Q 01/05

Nansen was born in 1861 near which capital city, then called Christiania?

A) Oslo

B) Stockholm

C) Copenhagen

D) Helsinki

Answer · why

A) Oslo

Oslo was still called Christiania then. From the family estate on its edge, the schoolboy Nansen would vanish into the Nordmarka forest for days at a ...

Q 02/05

Which body asked Nansen to run Russian famine relief?

A) Salvation Army

B) Rockefeller Foundation

C) Red Cross

D) Carnegie Endowment

Answer · why

C) Red Cross

The Red Cross asked him in 1921. With the Soviet regime distrusted abroad, governments held back, and Nansen had to raise most of the money from priva...

Q 03/05

How did Nansen's six-man team first traverse the Greenland interior in 1888?

A) With Icelandic ponies

B) On cross-country skis

C) On dog-drawn sledges

D) On Inuit snowshoes

Answer · why

B) On cross-country skis

On cross-country skis, but only after a false start: pack ice kept their boats from shore, and the party spent days camped on a floe that carried them...

Q 04/05

What made Nansen turn back at 86°14′N?

A) Johansen's frostbite

B) Ice ridges ahead

C) Their last dog's death

D) A cracked sledge

Answer · why

B) Ice ridges ahead

Ice ridges ahead: scouting in front, Nansen saw what he called a veritable chaos of ice blocks stretching to the horizon, and decided to stop wasting ...

Q 05/05

What subject did Nansen study at the Royal Frederick University in Christiania?

A) Zoology

B) Geology

C) Medicine

D) Law

Answer · why

A) Zoology

Zoology appealed because he thought it promised a life outdoors, and it delivered: it soon had him aboard an Arctic sealing ship, studying the animals...