Amundsen Quotes

Adventure is just bad planning.

For scientific discovery, give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel, give me Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when you are seeing no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton

For scientific leadership give me Scott; for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.

I may say that this is the greatest factor: the way in which the expedition is equipped, the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who has everything in order, luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time, this is called bad luck.

My name is Grey Amundsen. But Grey, she doesn’t exist in here, in this slimy, smoky, sex-hazed hole. In here, I’m Gracie.

Visam să ajung la Polul Nord şi în Antarctica, pe urmele lui Nansen şi Amundsen, dar o făceam stând lipit cu spatele de o sobă de teracotă caldă.

And if the worst, or best, happens, and Death comes for you in the snow, he comes disguised as Sleep, and you greet him rather as a welcome friend than a gruesome foe.

Roald Amundsen says that ‘Adventure is just bad planning.’ In that case, friends, let us make more bad planning!

Victory awaits him who has everything in order - luck, people call it

Good stories are never about a string of successes but about spectacular defeats,” Støp had said. “Even though Roald Amundsen won the race to the South Pole, it’s Robert Scott the world outside Norway remembers. None of Napoleon’s victories is remembered like the defeat at Waterloo. Serbia’s national pride is based on the battle against the Turks at Kosovo Polje in 1389, a battle the Serbs lost resoundingly. And look at Jesus! The symbol of the man who is claimed to have triumphed over death ought to be a man standing outside the tomb with his hands in the air. Instead, throughout time Christians have preferred the spectacular defeat: when he was hanging on the cross and close to giving up. Because it’s always the story of the defeat that moves us most.

Victory awaits him who has everything in order—luck people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.” —Roald Amundsen, The South Pole

Side note: Down here, you're either an Amundsen guy, a Shackleton guy, or a Scott guy. Amundsen was the first to reach the Pole, but he did it by feeding dogs to dogs, which makes Amundsen the Michael Vick of polar explorers: you can like him, but keep it to yourself, or you'll end up getting into arguments with a bunch of fanatics. Shackleton is the Charles Barkley of the bunch: he's a legend, all-star personality, but there's the asterisk that he never reached the Pole, i.e. won a championship. How this turned into a sports analogy, I don't know. Finally, there's Captain Scott, canonized for his failure, and to this day never fully embraced because he was terrible with people. He has my vote, you understand.

How did I happen to become an explorer? It did not just happen, for my career has been a steady progress toward a definite goal since I was fifteen years of age.

An die Kälte kann der Mensch sich nicht gewöhnen.

A hero, in his mind, was not someone who suffered disaster after disaster, heroically pulling through with great endurance, but rather one who focused his intelligence and skills to avoid disaster, thus succeeding by good planning and crafty decision making.

So we go around pigeonholing everything. We put cows in cowsheds, horses in stables, pigs in pigsties, and chickens in chicken coops. The same happens when Sophie Amundsen tidies up her room. She puts her books on the bookshelf, her schoolbooks in her schoolbag, and her magazines in the drawer. She folds her clothes neatly and puts them in the closet - underwear on one shelf, sweaters on another, and socks in a drawer on their own. Notice that we do the same thing in our minds. we distinguish between things made of stone, things made of wool, and things made of rubber. We distinguish between things that are alive or dead, and we distinguish between vegetables, animal, and human

Where imaginary mole hills turn into hallucinatory mountains

Menneskets eldste våpen var mennesket selv.

Roald Amundsen şöyle diyor: ‘Macera denen şey, kötü planlamadan başka bir şey değildir!’ O halde, dostlar, daha fazla kötü planlama yapalım!

Then she sat down on a kitchen stool with the mysterious letter in her hand. Who are you? She had no idea. She was Sophie Amundsen, of course, but who was that?

Men, as Amundsen liked to say, are the unknown factor in the Antarctic.

It wasn’t Amundsen’s job to make his men happy, but to lead them to victory, alive.

Amundsen slept with his window wide open at night even in the winter, claiming to his mother that he loved fresh air, but really “it was a part of my hardening process.” He organized small expeditions for himself and a few friends, such as overnight treks on skis under a star-studded sky, enlivened by the otherworldly swirling of the aurora borealis, into the winter wilds to improve his toughness.

