloquium in 1996, providing evidence for the dating of the pyramids. According to the preceding geophysical Georadar-Survey eight locations adjacent to the pyramids, each with an area of 25 m2, were investigated in layers down to the solid lava-floor. In doing so it was possible to establish three specific sediment layers. Starting from the top these were: A layer of thickness averaging 20 cm, consisting of humus-rich earth with many plant remains and roots; tracks from ploughing were clearly identifiable as were a broad spectrum of readily datable finds from the second half of the 20th century. A layer of thickness averaging 25 cm, similar in composition to the first layer, however containing less humus and a larger amount of small stones; a large variety of finds which could be dated to the 19th and 20th century were found, of which an official seal from 1848 deserves particular mention. A layer of thickness between 25 and 150 cm, composed out of small volcanic rocks, most likely put in place in one movement, which levelled the uneven stone underneath; the stones contained only very few finds, mostly a small number of pottery shards, of which some was local and some imported, both kinds were roughly estimated as belonging to the 19th century. The pyramids stand stratigraphically directly on top of this bottom layer, therefore allowing for an earliest date of construction of the pyramids within the 19th century. Furthermore, under the border edge of one of the pyramids, a natural lava cave was discovered. It had been walled up and yielded artefacts from the time of the Guanches. Since the pyramids lie stratigraphically above the cave, the Guanche finds from between 600 and 1000 AD can only support conclusions on the date of human use of the cave. The above survey indicates that the pyramids themselves cannot be older than the 19th century. Heyerdahl also investigated the mounds found on the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean. There, he found sun-orientated foundations and courtyards, as well as statues with elongated earlobes. Heyerdahl believed that these finds fit with his theory of a seafaring civilisation which originated in what is now Sri Lanka, colonised the Maldives, and influenced or founded the cultures of ancient South America and Easter Island. His discoveries are detailed in his book The Maldive Mystery. Heyerdahl was also an active figure in Green politics. He was the recipient of numerous medals and awards. He also received 11 honorary doctorates from universities in the Americas and Europe. In subsequent years, Heyerdahl was involved with many other expeditions and archaeological projects. He remained best known for his boatbuilding, and for his emphasis on cultural diffusionism. Heyerdahl died on 18 April 2002 aged 87 from a brain tumour in Colla Micheri, Liguria, where he had gone to spend the Easter holidays with some of his closest family members. After receiving the diagnosis, he prepared for death, by refusing to eat or take medication. The Norwegian government honored him with a state funeral in the Oslo Cathedral on 26 April 2002. He is buried in the garden of the family home in Colla Micheri. He was an atheist. Although much of his work was not accepted by the scientific community for many years, Heyerdahl nevertheless increased public interest in ancient history and anthropology. He also showed that long-distance ocean voyages were possible with ancient designs. As such, he was a major practitioner of experimental archaeology. The Kon-Tiki Museum on the Bygdøy peninsula in Oslo, Norway houses vessels and maps from the Kon-Tiki expedition, as well as a library with about 8,000 books. The Thor Heyerdahl Institute was established in 2000. Heyerdahl himself agreed to the founding of the institute and it aims to promote and continue to develop Heyerdahl's ideas and principles. The institute is located in Heyerdahl's birth town of Larvik, Norway. In Larvik, the birthplace of Heyerdahl, the municipality began a project in 2007 to attract more visitors. Since then, they have purchased and renovated Heyerdahl's childhood home, arranged a yearly raft regatta in his honour at the end of summer and begun to develop a Heyerdahl centre. Heyerdahl's grandson, Olav Heyerdahl, retraced his grandfather's Kon-Tiki voyage in 2006 