Facts for Kids

Roald Amundsen was born in a small town in Norway and grew up in a family of ship captains and shipowners. He learned about ships and the sea at home, so travel and boats felt natural to him. His mother wanted him to become a doctor, and he kept that promise until she died when he was 21.

After his mother died, he left university and went to sea. As a boy he read stories about Arctic voyages and played with other children whose families were sailors. These things made him want to explore polar places when he grew up.

Roald Amundsen is a famous explorer from Norway who loved the cold places at the top and bottom of the world. He lived in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a time when many people tried to travel to the poles. Amundsen planned carefully and used the skills he learned from the people and places he visited.

He became the first explorer confirmed to reach the South Pole on 14 December 1911, and later took part in a flight over the North Pole in 1926. He disappeared while flying on a rescue trip in the Arctic in 1928.

On 18 June 1928 Amundsen went to help people from a crashed airship and left on the flying boat Latham 47 with other pilots and crew. The plane never came back. Pieces of wreckage were found near Tromsø, and people think the plane crashed in the sea. Official searches stopped in September 1928, and no bodies were found, although later searches in 2004 and 2009 looked for wreckage.

Amundsen never married, but he had a long secret relationship with Kristine Elisabeth (“Kiss Bennett”) and later became engaged to Bess Magids. He also had a few short romances, but he spent most of his life focused on exploration. Which part of his life do you find most surprising?

From 1903 to 1906, Amundsen led a small team to travel the Northwest Passage in a tiny ship called the Gjøa. He chose just six men and a shallow-draft sloop with a small engine so they could move slowly and stay safe near the coast. They sailed through narrow channels and spent two winters on King William Island.

During those winters they learned from the Netsilik Inuit how to live in the Arctic. The Inuit taught them to use sled dogs, wear animal skins for warmth, and find food in the ice and snow. These skills helped Amundsen on later journeys, and the Gjøa is now shown in a museum in Oslo.

At 25, Amundsen joined the Belgian Antarctic Expedition as first mate. The ship became trapped in sea ice near Alexander Island and the crew had to spend the winter in Antarctica. They were not ready for such a long, dark cold season.

The crew struggled with a sickness called scurvy, which comes from not having enough vitamin C. The expedition doctor hunted fresh animals and gave the crew raw meat, which helped prevent scurvy because it supplied vitamin C when fresh fruits were not available. This taught Amundsen important lessons about polar survival.

In June 1910 Amundsen left Norway on the ship Fram and reached Antarctica in January 1911. He made a camp called Framheim at the Bay of Whales and laid out supply depots on the Ross Ice Shelf so the teams would find food and gear on the way south.

Amundsen dressed his men in Inuit-style furred skins and used skis and dog sleds. He planned carefully—sometimes dogs were used for food so the rest could survive. A first try in September 1911 turned back because of extreme cold. A smaller team of five left in October by the Axel Heiberg Glacier and reached the South Pole on 14 December 1911, beating another explorer by about a month. They left a tent and letter, returned to Framheim by January 1912, and announced the success in March in Hobart. Careful planning, good clothing, dogs, and skis made the win possible.

In 1918 Amundsen sailed in the ship Maud to study the Arctic, hoping to freeze the ship into the ice and drift like an earlier explorer did. The Maud became stuck many times near places such as the New Siberian Islands and Wrangel Island. The crew spent several winters trapped, and Amundsen was hurt when he broke his arm and had a dangerous encounter with a polar bear. The ship reached Seattle for repairs in 1921.

Amundsen also tried flying in the Arctic. In 1923 a plane trip failed, but in 1925 he flew to 87°44′ north with flying boats. In 1926 he flew over the North Pole in the airship Norge, a trip that may be the first clearly proven crossing of the Pole. Scientists on the Maud collected valuable data, and some records were later recovered. These journeys mixed brave exploration, hard winters, and some disputes about who reached the Pole first.