Conquering the North Pole
As early as the year 420 B.C. the Greek historian Herodot mentioned the North Pole. More than one thousand years later the Italian Giovanni Cabote, also called John Cabot, tried without success to sail through the North West Passage. He was lost without trace on his second attempt. Then another four hundred years passed by with great expeditions getting as far as the bays, seas and islands around the North Pole – primarily Greenland, Spitsbergen and Franz-Joseph-Land. The names of the explorers read like a "Who’s Who" of polar history: Cabot, Barents, Hudson, Baffin, Bering, Cook, Bocharoff, Ross, Parry, Franklin, Hall, Payer, Nordenskiöld, Nansen... Many died in these inhospitable regions around the North Pole while daring to push forward as far as possible.
In 1906 the American Robert Edwin Peary, who had been the leader of several great expeditions to the far north and had suffered severe frostbite, got as far as 87°6’ north - a new record. Then came Frederick Albert Cook: this very experienced explorer claimed to have reached the North Pole in 1908, but few people believed him after Peary had called him a liar. Peary claimed to have been the first to reach the North Pole in 1909 - yet his claim was
questioned, too. His means of navigation were too limited, he got back to his boat from the Pole too quickly and none of his friends had verified the way he had fixed the position.It was Knud Rasmussen who discovered that Peary’s information and map sketches were incorrect. The secrets connected with the history of the North Pole have contributed to the fascination of the final degrees of latitude to such an extent that more and more men and women want to travel to this northernmost point of the earth.
The Arctic
