On 17 July 1888, the young Norwegian scientist Fridtjof Nansen disembarked with five other men from the Jason, a seal-hunting ship, 10 miles from Greenland’s south-eastern coast. Boarding two small boats, the men began rowing through ice-choked waters toward land. Their goal, when they reached the shore, was to cross the ice sheet that cloaks much of Greenland. This remnant of ancient ice ages covers an expanse of 660,000 square miles and rises, in its centre, to an altitude of nearly two miles.
If Nansen’s expedition succeeded, he and his compatriots would become the first to cross the Greenland Ice Sheet. Since the early 18th century, explorers had made modest forays onto the ‘inland ice’ by foot, but all had turned back before completing the crossing, having encountered punishing cold…