Lecture and musk ox roast at the Ishavsmuseet on Friday 20.11 at 7:00 PM Polar evening about Ernest Shackleton
"We travel out, young and curious. Experience nature, experience danger, survive, make friends. Are gone for a year or two, and then we travel back home. But we are not the same as when we traveled out. We do not forget. The ice, the cold, the toil, the wind howling outside the tent. Fingers that are useless because they are stiff from the cold. All that makes you curse yourself for going out. You can't forget it. But it is also what draws you back. Time and time again.
It is the winter of 1916, and it is Frank Wild, British polar adventurer Ernest Shackleton's second-in-command, who attempts to speak courage and hope into the other men. They lie under two lifeboats, on a windswept promontory on a deserted island along the coast of Antarctica, waiting for Shackleton to rescue them.
100 years of memory
It has been a hundred years since Briton Ernest Shackleton attempted to become the first to cross Antarctica from coast to coast.
Per Sennels – who lives in Røyken municipality in Buskerud – has written a different polar book.
about this expedition. Friday, November 20 He visits the Ishavsmuseet with a lecture and book presentation.
In 1911, Roald Amundsen conquered the South Pole. Therefore, there was only one feat left in Antarctica: to cross the enormous, white continent from coast to coast.
Sir Ernest Shackleton decided to be the first to perform this heroic feat.
But already on its way to Antarctica, his ship, the Norwegian-built "Endurance", froze solid in the ice, and exactly a hundred years ago, the 28 men on board were forced to abandon ship.
Meanwhile, on the other side of Antarctica, other members of the expedition were laying out the supplies Shackleton would need to cross Antarctica. They knew nothing of the expedition's failure, and worked with their lives as an effort to do their part of the job.
One of the big ones
Per Sennels has written a documentary novel about this expedition. Based on a wealth of source material, he tells the story of an expedition that is unknown to many, and of a man who is not known to everyone, but who was world-famous in his time, who associated with the great polar heroes, and whom Roald Amundsen thought was perhaps the greatest of them all.
And for the first time in Norwegian, the author tells in detail the efforts of the men who laid out the depot that Shackleton would never need; about how they struggled, how they managed it, and about the high price they had to pay to carry out their part of the expedition.
Musk on the menu
After Sennel's lecture next Friday, something as exclusive and rare as musk steak will be served in the museum cafe. Two good reasons to visit the Ishavsmuseet this Friday, in other words. The daily manager at the Ishavsmuseet, Webjørn Landmark, is pleased to be able to offer this somewhat rare dish. Those who wish to taste this exclusive steak of musk must register at the Ishavsmuseet.