For scientific leadership, give me Scott; for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems to be no way out, get on your knees and pray for Shackleton.

Antarctica is the highest, driest, coldest, and windiest place on the planet. The South Pole averages sixty below zero, has hurricane-strength winds, and sits at an altitude of ten thousand feet. In other words, those original explorers didn’t have to just get there, but had to climb serious mountains to do so. (Side note: Down here, you’re either an Amundsen guy, a Shackleton guy, or a Scott guy. Amundsen was the first to reach the Pole, but he did it by feeding dogs to dogs, which makes Amundsen the Michael Vick of polar explorers: you can like him, but keep it to yourself, or you’ll end up getting into arguments with a bunch of fanatics. Shackleton is the Charles Barkley of the bunch: he’s a legend, all-star personality, but there’s the asterisk that he never reached the Pole, i.e., won a championship. How this turned into a sports analogy, I don’t know. Finally, there’s Captain Scott, canonized for his failure, and to this day never fully embraced because he was terrible with people. He has my vote, you understand.)

Although I have had offers of wireless installation for the Fram,” he said in one rambling interview, “that also I declined. I don’t care for it. It is very much better to be without news when you cannot be where the news comes from. We are always more contented if we get no news. A good book we like, we explorers. That is our best amusement and our best time killer.

É fácil você pregar sobre convivência com o outro quando sua população é rica e quase todo mundo tem olhos azuis, é loiro e tem um nome do tipo “Amundsen”. É fácil repartir com poucas pessoas quando se tem muito. Não é por acaso que os europeus se fecham aos imigrantes porque não querem dividir seu “sossego”. É normal, o ridículo é negar isso. O politicamente correto nega que seja normal (embora não seja “bonito”) ser egoísta e com isso dá uma roupagem bonita ao egoísmo, porque pretende torná-lo invisível.

Gjøa was later presented as a gift to the city of San Francisco, remaining on display in Golden Gate Park until 1972, when it was returned to Norway. It now resides in Oslo harbour, next to two other famous Norwegian ships, Fridtjof Nansen’s Fram and Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki.

At this period, too, Leningraders resorted to their most desperate food substitutes, scraping dried glue from the underside of wallpaper and boiling up shoes and belts. (Tannery processes had changed, they discovered, since the days of Amundsen and Nansen, and the leather remained tough and inedible.)

Still, not even a cynic could deny Shackleton’s gifts as a commander. As one polar explorer put it, “For scientific leadership, give me Scott; for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems to be no way out, get on your knees and pray for Shackleton.

In the snows Amundsen grasped that it was usually best to lead from behind. He could see his men and survey the situation, the foundation of command. And the last man has the responsibility of retrieving what falls off the sledges. However careful the stowing, somehow something vital usually drops by the wayside.

Spilsby in Lincolnshire is proud of its most famous son, Sir John Franklin, and home to an enormous bronze statue of him. It was unveiled in 1875 and according to the legend on its plaque, it was Sir John who discovered the Northwest Passage. This is overstating things a little, given that the discovery was made twenty-five years later and by Roald Amundsen.

Our plan is one, one and again one alone—to reach the pole. For that goal, I have decided to throw everything else aside.

Jeg tror verden har så mange skrik at om de alle brøt løs på en gang, ville verden sprekke som et egg mot stein.

Du kan ikke forsvare drap eller tortur i seg selv, men verden er faktisk slik at noen ganger må du velge det minste av to onder.

I have heard men snore till I was really afraid they would choke, but as for acknowledging that they had been asleep—never!

All the dogs except eight had been named. I do not know who had been responsible for some of the names, which seemed to represent a variety of tastes. They were as follows Rugby, Upton Bristol, Millhill, Songster, Sandy, Mack, Mercury, Wolf, Amundsen, Hercules, Hackenschmidt, Samson, Sammy, Skipper, Caruso, Sub, Ulysses, Spotty, Bosun, Slobbers, Sadie, Sue, Sally, Jasper, Tim, Sweep, Martin, Splitlip, Luke, Saint, Satan, Chips, Stumps, Snapper, Painful, Bob, Snowball, Jerry, Judge, Sooty, Rufus, Sidelights, Simeon, Swanker, Chirgwin, Steamer, Peter, Fluffy, Steward, Slippery, Elliott, Roy, Noel, Shakespeare, Jamie, Bummer, Smuts, Lupoid, Spider, and Sailor. Some of the names, it will be noticed, had a descriptive flavour.