as part of a six-member crew. The voyage, organised by Torgeir Higraff and called the Tangaroa Expedition, was intended as a tribute to Heyerdahl, an effort to better understand navigation via centreboards ("guara") as well as a means to monitor the Pacific Ocean's environment. A book about the Tangaroa Expedition by Torgeir Higraff was published in 2007. The book has numerous photos from the Kon-Tiki voyage 60 years earlier and is illustrated with photographs by Tangaroa crew member Anders Berg (Oslo: Bazar Forlag, 2007). "Tangaroa Expedition" has also been produced as a documentary DVD in English, Norwegian, Swedish and Spanish. Paul Theroux, in his book The Happy Isles of Oceania, criticises Heyerdahl for trying to link the culture of Polynesian islands with the Peruvian culture. Recent scientific investigation that compares the DNA of some of the Polynesian islands with natives from Peru suggests that there is some merit to Heyerdahl's ideas and that while Polynesia was colonised from Asia, some contact with South America also existed; several papers have in the last few years confirmed with genetic data some form of contacts with Easter Island. More recently, some researchers published research confirming a wider impact on genetic and cultural elements in Polynesia due to South American contacts. Asteroid 2473 Heyerdahl is named after him, as are HNoMS Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian Nansen class frigate, along with MS Thor Heyerdahl (now renamed MS Vana Tallinn), and Thor Heyerdahl, a German three-masted sail training vessel originally owned by a participant of the Tigris expedition. Heyerdahl Vallis, a valley on Pluto, and Thor Heyerdahl Upper Secondary School in Larvik, the town of his birth, are also named after him. Google honoured Heyerdahl on his 100th birthday by making a Google Doodle. Heyerdahl's numerous awards and honours include the following: Grand Cross of the Royal Norwegian Order of St Olav (1987) (Commander with Star: 1970; Commander: 1951) Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of Peru (1953) Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (21 June 1965) Knight in the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem Knight of the Order of Merit, Egypt (1971) Grand Officer of the Order of Ouissam Alaouite (Morocco; 1971) Officer, Order of the Sun (Peru) (1975) and Knight Grand Cross International Pahlavi Environment Prize, United Nations (1978) Knight of the Order of the Golden Ark, Netherlands (1980) Commander, American Knights of Malta (1970) Civitan International World Citizenship Award Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (2000) St. Hallvard's Medal Retzius Medal, Royal Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography (1950) Mungo Park Medal, Royal Scottish Society for Geography (1951) Bonaparte-Wyse Gold Medal, Société de Géographie de Paris (1951) Elisha Kent Kane Gold Medal, Geographical Society of Philadelphia (1952) Honorary Member, Geographical Societies of Norway (1953), Peru (1953), Brazil (1954) Elected Member Norwegian Academy of Sciences (1958) Fellow, New York Academy of Sciences (1960) Vega Gold Medal, Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography (1962) Lomonosov Medal, Moscow State University (1962) Gold Medal, Royal Geographical Society, London (1964) Distinguished Service Award, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington, US (1966) Member American Anthropological Association (1966) Kiril i Metodi Award, Geographical Society, Bulgaria (1972) Honorary Professor, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico (1972) Bradford Washburn Award, Museum of Science, Boston, US, (1982) President's Medal, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, US (1996) Honorary Professorship, Western University, Baku, Azerbaijan (1999) Doctor Honoris Causa, University of Oslo, Norway (1961) Doctor Honoris Causa, USSR Academy of Science (1980) Doctor Honoris Causa, University of San Martin, Lima, Peru, (1991) Doctor Honoris Causa, University of Havana, Cuba (1992) Doctor Honoris Causa, University of Kyiv, Ukraine (1993) Doctor Honoris Causa, University of Maine, Orono (1998) På Jakt efter Paradiset (Hunt for Paradise), 1938; Fatu-Hiva: Back to Nature (changed title in English in 1974). The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas (Kon-Tiki ekspedisjonen, also known as Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific in a Raft), 1948. American Indians in the Pacific: The Theory Behind the Kon-Tiki Expedition (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1952), 821 pages. Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island, 1957. Archaeology of Easter Island, vol. 1 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961), vol. 2 (1965) Sea Routes to Polynesia: American Indians and Early Asiatics in the Pacific (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968), 232 pages. The Ra Expeditions ISBN 0-14-003462-5. Early Man and the Ocean: The Beginning of Navigation and Seaborn Civilizations, 1979 The Tigris Expedition: In Search of Our Beginnings The Maldive Mystery, 1986 Green Was the Earth on the Seventh Day: Memories and Journeys of a Lifetime Pyramids of Tucume: The Quest for Peru's Forgotten City Skjebnemøte vest for havet [Fate Meets West of the Ocean], 1992 (in Norwegian and German only) the Native Americans tell their story, white and bearded Gods, infrastructure was not built by the Inkas but their more advanced predecessors. In the Footsteps of Adam: A Memoir (the official edition is Abacus, 2001, translated by Ingrid Christophersen) ISBN 0-349-11273-8 Ingen Grenser (No Boundaries, Norwegian only), 1999 Jakten på Odin (Theories about Odin, Norwegian only), 2001 M/S Thor Heyerdahl – a ferry named after him List of notable brain tumor patients Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact Pre-Columbian rafts Vital Alsar Kitín Muñoz The Viracocha expedition Maal og minne 1, 2002 at the Wayback Machine (archived 13 September 2009) a scientific critique of his Odin project, in English Thor Heyerdahl in Baku Azerbaijan International, Vol. 7:3 (Autumn 1999), pp. 96–97. Thor Heyerdahl Biography and Bibliography Thor Heyerdahl expeditions The 'Tigris' expedition, with Heyerdahl's war protest Azerbaijan International, Vol. 11:1 (Spring 2003), pp. 20–21. Bjornar Storfjell's account: A reference to his last project Jakten på Odin Azerbaijan International, Vol. 10:2 (Summer 2002). Biography on National Geographic Forskning.no Biography from the official Norwegian scientific webportal (in Norwegian) Thor Heyerdahl on Maldives Royal Family website Biography of Thor Heyerdahl Sea Routes to Polynesia Extracts from lectures by Thor Heyerdahl The home of Thor Heyerdahl Useful information on Thor Heyerdahl and his hometown, Larvik Thor Heyerdahl – Daily Telegraph obituary Works by or about Thor Heyerdahl at Internet Archive
5. Ingólfr Arnarson (850 - 910)
With an HPI of 67.95, Ingólfr Arnarson is the 5th most famous Norwegian Explorer. His biography has been translated into 47 different languages.
Ingólfr Arnarson, in some sources named Bjǫrnólfsson, (c. 849 – c. 910) is commonly recognized as the first permanent Norse settler of Iceland, together with his wife Hallveig Fróðadóttir and foster brother Hjörleifr Hróðmarsson. According to tradition, they settled in Reykjavík in 874.
6. Otto Sverdrup (1854 - 1930)
With an HPI of 58.05, Otto Sverdrup is the 6th most famous Norwegian Explorer. His biography has been translated into 30 different languages.
Otto Neumann Knoph Sverdrup (31 October 1854, in Bindal Municipality in Helgeland – 26 November 1930) was a Norwegian sailor and Arctic explorer.
7. Naddodd (b. 900)
With an HPI of 55.28, Naddodd is the 7th most famous Norwegian Explorer. His biography has been translated into 21 different languages.
Naddodd (Old Norse: Naddoðr [ˈnɑdːoðr] or Naddaðr [ˈnɑdːɑðr]; Icelandic: Naddoður [ˈnatːɔːðʏr̥]; Faroese: Naddoddur; fl. c. 9th century) was a Norse Viking who is credited with the discovery of Iceland.
8. Thekla Resvoll (1871 - 1948)
With an HPI of 55.27, Thekla Resvoll is the 8th most famous Norwegian Explorer. Her biography has been translated into 25 different languages.
Thekla Susanne Ragnhild Resvoll (22 May 1871 – 14 June 1948) was a Norwegian botanist and educator. She was a pioneer in Norwegian natural history education and nature conservation together with her sister, Hanna Resvoll-Holmsen.
9. Carsten Borchgrevink (1864 - 1934)
With an HPI of 54.72, Carsten Borchgrevink is the 9th most famous Norwegian Explorer. His biography has been translated into 28 different languages.
