Explorers and Knödel

I spent some time last week checking out a couple more museums here in Oslo.  First, the Fram museum!

The museum space is pretty much filled by this ship, which makes it look enormous, though if you imagine it out on the ice, it probably seemed quite fragile (aka "the Christmas tree effect").

The Fram was used in both North and South pole exploration; first by Fridtjof Nansen, who in 1893 set out to deliberately freeze this ship into the pack ice and drift along.  Nansen was a scientist, and wanted to prove that there was an E-W current.  Everyone thought he was nuts.

The Fram was specifically designed to survive-it's kind of hard to see in this picture, but it's really round, so that when the ice squeezed, the ship would pop up rather than be crushed-and it worked!

There was a 2nd Fram expedition that set out to do more scientific measurements.

Now, we come to my favorite part-the race to the South Pole-I've read before about this, but always from an English-speaking perspective: so, Shackleton and Scott, who both failed (one more spectacularly).  The museum currently has a temporary exhibit about Scott's expedition, which relied on ponies and motorized sledges, both of which died.  The horrible end revealed in their diaries contrasts sharply with Amundsen.

Roald Amundsen, after finding out that someone has allegedly reached the North Pole, decided to stick the Fram in the ice again for a drift across the North Pole.  However, sometime between that point and leaving, he decided to try for the South Pole.  Get this, though-he didn't tell anyone on board!  Now, you may rightly wonder-wouldn't people notice when they started going south?  The original plan was to go south, though, past the tip of South America and get stuck in the ice on the other side of the Americas, so no one noticed.  Here's a photo of the Fram before leaving:

Recognize that fun little building?  Anyway, Amundsen told everyone of the change of plans (Hey guys, yeah, since we're down here, do you mind if we take a side trip to the South Pole....?) and they set up camp at the Bay of Whales.

They had a steam bath, too.  This guy's really happy about it.

Also, funny pictures:

Anyway, Amundsen's group made it to the Pole a month ahead of Scott, probably because they relied more on sled dogs who were used to these types of conditions.  Also, less reliance on new technology and a greater ability to adapt to conditions (for example, shaving down the sleds so they were lighter).

Like any great museum, the Fram Polar Museum has a mummy, and an indoor snow cave-impressively chilly in there:

Next, to the tropics: the Kon-Tiki museum!

This is museum dedicated to the projects of Thor Heyerdahl- a Norwegian anthropologist  His most famous project was his voyage across the Pacific on the balsa raft Kon-Tiki, trying to show that it was possible for South Americans to colonize the Polynesian islands.  Of course, since the 1940's, genetic studies have show that the Polynesians came from East Asia, but I wouldn't say that too loudly!  Heyerdahl also rode another raft, the Ra I and II across the Atlantic to show a possible connection between the Mediterranean and Central America (there were 2 because the first one sank).  This museum was built back when he was still alive, so it's very Heyerdahl-positive.  It also smells nice-like sweet lumber.
Here's the Kon-Tiki:

I highly recommend watching the documentary filmed during the voyage (Favorite character: Lolita, the seasick parrot with a Norwegian accent).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1UpCYGHy24&feature=related

In other news, I learned how to make Austrian knödel (knodel-pronounced like canoodle).  Basically, fruit-filled potato dumplings-these have strawberries or peaches in them.  See how I snuck a new letter into that title there-yeah!