Never mind that travelling by kayak from Victoria Land to Australia was assured suicide, or that camping on an iceberg was at best ill-advised. Scrawling furiously in his cabin by candlelight, Amundsen was more focused than ever on writing his own legend. When, a few weeks later, an iceberg in a nearby clearing suddenly flipped on its side with a tremendous roar, Amundsen wrote, "I will not allow my plan to spend the winter on an iceberg to be influenced by this.

For an hour or so we were furiously angry, and were possessed with an insane sense that we must go straight to the Bay of Whales and have it out with Amundsen and his men in some undefined fashion or other there and then. Such a mood could not and did not bear a moment's reflection; but it was natural enough. We had just paid the first instalment of the heart-breaking labour of making a path to the Pole; and we felt, however unreasonably, that we had earned the first right of way.

Nansen had moreover introduced a startling new concept into Polar exploration. He had deliberately cut off his lines of retreat. His route was from the desolate east coast to the inhabited west. This was not bravado, but calculated exploitation of the instinct of self-preservation. It drove him on; there was no incentive to look back.

My favorite chick was the tawny-colored Buff Orpington. She promised to one day be a bodacious plus-sized model of a chicken, wearing fluffy pantaloons under full feathery skirts and with as charming a personality as her appearance suggested. Predictably named Buffy, she didn’t mind being handled and rather seemed to enjoy the company, clucking softly with a closed beak as I picked her up and stroked her silky feathers.

Miss Boyd’s voyages to Greenland were conducted during a transitional period in polar exploration between “the Golden Age,” in which conquering the poles was accomplished by overland routes and by sea, and the modern technological era heralded by early polar flights by Amundsen, Ellsworth, and Byrd. Gillis wrote that Louise Arner Boyd “represented one of the last revivals of a Victorian phenomenon the wealthy explorer who poured a personal fortune into expeditions aimed at advancing science and satisfying profound personal curiosity.” [3] In rejecting a sedate and sheltered life as a wealthy wife and mother, she defied societal expectations. But she also challenged the ideal of a polar explorer as defined by manliness, stoicism, and heroism. Her seven daring expeditions to northern Norway and Greenland between 1926 and 1955 paved the way for later female polar explorers,

The English too, were turning their eyes to the South. In 1769, there was to be a transit of the planet Venus across the disc of the sun, a rare event which astronomers wanted to observe. The newly discovered island of Tahiti was judged the perfect site. The Royal Society in London asked the Royal Navy to organize the expedition. The Navy obliged. This was to have profound and unlooked-for consequences. It led to the virtual monopolization by naval officers of British Polar exploration until the first decade of this century. The voyage inspired by the transit of Venus was commanded by a man of quiet genius, James Cook, one of the greatest of discoverers.

How did I happen to become an explorer? It did not just happen, for my career has been a steady progress toward a definite goal since I was fifteen years of age." Roald Amundsen

The ultimate success of Amundsen’s expedition in reaching the South Pole in December 1911 would depend on two crucial logistical choices: the decision to use skis and the reliance on dog teams to haul the sledges. It was the tried-and-true Norwegian style of polar travel, but one that British explorers never fully embraced.

A vitória aguarda aquele que tem tudo em ordem – ou sorte, como as pessoas costumam dizer. A derrota é certa para aquele que deixa de tomar as precauções necessárias a tempo; a isso as pessoas chamam má sorte.” Roald Amundsen, Polo sula

Note: Dr. Lawrence Polinkis who analyzed clinical data from American men and women at Antarctica's Mcmurdo station Amundsen Scott's South Pole station posits specifically that the memory loss and other cognitive impairments he observed were related to a decline in levels of the thyroid hormone T3, which helps determine how the body uses energy. Thyroid hormones help the body regulate temperature and set its circadian rhythms. It's not difficult to see how extreme cold and the prolonged absence of sunshine might throw a system off. This is just a hypothesis - the causes of the syndrome remain puzzling more the a century after Cook first described it.

