Cape Norway, Jackson Island, Franz Josef Land
For an archipelago that is exceedingly remote and rarely visited, Franz Josef Land certainly does have some great historic sites. Tonight, after dinner, we visited one of the most significant of these when we went ashore at Cape Norway. The site is so named because it was here in 1895-96 that two prominent Norwegians spent a difficult winter in a makeshift shelter. Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen took refuge on this rather bleak headland after their failed attempt to reach the Geographic North Pole. They had been struggling across the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean for five months when, at summer’s end, they finally reached the solid land of Jackson Island. At this then-unamed cape, they settled in for the winter. Using walrus skins, rocks, and driftwood, they fashioned a modest shelter that was to protect them through the long polar night. Living off of seals, walrus, and polar bears, the pair actually put on weight as they waited out the winter before pressing on southward. They were rescued later in 1896. We had a chance to examine what is left of their humble dwelling – some stones and the driftwood log that served as the central beam that supported the walrus skins. But Cape Norway isn’t all bleak. The flowers and mosses are quite sumptuous here, benefiting from the abundance of fertilizer brought in by the seabirds that nest on the cliffs nearby. Little auks, fulmars, and kittiwakes kept up a vocal racket as we explored the cape and tried to imagine what life must have been like for its earliest visitors.
