Q 01/05

Who planted the Norwegian flag when Amundsen's party reached the South Pole in December 1911?

A) Amundsen alone

B) The five men together

C) The party's youngest man

D) The lead dog driver

Answer · why

B) The five men together

The five men together gripped the flagpole: Amundsen wrote that the honour was not for one man but for everyone who had staked his life in the struggl...

Q 02/05

Which ship carried Amundsen's expedition to Antarctica in 1910?

A) Fram

B) Terra Nova

C) Endurance

D) Nimrod

Answer · why

A) Fram

Fram left Norway with a crew who believed they were bound for the Arctic; Amundsen revealed the real goal only weeks into the voyage.

Q 03/05

Amundsen's father and uncles built up a family business in which trade?

A) Whaling

B) Timber

C) Shipping

D) Banking

Answer · why

C) Shipping

Shipping: his father's family were sea captains and shipowners, and with her three older sons already in the trade, his widowed mother wanted her youn...

Q 04/05

What career did Amundsen's mother want for him, a promise he kept only until she died?

A) Priest

B) Teacher

C) Lawyer

D) Doctor

Answer · why

D) Doctor

Doctor: he studied medicine without enthusiasm, and when his mother died in 1893 he sold his medical books and signed on to an Arctic sealing ship.

Q 05/05

Whose narratives of overland Arctic expeditions enthralled the 15-year-old Amundsen?

A) John Franklin

B) Fridtjof Nansen

C) John Ross

D) James Cook

Answer · why

A) John Franklin

John Franklin's accounts decided him at fifteen: he devoured every polar book he could find and spent years toughening his body for the ice instead of...