Otto Sverdrup shortly after his return from the Canadian Arctic Archipelago in 1902. This year, 1974, marks the one hundred and twentieth anniversary o f his birth. the Russian Imperial Navy

• Main Author: William Barr
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Axel Heiberg Island; Canadian Arctic Archipelago; Grise Fiord; Heiberg; Kara Sea; Slidre Fiord; Arctic Archipelago; Queen Elizabeth Islands
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.694.5760; http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic27-1-2.pdf

Otto Sverdrup, one of Norway’s greatest explorers, is usually remembered for his participation, as captain of Fram, in Nansen’s memorable drift of 1893-96, and for his remarkably successful exploratory expedition in 1898-1902, again in Fram, to what are now the Queen Elizabeth Islands. Such obviously Scandinavian names as Axel Heiberg Island, Grise Fiord, and Slidre Fiord, bestowed by Sver-drup, testify to his achievements in that area. But several later arctic exploits of Otto Sverdrup’s, although in some ways ranking equally as high as the better known expeditions, have achieved relatively little renown. One of these was his leadership of the search-and-rescue expedition aboard Eklips in the Kara Sea in 1914-15, described in detail by L. M. Staroka-domskiy (1959) on whose account this article is largely based. Although one can not state categorically that Sverdrup’s presence and experience saved human life, it is fair to say that had it not been for Sverdrup, and had ice conditions in the summer of 1915 been more severe, the Russian Imperial Navy might have expe-rienced a major disaster.