Amundsen continued in what Cook described as the language of the Belgica, a mix in this case of Flemish, German, and Norwegian: “There is a relation between the tongue and the harpoon. Both can inflict painful wounds. The cut of the lance heals. The cut of the tongue rots.

What can we make of Amundsen? His story is a knot. All his life he had been a man of the north, all his career had been an exploration of the north. He had found a Northwest Passage;

Victory awaits him who has everything in order—luck people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.” —Roald Amundsen, The South Pole1

and it must be remembered that the men whose desires lead them to the untrodden paths of the world have generally marked individuality.

All the dogs except eight had been named. I do not know who had been responsible for some of the names, which seemed to represent a variety of tastes. They were as follows Rugby, Upton Bristol, Millhill, Songster, Sandy, Mack, Mercury, Wolf, Amundsen, Hercules, Hackenschmidt, Samson, Sammy, Skipper, Caruso, Sub, Ulysses, Spotty, Bosun, Slobbers, Sadie, Sue, Sally, Jasper, Tim, Sweep, Martin, Splitlip, Luke, Saint, Satan, Chips, Stumps, Snapper, Painful, Bob, Snowball, Jerry, Judge, Sooty, Rufus, Sidelights, Simeon, Swanker, Chirgwin, Steamer, Peter, Fluffy, Steward, Slippery, Elliott, Roy, Noel, Shakespeare, Jamie, Bummer, Smuts, Lupoid, Spider, and Sailor. Some of the names, it will be noticed, had a descriptive flavour.

But it is possible that a completely different author is somewhere writing a book about a UN Major Albert Knag, who is writing a book for his daughter Hilde. This book is about a certain Alberto Knox who suddenly begins to send humble philosophical lectures to Sophie Amundsen, 3 Clover Close.

La victoria aguarda a aquel que tiene todo bajo control – la gente lo llama suerte -. La derrota es para aquellos que descuidan las necesarias precauciones a tiempo; lo llaman mala suerte”. (Amundsen, Polo Sur, 389)

A lo largo de los siguientes años Amundsen cosechó nuevos éxitos en el campo de la exploración, pero fracasos en lo personal. Acabó enfrentado con su hermano Leon y con casi todo el mundo. Comandó una expedición fallida al Polo Norte en avión (1925), 182 y participó en una exitosa en dirigible, junto con Nobile y Wisting. Sobrevolaron el Polo Norte, y Amundsen cumplió su sueño juvenil, aunque fuera desde el aire. En 1928 Nobile, que participaba en una nueva expedición, desapareció, y Amundsen se dispuso a participar en su búsqueda. El hidroavión en el que viajaba nunca fue encontrado. Se sospecha que se estrelló en el mar de Barents. Roald Amundsen moría a los 56 años, convertido en uno de los exploradores más exitosos de la historia. El Paso del Noroeste, el Polo Sur y el Polo Norte eran su legado. 

Pensarás que no puede ser muy agradable «perderse a sí mismo»; entiendo lo que quieres decir. Pero lo que pasa es que lo que pierdes es muchísimo menos que lo que ganas. Te pierdes a ti mismo en la forma que tienes en ese momento, pero al mismo tiempo comprendes que en realidad eres algo mucho más grande. Tú eres todo el universo; tú eres el alma universal, querida Sofía. Tú eres Dios. Si tienes que soltar a Sofía Amundsen, puedes consolarte con que ese «yo cotidiano» es algo que de todos modos perderás un día. Tu verdadero yo, que sólo llegarás a conocer si consigues perderte a ti misma, es según los místicos una especie de fuego maravilloso que arde eternamente.

I’m not someone who wakes up very fast. Explorer Roald Amundsen called it morning peevishness.” “Proof that language today isn’t what it used to be.” She

It was summer in the Midwest and thus idyllic. Long days rolled out like the land before us, expansive and dotted with wild flowers and fireflies. It’s a potent season that can enchant away all thoughts of our protracted northern winters, which seem not only far off but altogether improbable. I blamed it on the heady billow of chlorophyll and vitamin D. In this unfiltered sunshine even a non-agrarian like me could see that this swelling farmland was beautiful and precious, a ripe expanse of great potential. I just wasn’t convinced it was our potential. But we were about to find out. With a transition as subtle as an ax, today would come to have a story, a moniker, and forever more be The Day the Chickens Came.