Carsten Egeberg Borchgrevink (1 December 1864 – 21 April 1934) was a Norwegian polar explorer and a pioneer of Antarctic travel. He inspired Sir Robert Falcon Scott, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen, and others associated with the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Borchgrevink was born and raised in Christiania (now Oslo) as the son of a Norwegian lawyer and an English-born immigrant mother. He began his exploring career in 1894 by joining a Norwegian whaling expedition, during which he became one of the first people to set foot on the Antarctic mainland. This achievement helped him to obtain backing for his Southern Cross expedition, which became the first to overwinter on the Antarctic mainland, and the first to visit the Great Ice Barrier since the expedition of Sir James Clark Ross nearly sixty years earlier. The expedition's successes were received with only moderate interest by the public – and by the British geographical establishment, whose attention was by then focused on Scott's upcoming Discovery expedition. Some of Borchgrevink's colleagues were critical of his leadership, and his own accounts of the expedition were regarded as journalistic and unreliable. From 1898 to 1900, Borchgrevink led the British-financed Southern Cross expedition. He was one of three scientists in 1902 to report on the aftermath of the Mount Pelée eruption on Martinique. Thereafter he returned to Kristiania, leading a life mainly away from public attention. His pioneering work was subsequently recognised and honoured by several countries, and in 1912 he received a tribute from Roald Amundsen, leader of the first expedition to reach the South Pole. In 1930, the Royal Geographical Society acknowledged Borchgrevink's contribution to polar exploration and awarded him its Patron's Medal. The Society acknowledged in its citation that justice had not previously been done to the work of the Southern Cross expedition. Carsten Borchgrevink was born in Christiania on 1 December 1864, the son of a Norwegian lawyer, Henrik Christian Borchgrevink, and an English-born mother Annie, née Ridley. The Borchgrevink family has distant Dutch roots and immigrated to Denmark in the 16th century and Norway in the late 17th century. The family lived in the Uranienborg neighbourhood, where Roald Amundsen, an occasional childhood playmate, also grew up. Borchgrevink was educated at Gjertsen College, Oslo, and later (1885–1888) at the Royal Saxon Academy of Forestry at Tharandt, Saxony, in Germany. According to the historian Roland Huntford, Borchgrevink had a restless nature, with a passion for adventure which took him, after his forestry training, to Australia. For four years he worked with government surveying teams in Queensland and New South Wales before settling in the small town of Bowenfels, where he became a teacher in languages and natural sciences at Cooerwull Academy. His initial interest in polar exploration developed from reading press reports about the work of local scientists on the first Australian Antarctic Exploration Committee. This organisation, founded in 1886, was investigating the possibility of establishing permanent scientific research stations in the Antarctic regions. These plans were not realised; it was a revival of interest in commercial whaling in the early 1890s that gave Borchgrevink the opportunity, in 1894, to sign up for a Norwegian expedition to Antarctica. The expedition that Borchgrevink joined was organised by Henryk Bull, a Norwegian businessman and entrepreneur who, like Borchgrevink, had settled in Australia in the late 1880s. Bull planned to make a sealing and whaling voyage into Antarctic waters; after failing to interest Melbourne's learned societies in a cost-sharing venture of a commercial–scientific nature, he returned to Norway to organise his expedition there. He met Svend Foyn, the 84-year-old "father of modern whaling" and inventor of the harpoon gun. With Foyn's help he acquired the whaler Kap Nor ("North Cape"), which he renamed Antarctic. A Mr Sanne was appointed captain initially but was quickly replaced by Leonard Kristensen. The ship sailed left Norway in September 1893. When Borchgrevink learned that Antarctic was due to visit Melbourne in September 1894, he hurried there hoping to find a vacancy. He was fortunate; William Speirs Bruce, later an Antarctic expedition leader in his own right, had intended to join Bull's expedition as a natural scientist but could not reach the ship before it left Norway. This created an opening for Borchgrevink, who met Bull in Melbourne and persuaded him to take him on as a deck-hand and part-time scientist. During the following months, Antarctic's sealing activities around the subantarctic islands were successful, but whales proved difficult to find. Bull and Kristensen decided to take the ship further south, to areas where the presence of whales had been reported by earlier expeditions. The ship penetrated a belt of pack ice and sailed into the Ross Sea, but whales were still elusive. On 17 January 1895, a landing was made at Possession Island, where Sir James Clark Ross had planted the British flag in 1841. Bull and Borchgrevink left a message in a canister to prove their