In 1893 Fridtjof Nansen set sail for the North Pole in the Fram, a ship specially designed to be frozen into the polar ice cap, withstand its crushing pressures and drift to the North Pole as a scientific experiment to prove that the polar cap was a sheet of ice floating on the oceans. Experts said that such a mission was tantamount to suicide. His disappearance for three years created such a media sensation that when he was found paddling back to civilisation dressed in walrus skin his stirring first-person account of the expedition's historic achievements became an instant international bestseller, the first of its kind! 'Nansen was the last of the Nordic gods... Tall, blond, and ridiculously handsome... The First Crossing Of Greenland is a... thrilling account of his earliest adventure... It was a hideous journey... Hair froze fast to headgear, beards solidified so that the lips could not be opened to speak... Polar exploration tends to attract more testosterone than talent... One man towers over the other ice-encrusted sledgers: Fridtjof Nansen, colossus of the glaciers... Of all the frozen beards... only Nansen communicated a sense of the true subjugation of the ego that endeavour can bring. Failure, he acknowledged, would mean "only disappointed human hopes, nothing more".' Sara Wheeler, Guardian 'Seminal... demythologised the polar environment and revolutionised modern polar travel with the introduction of skis.' Roland Huntford, The Times 'Nansen defied that conventional wisdom, which dictated explorers proceed from the known to the unknown to maintain a line of retreat, by sailing first to the largely uncharted eastern coast of Greenland.' Times Higher Education 'The visionary Norse explorer.' Jon Krakauer Fridtjof Nansen was the very first Arctic explorer, scientist, Nobel Prize winner and celebrity who engineered the peaceful secession of Norway from Sweden. The daring adventure story in Farthest North was the spark of inspiration for the world-famous Arctic explorers who came after him - Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen among them.