Everything about Otto Sverdrup totally explained
Otto Neumann Sverdrup (
October 31,
1854 –
November 26,
1930) was a native of
Bindal,
Nordland county,
Norway, known for his achievements within the areas of
Arctic science and exploration.
Early life
His father was born on
Buøy in
Nærøy municipality, at that time
Kolvereid municipality. As oldest son he was heir to the Sverdrup properties at
Buøya. However, he left it all to his younger brothers and went to Åbygda in Bindal, to the farm named Hårstad, where Otto Sverdrup was born. In 1872, at the age of 17, Otto Sverdrup returned to Nærøy, to Ottersøy where his uncle Søren worked in transportation with his own vessels. Here Sverdrup started his career as a seaman and after a while he was sailing abroad. In 1875 he passed his mate's examination, and some years later the shipmaster's examination.
In 1877 Sverdrup's parents moved from Bindal to the farm Trana situated outside
Steinkjer. At this time O.T. Olsen, a teacher and employee in the bank at Kolvereid and a relative of his mother, had purchased the steamboat
TRIO. Sverdrup was employed as captain. Around this time Sverdrup also met the lawyer Alexsander Nansen who lived in
Namsos. He was the brother of
Fridtjof Nansen and through him Sverdrup and Fridtjof Nansen learned to know each other.
Expeditions
Sverdrup joined
Fridtjof Nansen's expedition of 1888 across
Greenland. In 1893 he was given command of the
Fram, and in 1895 he was left in charge of it while Nansen attempted to reach the
North Pole. Setting out in 1898, Sverdrup attempted to circumnavigate Greenland via
Baffin Bay but failed to make it through the
Nares Strait. Forced to overwinter on
Ellesmere Island, he and his crew explored and named many uncharted fjords and peninsulas on the western shores of the island, explaining the Norwegian names, such as
Hoved Island ("main island"), in the
Canadian Arctic.
Between 1899 to 1902, he overwintered three more times on Ellesmere Island, continuing to explore and map, culminating in the discovery of the islands to the west of Ellesmere Island, namely
Axel Heiberg,
Amund Ringnes and
Ellef Ringnes, collectively known as the
Sverdrup Islands. In adopting
Inuit methods, Sverdrup and his crew were able to chart a total of 260,000 square kilometers - more than any other polar exploration. Upon his return in Norway, he was treated as a national hero. However, he remains relatively unknown in North America.
Sverdrup claimed all three islands he discovered for Norway, setting off a sovereignty dispute with
Canada, which wasn't settled until 1930 when Norway ceded its claim. Canada bought the records of Sverdrup's expeditions in 1931 for $67000 and are now archived in the
National Archives of Canada.
One of Sverdrup's lesser known exploits was a search-and-rescue expedition aboard ship
Eklips in the
Kara Sea in 1914-15. His aim was to search for two missing Arctic expeditions, that of Captain
Brusilov on the
St. Anna and that of
Vladimir Rusanov on the
Gerkules.
Sverdrup’s fourth and last expedition in Arctic Siberian waters was in 1921, when, from the bridge of the
Soviet Icebreaker Lenin, he commanded a convoy of five cargo ships on an experimental run through the
Kara Sea to the mouths of the
Ob and
Yenisei. The ships reached their destinations and returned safely. This was considered an important step in the development of the Kara Sea sector of the
Northern Sea Route (Fairley, p. 272).
The last years of his life he lived in
Sandvika, a township outside Oslo, Norway.
Further Information
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