| |
 The original Arctic explorers were the ancestors of the Paleoindians, who migrated from Siberia via the land bridge that crossed the Bering Sea during the late stages of the Ice Age, probably sometime between 30,000 and 14,000 years ago. These pioneers only passed through on their way to warmer habitats; later arrivals, the ancestors of the Inuit, stayed in the Arctic to develop their unique culture.
The first European Arctic explorer was the Greek navigator Pytheas. Around 330 BC, he sailed from the colony at Massilia (the present Marseilles, France) to explore the British Isles, an important source of tin for making bronze. From Scotland, Pytheas sailed northwest six days seeking a legendary land called Thule where the sun shone all night long. He reported seeing pods of whales before being forced to turn back by dense fogs and slush ice so thick it was impassable. His discoveries were not believed in his time, but he is now credited with having reached the vicinity of Iceland and perhaps even Greenland.
 More recent European explorers searched for a "Northwest Passage" to the Orient, proposed in the 1490's by the Genoese navigator Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) while working for Henry VII of England. From 1576-1578 Martin Frobisher sought the Northwest Passage for Queen Elizabeth I, but was distracted by the supposed discovery of gold; the "ore" turned out to be fool's gold and he nearly went to prison. After discovering the Hudson River in 1609, Henry Hudson sailed again in 1610-1611. His ship Discovery was frozen in James Bay, its crew becoming the first Europeans to spend the winter in the Canadian north. The crew mutinied and cast him adrift, never to be heard from again. John Franklin led many expeditions. The last, on the ships Erebus and Terror in 1845, vanished; much was learned by four expeditions searching in vain for Franklin.
 Modern exploration was largely inspired by the race for the North Pole. The American Robert Peary, the African American Matthew Henson, and four Inuit co-explorers were credited with reaching the pole on April 6, 1909; later research suggests they missed the pole, but came within 20 miles. The Norwegian Roald Amundsen, spurred by Peary's "discovery," became the first to reach the South Pole in 1911, and was on the first flight over the North Pole in 1926 in the Italian Umberto Nobile's airship Norge. Amundsen had also completed the Northwest Passage in 1905 in his ship Gjoa. Despite a falling out over publicity, Amundsen died in an attempt to rescue Nobile from the crash of his airship Italia in 1928. The first undisputed reach of the pole by land did not come until the Russian expedition of Senkosomov, Geordiyenko, and Ostrekin in 1948.
|
|