Jason levels a glare at me and says slowly, “You cannot stop me from pursuing this farm.” I taste the bitterness of adrenaline and betrayal in my constricted throat. Thoughts bing around my head in an enraged electrical storm. How dare you cast me as the pisser-on-er of dreams! I put up a halfhearted fight against angry tears and succumb. Having done my fair share of food industry service, I can tell you that nothing, nothing unnerves waitstaff like the fighting couple with the crying woman seated in one’s station. I remember glancing up for a second and seeing our waitress do a sort of horrified back-and-forth shuffle with our meals as she looked for an opportunity to throw them on our table and bolt. But that right moment was elusive, as I wasn’t engaged in dignified weeping into one’s napkin. I rarely cry, but when I do, it’s full-on bawling with shallow, gasping breaths. The kind that can really get the snot flowing. The kind that produces honking.

Putting out the last of the rusty folding chairs that propagated in barn corners, I couldn’t help but think the luncheon had the air of a shower, an event commemorating a big life change. Sitting down, we formed a loose circle, plates on our laps, while our supportive friends, many of them business owners them- selves, murmured encouraging words to us. To be truthful, I’ve grown suspicious of life events that trigger showers. It feels like the calm before the storm, the harbinger of things to suck. Historically, these were occasions for women to share their collective marriage or child-rearing wisdom gathered along their own journeys. But that’s not what hap- pens today. We’ve become too politically correct to issue opinions based on our experience, thus leaving attendees of such fetes to fall flat of the original intent. I know; I’ve participated in such group failings myself. But unable to bring ourselves to lay out reality for the honoree, we adopt an “ignorance is bliss” attitude and distract the guest of honor with a Cuisinart, a Diaper Genie, and assorted petit fours—and, like those gathered around the barn, just smile, hoping for the best for this new endeavor.

That leaves the category of pasture-raised chickens. It seems they’re living the poultry dream—and, according to Jason, we could be, too. I nod as I take another swallow of beer. I don’t say that it sounds like an enormous amount of work or that we live in arguably one of the harshest climates in the continental United States. Nor do I point out that having spent our entire careers jockeying keyboards to make a living, we are not farmers. So while I don’t exactly tune him out, I become a passive listener. A very passive listener. Poultry isn’t exactly the foreplay talk I was hoping for, so instead I just enjoy the rhythm and cadence of his voice. I hear something about pastured hens for- aging on fresh grasses producing healthier, delicious eggs with less fat and cholesterol, something about the local food movement and its ability to remake America’s food system. I signal the server for a second beer and let it all wash over me with an occasional nod until an utterly un-ignorable statement pulls me out. “This is the kind of farm I want to start.” Now I’m listening. In fact, I’m listening so hard I realize that this particular corner of the restaurant is a convergence point for the piped-in music from two separate rooms, and they’re competing against each other like dueling mariachi bands.

Just a few days before, Jason had been part of the noisy street- scape, trying to talk to his aunt Joyce back in Shakopee, Minnesota. To avoid the blaring traffic and techno music, he’d ducked into a quiet construction site, phone pressed against his ear, eyes on his shoes. That was when a hard punch connected with his cheekbone. The phone went flying. Probably the worst text I’ve ever gotten was the one line, Jason’s been mugged. Accounting it later, he would say his military training must have kicked in. “Before I could think about it, I’d kicked the legs out from under one of the guys.” And that was when he said it. Jason uttered a phrase so outrageous, so utterly shameless, it can be used only once per life- time, and until then stored in a special box sternly labeled, In case of emergency, break glass. “It’s terrible; it’s right out of a Steven Seagal direct-to-VHS movie,” he admitted, as I coaxed the story out of him again. “Well, I mustered up my army drill sergeant voice and I barked, ‘Motherf*cker! You want a piece of me?’” Jason claims the second it came out of his mouth, he was already embarrassed. Embarrassed in front of what turned out to be teen boys, kids really, who clearly didn’t speak English. They ran off with his phone and Jason found his way back to Brian’s hospital room with a headache, a purple contusion, and a strong will to get his brother well—and the hell out of Asia.