presence there. On the island Borchgrevink found a lichen, the first plant life discovered south of the Antarctic Circle. On 24 January, the ship reached the vicinity of Cape Adare, at the northern extremity of the Victoria Land coastline of the Antarctic mainland. Ross's 1841 expedition been unable to land here, but as Antarctic neared the cape, conditions were calm enough for a boat to be lowered. A party including Bull, Kristensen, Borchgrevink and others then headed for a shingled foreshore below the cape. Exactly who went ashore first was disputed, between Kristensen, Borchgrevink, and a 17-year-old New Zealand seaman, Alexander von Tunzelmann, who said that he had "leapt out to hold the boat steady". The party claimed this was the first landing on the Antarctic mainland, although they may have been preceded by the Anglo-American sealing captain John Davis, on the Antarctic Peninsula on 7 February 1821, or by other whaling expeditions. While ashore at Cape Adare, Borchgrevink collected further specimens of rocks and lichens, the latter of which were of great interest to the scientific community, which had doubted the ability of vegetation to survive so far south. He also made a careful study of the foreshore, assessing its potential as a site where a future expedition might land and establish winter quarters. When Antarctic reached Melbourne, Bull and Borchgrevink left the ship. Each hoped to raise funds for a further Antarctic expedition, but their efforts were unsuccessful. An animosity developed between them, possibly because of their differing accounts of the voyage on the Antarctic; each emphasised his own role without fully acknowledging that of the other. To promote his developing ideas for an expedition that would overwinter on the Antarctic continent at Cape Adare, Borchgrevink hurried to London, where the Royal Geographical Society was hosting the Sixth International Geographical Congress. On 1 August 1895 he addressed the conference, giving an account of the Cape Adare foreshore as a place where a scientific expedition might establish itself for the Antarctic winter. He described the site as "a safe situation for houses, tents and provisions", and said there were indications that in this place "the unbound forces of the Antarctic Circle do not display the full severity of their powers". He also suggested that the interior of the continent might be accessible from the foreshore by an easy route – a "gentle slope". He ended his speech by declaring his willingness to lead an expedition there himself. Hugh Robert Mill, the Royal Geographical Society's librarian, who was present at the Congress, reported reactions to the speech: "His blunt manner and abrupt speech stirred the academic discussions with a fresh breeze of realism. Nobody liked Borchgrevink very much at that time, but he had a dynamic quality and a set purpose to get out again to the unknown South that struck some of us as boding well for exploration". The Congress did not, however, endorse Borchgrevink's ideas. Instead, it passed a general resolution in support of Antarctic exploration, to the effect that "the various scientific societies throughout the world should urge, in whatever way seems to them most effective, that this work be undertaken before the close of the century". For the next two years Borchgrevink travelled in Europe and in Australia, seeking support and backing for his expedition ideas without success. One of those with whom he sought to join forces was William Speirs Bruce, who was planning his own Antarctic expedition. Their joint plans foundered when Borchgrevink, who had severed relations with Henryk Bull, learned that Bruce was in discussions with him; "I regret therefore that we cannot collaborate," wrote Borchgrevink to Bruce. He also discovered that the Royal Geographical Society had been planning its own Antarctic expedition since 1893. Under the influence of its president, Sir Clements Markham, this RGS project was envisaged not only as a scientific endeavour, but as an attempt to relive the former glories of Royal Naval polar exploration. This vision would eventually develop into the National Antarctic Expedition with the Discovery, under Robert Falcon Scott, and it was this that attracted the interest of the learned societies rather than Borchgrevink's more modest proposals. Markham was fiercely opposed to private ventures that might divert financial support from his project, and Borchgrevink found himself starved of practical help: "It was up a steep hill," he wrote, "that I had to roll my Antarctic boulder." During his search for backers, Borchgrevink met Sir George Newnes, a leading British magazine publisher and cinema pioneer whose portfolio included the Westminster Gazette, Tit-Bits, Country Life and the Strand Magazine. It was not unusual for publishers to support exploration – Newnes's great rival Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) had recently financed Frederick Jackson's expedition to Franz Josef Land, and had pledged financial backing to the National Antarctic Expedition. Newnes was sufficiently impressed by Borchgrevink to offer the full costs of his proposed expedition – around £40,000 (at least £3 million in 2008 values). This