Arctic Polar Expedition Films

Tonight Alejandra and I went to a lecture by a Norwegian researcher and professor, Jan Anders Diesen.

Diesen was from a smaller town in Norway that had a statue of polar explorers in their town square and he became fascinated with them. He started reading up about them when he was nine and has been researching and writing about polar explorers ever since.

What I learned: There were a lot of people trying to get to the North Pole (and the South Pole, but being from Norway, Diesen mainly focused on the north). Anthony Fiala was hired to be a photographer on an expedition in 1901 and then ended up leading a second one in 1905. The funder of this expedition wanted lots of photographs and film footage so that there could be lectures and they could make a ton of money.

There were several others such as Walter Wellman, Frederick Cook, and George Hubert Wilkins who were explorers first and took really poor-quality pictures. Roald Amundsen was one of the last amateurs in 1912 to take a camera to the arctic. He showed his footage to large crowds and earned as much for one lecture as he did for a year of being a professor. He apparently built a large mansion in Norway.

The mass of photos shoved into this one slide is
just a taste of the excitement held at tonight's lecture

In the mid-1920's films started to lose funding, but Richard E Byrd was an American superstar and claimed to fly to and from the North Pole but people were skeptical. His status got him lots of funding. But there was no evidence.

This lecture was very boring and Diesen didn't have his thoughts collected. The films were semi-interesting but were dull scenes of snow. It was hard to stay awake.

He ended his lecture by relating this classic stuff to new explorers such as Borge Ousland, who does a lot of "daredevil" exploring. Such as traveling around the arctic in a little boat in months instead of a year. Or whatever... He left us on the quote "Use old films to tell new stories" but he didn't really go into this.

The lecture was trying to be interested and if I was really fascinated with the history of arctic exploration I would be thrilled by this, but I was not....