At dusk, hens seek their coop. So reliable is this, there’s even a saying, an adage: Chickens come home to roost. It’s for warmth. It’s for protection. It’s hardwired. But our first shipment of nine hundred mature birds, just purchased from a commercial operation, stands on the field staring. They tilt and turn their heads to better align us with their side-placed eyes, as though await- ing instructions. Then, as darkness quiets the pasture, I get it. My hand on my lips, I mumble, “Oh, God.” These hens are out of sync with sunset because until today, they have NEVER SEEN THE SUN. While I’ve worried about many things going wrong with our unlikely egg startup, CHICKENS not knowing HOW TO BE CHICKENS was not one of them.

Sohlberg looked as if he had just swallowed a spoonful of lutefisk.

It seemed that starting the business was a series of disappointing compromises and heart-stopping leaps of faith.

Chickens, no doubt, have pluck.

Our daily routine was soon working smoothly, and everyone gave the impression of being eminently fitted for his post. We constituted a little republic on board the “Gjöa.” We had no strict laws. I know myself how irksome this strict discipline is. Good work can be done without the fear of the

nascent

Oates struggled with wet feet throughout the seventy-nine-day journey across packed ice. As they closed in on the Pole, they had the horror of encountering the abandoned remnants of the Norwegians’ tent. Inside, a note from Amundsen informing them he had beaten them to it. Defeated and distraught, the small party attempted to return home, yet progress was agonizingly slow. Blizzards battered the party, and Oates, suffering from both gangrene and frostbite, had his big toe turn black and his body become yellow. His inability to walk bogged down the entire party, who, despite Oates’s protestations, refused to leave him behind. One the 17th of March, on his thirty-second birthday, Oates awoke and muttered his last words to the rest of his team, “I am just going outside and may be some time.” He then proceeded to wander off into a −40°F blizzard and was never seen again.

Rae was an explorer in the mould of Amundsen and Nansen, listening to the locals, learning from them what to wear, what to eat and how to survive. In his lifetime he mapped 1,750 miles of unexplored territory, with the loss of only one man. What a contrast with the disastrous expedition whose fate he was the first to discover.

There is so much irony in this. Scott had been distraught to learn that Amundsen had based himself in the Bay of Whales for his own attempt to get to the South Pole. Cherry-Garrard was with Scott when he received Campbell’s news about the Norwegians:

For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton

When it is darkest there is always light ahead

A good book we like, we explorers. That is our best amusement, and our best time killer

with the possible exception of the Fram, the vessel used by Fridtjof Nansen, and later by Amundsen.

Amundsen in my will, Scott in my blood, I will plant my flag.

In 1909 a Norwegian explorer called Roald Amundsen was planning an expedition to become the first man to reach the North Pole. But after learning that others had beaten him to it, he changed his plan and decided to become the first person to reach the South Pole.

I said I liked Amundsen and Scott and I liked King Solomon’s Mines and I liked everything by Dumas and I liked The Bad Seed and The Hound of the Baskervilles and I liked The Name of the Rose but the Italian was rather difficult.

Ha hajlamosak vagyunk a szorongásra, azt gondolhatjuk, hogy majd akkor indulunk el a számunkra fontos cél felé, ha előbb megszüntettük a belső feszültséget. Ez azonban olyan, mintha Roald Amundsen azzal halogatta volna a Déli-sark-expedíciót, hogy előbb megvárja, amíg elolvad az a sok jég.

As the explorer Roald Amundsen once said, “Adventure is just bad planning.

For a joint scientific and geographical piece of organization, give me Scott; for a Winter Journey, Wilson; for a dash to the Pole and nothing else, Amundsen: and if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time.

A telegram was waiting for Scott: "Madeira. Am going South. Amundsen.

Five men went forward, Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates and Seaman Evans. They reached the Pole on January 17 to find that Amundsen had reached it thirty-four days earlier. They returned 721 statute miles and perished 177 miles from their winter quarters.

We did not pass that spot, without according our highest tribute of admiration to the man, who - together with his gallant companions - had planted his country’s flag so infinitely nearer to the goal than any of his precursors. Sir Ernest Shackleton’s name will always be written in the annals of Antarctic exploration in letters of fire.

I’m not someone who wakes up very fast. Explorer Roald Amundsen called it morning peevishness.