generosity infuriated Sir Clements Markham and the geographical establishment, who saw Borchgrevink as a penniless Norwegian nobody who had secured British money which they believed ought to have been theirs. Markham maintained an attitude of hostility and contempt towards Borchgrevink, and chastised Mill for attending the launch of his expedition. Newnes stipulated that the expedition should sail under a British flag, and should be styled the "British Antarctic Expedition". In the end, of the total party of 29, only two were British, with one Australian and the rest Norwegian. Despite this, Borchgrevink took steps to emphasise the expedition's British character, flying the personal flag of the Duke of York and taking 500 bamboo poles with miniature Union Jacks for, as he put it, "purpose of survey and extension of the British Empire". With funding assured, Borchgrevink purchased the whaling ship Pollux, renamed her Southern Cross, and had her fitted out for Antarctic service. Southern Cross sailed from London on 22 August 1898, and after a three-week pause in Hobart, Tasmania, reached Cape Adare on 17 February 1899. Here, on the site which Borchgrevink had described to the Congress, the expedition set up the first shore base on the Antarctic continent, in the midst of a penguin colony. It was named "Camp Ridley" in honour of Borchgrevink's mother. In 1901, Borchgrevink published the book First on the Antarctic Continent. He wrote in a chapter dedicated to Adélie penguins: "We all watched the life of the penguins with the utmost interest, and I believe and hope that some of us learnt something from their habits and characteristics." On 2 March, the ship departed for New Zealand to winter there, leaving a shore party of ten men with their provisions, equipment and seventy dogs. These were the first dogs brought to the Antarctic; likewise, the expedition pioneered the use of the Primus stove, invented in Sweden six years earlier. Louis Bernacchi, the party's Australian physicist, was later to write: "In many respects, Borchgrevink was not a good leader". Borchgrevink was evidently no autocrat but, Bernacchi said, without the framework of an accepted hierarchy a state of "democratic anarchy" prevailed, with "dirt, disorder and inactivity the order of the day". Furthermore, as winter developed, Borchgrevink's hopes that Cape Adare would escape the worst Antarctic weather proved false; he had chosen a site which was particularly exposed to the freezing winds blown northwards from the inland ice. As time progressed, tempers wore thin; the party became irritable and boredom set in. On January 23rd, the anniversary of my first landing on the Antarctic continent in 1894, I found that the season in regard to climate and ice conditions was not as favorable as in that year [...] It was insufferable inside now, as the smell of the guano deposits was very strong. The wet loose snow which settles in drifts during the recent long gale melted rapidly, and the vapour there-from made the air muggy inside the huts. Besides, our humour always fell with the barometer, and did not always rise as quickly, especially now that, while waiting for the vessel, the time hung heavily on our hands, although there were so many matters to be considered and talked over. There were accidents: a candle left burning caused extensive fire damage, and on another occasion several members of the party were almost asphyxiated by fumes from the stove. Borchgrevink attempted to establish a routine, and scientific work was carried on throughout, but as he wrote himself, referring to the general lack of fellowship: "The silence roars in one's ears". Further lowering the group's spirits, their Norwegian zoologist, Nicolai Hanson, fell ill, failed to respond to treatment, and died on 14 October 1899. When the southern winter ended and sledging activity became possible, Borchgrevink's assumptions about an easy route to the interior were shattered; the glaciated mountain ranges adjoining Cape Adare precluded any travel inland, restricting exploration to the immediate area around the cape. Borchgrevink's basic expedition plan – to overwinter on the Antarctic continent and carry out scientific observations there – had been achieved. When Southern Cross returned at the end of January 1900, Borchgrevink decided to abandon the camp, although there were sufficient fuel and provisions left to last another year. Instead of returning home directly, Southern Cross sailed south until it reached the Great Ice Barrier, discovered by Sir James Clark Ross during his 1839–1843 voyage and later renamed the Ross Ice Shelf in his honour. No one had visited the Barrier since, and Ross had been unable to land. Borchgrevink discovered an inlet in the Barrier edge; this was later named the "Bay of Whales" by Shackleton. Here, on 16 February 1900, Borchgrevink, William Colbeck and the Sami dog-handler, Per Savio, made the first landing on the Barrier and, with dogs and sledges, travelled 10 miles (16 km) south to set a new Farthest South record at 78° 50′. Southern Cross visited other Ross Sea islands before turning for home, reaching New Zealand on 1 April 1900. Borchgrevink then took a steamer to England, arriving early in June. The reception