Abstract
THIS volume was compiled at a time when the early confidence in the success of the great Arctic effort had given place in Norway to a feeling of anxiety, if not of alarm. The translation is now published when the preliminary narrative of Nansen's triumphal procession across the polar area has cast his former exploits into the shade, and the expectancy with which the complete account of the expedition is awaited by the public will not be appeased by the book before us. It comes, in fact, a trifle inopportunely. To modify a wearied metaphor, the play of Hamlet is cut short before the central scene; the Scandinavian Prince has just begun to absorb attention when the curtain falls. The book is also heterogeneous in a high degree; no less than six authors are concerned in it, and the fact that all the varied contributions are translated by the same hand, robs them of some of their original freshness, although the translation is really done very well. Perhaps the unifying principle of the illrarranged chapters may be found in “Peer Gynt,” copious quotations from which are scattered over the pages. An abstract of that famous work would have proved no bad substitute for the tedious chapter on the Great Ice-Age, which, even when abridged by the translator, has little to do with the other subjects considered. The chapters on the outfit of the Fram, her voyage to the Kara Sea, and Baron-Toll's adventurous sledging expedition to the New Siberian Islands, should have been left for the forthcoming work on the polar expedition, a fact which will make them none the less interesting to the general reader. The chapter devoted to an interview with Mrs. Nansen is a clever piece of journalism, but of doubtful taste.
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MILL, H. The Early Life of Nansen1. Nature 55, 201–203 (1896). https://doi.org/10.1038/055201a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/055201a0