Roald Amundsen, “the last of the Vikings,” left his mark on the Heroic Era as one of the most successful polar explorers ever.
A powerfully built man more than six feet tall, Amundsen’s career of
adventure began at the age of fifteen (he was born in Norway in 1872 to
a family of merchant sea captains and rich ship owners); twenty-five
years later he was the first man to reach both the North and South
Poles.
Lynne Cox, adventurer and swimmer, author of Swimming to Antarctica (“gripping” —Sports Illustrated) and Grayson (“wondrous, and unforgettable” —Carl Hiaasen), gives us in South with the Sun a full-scale account of the explorer’s life and expeditions.
We see Amundsen, in 1903-06, the first to travel the Northwest
Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in his small ship Gjøa,
a seventy-foot refitted former herring boat powered by sails and a
thirteen-horsepower engine, making his way through the entire length of
the treacherous ice bound route, between the northern Canadian mainland
and Canada’s Arctic islands, from Greenland across Baffin Bay, between
the Canadian islands, across the top of Alaska into the Bering Strait.
The dangerous journey took three years to complete, as Amundsen, his
crew, and six sled dogs waited while the frozen sea around them thawed
sufficiently to allow for navigation.
We see him journey toward the North Pole in Fridtjof Nansen’s famous Fram,
until word reached his expedition party of Robert Peary’s successful
arrival at the North Pole. Amundsen then set out on a secret expedition
to the Antarctic, and we follow him through his heroic capture of the
South Pole.
Cox makes clear why Amundsen succeeded in his quests where other
adventurer-explorers failed, and how his methodical preparation and
willingness to take calculated risks revealed both the spirit of the
man and the way to complete one triumphant journey after another.
Crucial to Amundsen’s success in reaching the South Pole was his use
of carefully selected sled dogs. Amundsen’s canine crew members—he
called them “our children”—had been superbly equipped by centuries of
natural selection for survival in the Arctic. “The dogs,” he wrote,
“are the most important thing for us. The whole outcome of the
expedition depends on them.” On December 14, 1911, Roald Amundsen and
four others, 102 days and more than 1,880 miles later, stood at the
South Pole, a full month before Robert Scott.
Lynne Cox describes reading about Amundsen as a young girl and how
because of his exploits was inspired to follow her dreams. We see how
she unwittingly set out in Amundsen’s path, swimming in open waters off
Antarctica, then Greenland (always without a wetsuit), first as a
challenge to her own abilities and then later as a way to understand
Amundsen’s life and the lessons learned from his vision, imagination,
and daring.
South with the Sun—inspiring, wondrous, and true—is a bold adventure story of bold ambitious dreams.