afforded to the expedition on its return to England was lukewarm. Public interest and attention was fixed on the forthcoming national expedition of which Robert Falcon Scott had just been appointed commander, rather than on a venture which was considered British only in name. In spite of the Southern Cross expedition's achievements, there was still resentment in geographical circles – harboured especially by Sir Clements Markham – about Borchgrevink's acceptance of Newnes's gift. Also, Bruce complained that Borchgrevink had appropriated plans that he had developed but been forced to abandon. Borchgrevink's credibility was not helped by the boastful tone sounded in various articles which were published in Newnes's magazines, nor by the journalistic style of his rapidly written expedition account, First on the Antarctic Continent, the English edition of which appeared in 1901. In hailing his expedition as a great success, Borchgrevink spoke of "another Klondyke", an abundance of fish, seals and birds, and of "quartz, in which metals are to be seen". In his book, he listed the expedition's main achievements: proof that an expedition could live on Victoria Land over winter; a year's continuous magnetic and meteorological observations; an estimate of the current position of the south magnetic pole; discoveries of new species of insects and shallow-water fauna; coastal mapping and the discovery of new islands; the first landing on Ross Island and, finally, scaling the Great Ice Barrier and sledging to "the furthest south ever reached by man". Other commentators have observed that the choice of the winter site at Cape Adare had ruled out any serious geographical exploration of the Antarctic interior. The scientific results of the expedition were less than had been anticipated, due in part to the loss of some of Nicolai Hanson's natural history notes; Borchgrevink may have been responsible for this loss; He was later involved in a dispute with Hanson's former employers, Natural History Museum, London, over these missing notes and other specimens collected by Hanson. Following his return Borchgrevink was honoured by the American Geographical Society, and was made a Knight of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav by King Oscar II. He received honours from Denmark and Austria, but in England his work was for many years largely disregarded, despite Mill's acknowledgement of "a dashing piece of pioneer work, useful in training men for later service". The historian David Crane suggests that if Borchgrevink had been a British naval officer, England would have taken his achievements more seriously. In 1902, Borchgrevink was one of three geographers invited by the National Geographic Society (NGS) to report on the after-effects of the catastrophic eruptions of Mount Pelée, on the French-Caribbean island of Martinique. These eruptions, in May 1902, had destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre, with enormous loss of life. Borchgrevink visited the island in June, when the main volcanic activity had subsided, and found the mountain "perfectly quiet", and the islanders recovered from their panic. He did not think that Saint-Pierre would ever be inhabited again. He reported a narrow escape when, at the foot of the mountain, a jet of steam came out of the ground over which he and his party had just passed: "If it had struck any one of us we would have been scalded to death." He later presented his report to the NGS in Washington, although it is unclear if he did that. His account of the Mt Pelee eruption published in Frank Leslie's Monthly drew sharp criticism in the Science journal from expert Edmund Otis Hovey. On his return from Washington, Borchgrevink retired into private life. On 7 September 1896, he had married an English woman, Constance Prior Standen, with whom he settled in Slemdal, in Oslo, where two sons and two daughters were born. Borchgrevink devoted himself mainly to sporting and literary activities, producing a book entitled The Game of Norway. On two occasions he apparently considered returning to the Antarctic; in August 1902 he stated his intention to lead a new Antarctic expedition for the NGS, but nothing came of this, and a later venture, announced in Berlin in 1909, was likewise unfulfilled. Although he remained out of the limelight, Borchgrevink retained his interest in Antarctic matters, visiting Scott shortly before the Terra Nova sailed on Scott's last expedition in June 1910. When news of Scott's death reached the outside world, Borchgrevink paid tribute: "He was the first in the field with a finely organised expedition and the first who did systematic work on the great south polar continent." In a letter of condolence to John Scott Keltie, the Royal Geographical Society's secretary, Borchgrevink said of Scott: "He was a man!" In Norway differing assessments of Borchgrevink were made by the country's polar elite: Roald Amundsen was a long-time friend and supporter, whereas Fridtjof Nansen, according to Scott, spoke of him as a "tremendous fraud". When Amundsen returned from his South Pole conquest in 1912, he paid full tribute to Borchgrevink's pioneering work: "We must acknowledge that in ascending the Barrier, Borchgrevink