Scott refused to amend his schedule to deal with the Amundsen threat, writing, " The proper, as well as the wiser course, is for us to proceed exactly as though this had not happened ".

The chosen group marched on, reaching the Pole on 17 January 1912, only to find that Amundsen had preceded them by five weeks.

Scott's group took this photograph of themselves using a string to operate the shutter on 17 January 1912, the day after they discovered Amundsen had reached the pole first.

Even before Scott's death was known, Amundsen had been offended by what he felt was a " sneering toast "' from RGS President Lord Curzon, at a meeting held supposedly to honour the polar victor.

In 1903, Amundsen led the first expedition to successfully traverse Canada's Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans ( something explorers had been attempting since the days of Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, and Henry Hudson ), with six others in a 45-ton fishing vessel, Gjøa.

Amundsen had the ship outfitted with a small gasoline engine.

Five hundred miles ( 800 km ) away, Eagle City, Alaska, had a telegraph station ; Amundsen travelled there ( and back ) overland to wire a success message ( collect ) on 5 December 1905.

It was at this time that Amundsen received news that Norway had formally become independent of Sweden and had a new king.

Amundsen had problems and hesitation raising funds for the departure and upon hearing in 1909 that first Frederick Cook and then Robert Peary claimed the Pole, he decided to reroute to Antarctica.

With him on this expedition were Oscar Wisting and Helmer Hanssen, both of whom had accompanied Amundsen to the South Pole.

Amundsen planned to freeze the Maud into the polar ice cap and drift towards the North Pole ( as Nansen had done with the Fram ), and he did so off Cape Chelyuskin.

During this time, Amundsen participated little in the work outdoors, such as sleigh rides and hunting, because he had been subjected to numerous accidents.

Many of these carefully collected scientific data had been lost during the ill-fated journey of Peter Tessem and Paul Knutsen, two crew members sent on a mission by Amundsen, but they were later retrieved by Russian scientist Nikolay Urvantsev as they lay abandoned on the Kara Sea shores.

Amundsen disappeared on 18 June 1928 while flying on a rescue mission with Norwegian pilot Leif Dietrichson, French pilot René Guilbaud, and three more Frenchmen, looking for missing members of Nobile's crew, whose new airship Italia had crashed while returning from the North Pole.

Amundsen and Wisting had both been members of the first expedition to the South Pole, December 1911.

However, they reached the pole a month after Roald Amundsen and his team, who had climbed the previously unknown Axel Heiberg Glacier.

The report about this journey closed with a quotation by Helmer Hanssen, who had been responsible for the welfare of the sled dogs in Amundsen ’ s South Pole team:

Amundsen and his men, racing for the South Pole with Robert Falcon Scott, started out for the South Pole too early in the season and had to return to base camp at the Bay of Whales.

Amundsen had taken the best dogsled and sped off towards the camp without regard for his men as a storm approached.

79 days later, Wilson was one of the five-man Polar party that reached the Pole on 18 January 1912, only to find the pole had been claimed by Norwegian Roald Amundsen and his team just 5 weeks earlier.

A study in October 2004 suggested that because the ice in the Amundsen Sea had been melting rapidly and became riveted with cracks, the offshore ice shelf was set to collapse " within five years ".

Amundsen had previously in spring 1925 flown to within 150 nautical miles ( 280 km ) of the North Pole, in a pair of Italian-built Dornier Wal flying boats along with the American millionaire-adventurer Lincoln Ellsworth, the pilot Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen, but their planes were forced to land near 88 degrees North and the six men were trapped on the ice for 30 days.

Huntford's controversial The Last Place on Earth ( originally titled Scott and Amundsen ) had a tremendous impact on public interest in Polar matters.

Sought by explorers for centuries as a possible trade route, it was first navigated by Roald Amundsen in 1903 – 1906.

According to some, the first consistent, verified, and scientifically convincing attainment of the Pole was on 12 May 1926, by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his US sponsor Lincoln Ellsworth from the airship Norge.

The routes to the South Pole taken by Scott ( green ) and Amundsen ( red ), 1911 – 1912.

Amundsen now returned to Norway, spurred by a need to put his finances in order.

This part was led by Amundsen.

In 1925, accompanied by Lincoln Ellsworth, pilot Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen, and three other team members, Amundsen took two Dornier Do J flying boats, the N-24 and N-25 to 87 ° 44 ′ north.

In 1926, Amundsen and 15 other men ( including Ellsworth, Riiser-Larsen, Oscar Wisting, and the Italian air crew led by aeronautical engineer Umberto Nobile ) made the first crossing of the Arctic in the airship Norge designed by Nobile.

If the Norge expedition was actually the first to the North Pole, Amundsen and Oscar Wisting would therefore be the first persons to reach each geographical pole, by ground or by air, as the case may be.

The search for Amundsen was called off in September by the Norwegian Government.

* Gjennem luften til 88 ° Nord ( by Roald Amundsen, Lincoln Ellsworth and other members of the expedition, 1925 ).

* Roald Amundsen, a full biography by Tor Bomann-Larsen, 2006, ISBN 0-7509-4343-2

* Scott and Amundsen – Duel in the Ice by Rainer-K. Langner, Haus Publishing, London, 2007, ISBN 978-1-905791-08-8

* The Last Place on Earth a TV series based on the book, Scott and Amundsen, by Roland Huntford

* The Last Place On Earth 1985 serial depicting the race between Amundsen ( played by Sverre Anker Ousdal ) and Scott.

Works by Amundsen

* Works by Roald Amundsen at Internet Archive and Google Books ( scanned books original versions color illustrated )

* Works by Roald Amundsen via LibriVox ( audiobooks )

Explorers like Roald Amundsen, Umberto Nobile and Fridtjof Nansen made use of the know-how in Tromsø on the conditions in the Arctic, and often recruited their crew in the city.

Discovered by Roald Amundsen in 1911, and named by him for Fridtjof Nansen, polar explorer, who helped support Amundsen's expedition.

A biographer of the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen has suggested that, in her husband's absence, she began a brief affair with Nansen, the mentor of Scott's rival Amundsen.

In Norway Borchgrevink divided opinion ; Roald Amundsen was a long-time friend and supporter, whereas Fridtjof Nansen, according to Scott, spoke of him as a " tremendous fraud ".

Ski touring formed the basis of the polar expeditions of Norwegian explorers like Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen.

* HNoMS Roald Amundsen, Fridtjof Nansen class frigate of the Royal Norwegian Navy