At the end of the XIXth century, Scandinavia was shaken by the awakening of their national identity. Norway, ruled by Sweden since 1814, aspired to independence and attempted to valorize their national identity. When the explorer Fridtjof Nansen returned to his country after his expedition to Greenland in 1889, he was acclaimed with a great patriotic fever (see A.N. n°71). Influenced by research carried out by the meteorologist H. Mohn, Nansen did not believe in the then widespread idea of an open sea at the center of the North Pole. He thought that the Arctic ice was comprised of a single floating mass, drifting between Asia and Greenland. When invited to the Royal Geographical Society, he sustained the thesis that a submarine current exists between the coasts under the ice. His theory was based upon three facts: Siberian wood had been found on the coasts of Greenland; numerous traces of Siberian diatom fossils were found in the mud samples brought back by his expedition; and finally, the remains of the Jeanette, a ship lost in Siberia, were also found in Greenland. “To prove this theory”, he affirmed, “I need a ship that, once trapped in the pack ice, will be strong enough to resist the pressure of the ice during her drift across the pole. I need a crew of twelve men and supplies for five years!" ... follows