📚: The Last Viking, Stephen Bown

I enjoyed Bown’s biography of Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen, centered around his four major expeditions —the Northwest Passage, the South Pole, the Northeast Passage, and the North Pole.

According to Bown, Amundsen’s success stems directly from his preparation, down to the last detail; his strong leadership; and his openness to knowledge from any source.

Bown also traces Amundsen’s evolution in managing his public persona. The young man who could not forsee how his secret detour south would play in the British press learns to work to his advantage newspapers, geographical societies and diverse sources of founding —and then squanders much of his carefully cultivated reputation in a hot-tempered score-settling memoir.

We see examples of his leadership style through his various expeditions, which rests on there being exactly one authority. He went to the extreme of refusing to take doctors on expeditions, preferring to handle medicine himself rather than risk a rival source of command. In his South Pole expedition, he hid from his crew the real destination —the South Pole, not the North— until Madeira, the last port, where he gave each man the choice to leave. We later see him deal with insubordination, when Johansen questions his leadership in front of the crew, after Amundsen presured them into a perilous earlier start.

Icebound for two winters with six other men during his Northwest Passage expedition, early in his career, Amundsen spent a lot of time observing the Netsilik Inuit, whom he saw as equals, learning about their superior fur clothing, snow-house building, and dog driving techniques. Combined with Norwegian skiing, this carried him to the South Pole while Scott’s party, whose motor sleds broke down early on, perished. Later, his readiness to set aside ships and dog sleds and embrace flight took him to the North Pole.

The book is well researched and convincing, providing plenty of support for its claims —direct quotes from many sources— and painting a compelling picture of an extraordinary man.

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