opened the way to the south and threw aside the greatest obstacle to the expeditions that followed." During his later years Borchgrevink lived quietly. In 1929 the Parliament of Norway awarded him a pension of three thousand Norwegian kroner. In 1930 came belated recognition from London – the Royal Geographical Society awarded him its Patron's Medal, proclaiming that the magnitude of the difficulties overcome by Borchgrevink had initially been underestimated: "It was only after the work of Scott's Northern Party ... that we were able to realise the improbability that any explorer could do more in the Cape Adare district than Mr Borchgrevink had accomplished. It appeared, then, that justice had not been done at the time to the pioneer work of the Southern Cross expedition, which had been carried out under the British flag and at the expense of a British benefactor." Carsten Borchgrevink died in Oslo on 21 April 1934. Despite what one biographer describes as his obsessive desire to be first, and his limited formal scientific training, he has been acknowledged as a pioneer in Antarctic work and as a forerunner of later, more elaborate expeditions. Several geographical features in Antarctica commemorate his name, including the Borchgrevink Coast of Victoria Land, between Cape Adare and Cape Washington, the Borchgrevink Glacier in Victoria Land, and the Borchgrevinkisen glacier in Queen Maud Land. His name is also carried by the small Antarctic fish Pagothenia borchgrevinki and by the extinct arthropod Borchgrevinkium taimyrensis. His expedition's accommodation hut remains at Cape Adare, under the care of The New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust which acts as guardian to this hut and to those of Scott and Shackleton elsewhere on the continent. The Borchgrevink hut was designated by the Trust as Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA) No. 159 in 2002. In June 2005 the Trust adopted a management plan for its future maintenance and accessibility. Works by Carsten Borchgrevink at Biodiversity Heritage Library "Geology Collection". Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery. Archived from the original on 14 June 2011. Retrieved 23 September 2008. (The first scientific specimens recovered from mainland Antarctica)
10. Ohthere of Hålogaland (900 - 901)
With an HPI of 54.24, Ohthere of Hålogaland is the 10th most famous Norwegian Explorer. His biography has been translated into 21 different languages.
Ohthere of Hålogaland (Norwegian: Ottar fra Hålogaland) was a Viking Age Norwegian seafarer known only from an account of his travels that he gave to King Alfred (r. 871–99) of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex in about 890 AD. His account was incorporated into an Old English adaptation of a Latin historical book written early in the fifth century by Paulus Orosius, called Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII, or Seven Books of History Against the Pagans. The Old English version of this book is believed to have been written in Wessex in King Alfred's lifetime or soon after his death, and the earliest surviving copy is attributed to the same place and time. In his account, Ohthere said that his home was in "Halgoland", or Hålogaland, where he lived "north-most of all Norwegians … [since] no-one [lived] to the north of him". Ohthere spoke of his travels north to the White Sea, and south to Denmark, describing both journeys in some detail. He also spoke of Sweoland (central Sweden), the Sami people (Finnas), and of two peoples called the Cwenas, living in Cwena land to the north of the Swedes, and the Beormas, whom he found living by the White Sea. Ohthere reported that the Beormas spoke a language related to that of the Sami. Ohthere's story is the earliest known written source for the term "Denmark" (dena mearc), and perhaps also for "Norway" (norðweg). Ohthere's home may have been in the vicinity of Tromsø, in southern Troms county, northern Norway. Ohthere was involved in the fur trade.
People
Pantheon has 26 people classified as Norwegian explorers born between 801 and 1963. Of these 26, 1 (3.85%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Norwegian explorers include Erling Kagge. The most famous deceased Norwegian explorers include Roald Amundsen, Fridtjof Nansen, and Erik the Red. As of April 2024, 1 new Norwegian explorers have been added to Pantheon including Erling Kagge.
Living Norwegian Explorers
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Deceased Norwegian Explorers
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Roald Amundsen
1872 - 1928
HPI: 82.24
Fridtjof Nansen
1861 - 1930
HPI: 75.68
Erik the Red
950 - 1003
HPI: 74.14
Thor Heyerdahl
1914 - 2002
HPI: 71.63
Ingólfr Arnarson
850 - 910
HPI: 67.95
Otto Sverdrup
1854 - 1930
HPI: 58.05
Naddodd
900 - Present
HPI: 55.28
Thekla Resvoll
1871 - 1948
HPI: 55.27
Carsten Borchgrevink
1864 - 1934
HPI: 54.72
Ohthere of Hålogaland
900 - 901
HPI: 54.24
Carl Anton Larsen
1860 - 1924
HPI: 53.49
Hjalmar Johansen
1867 - 1913
HPI: 53.46
Newly Added Norwegian Explorers (2024)
Go to all RankingsOverlapping Lives
Which Explorers were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 15 most globally memorable Explorers since 1700.
