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a hunter and kept coming back to the
expression that "happiness is where you
are not."
Died alone
"Oh, the times I have longed so much and
it has been so empty here, but you can't
think I'm so awful that I for a single se-
cond thought it was wrong of you that you
went,? well I'm an unpardonable egotist,
but you shouldn't make me into somet-
hing that I am not either. "
Thus writes a smug Fridtjof to Eva in
December 1896. He has just returned
home after three years frozen in the ice
with the Fram. And now he has been so
generous as to allow his Eva to go on a
three-week concert tour to Stockholm,
Åbo (Turku) and Helsinki.
"Nansen spent almost his entire life
travelling. He was also a diplomat in
London. His absence certainly had some
effect on his marriage. Moreover, he was
a superstar in his time, and that took up
space in its way," says Harald Dag Jølle.
Eva Nansen died on 9 December 1907 of
pneumonia, aged 49. Her husband was
not present.
"And then comes the question sometimes as to whether you really do not
miss much by spending so much of your short life on the ice and under
these conditions."
(Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen 1930)
"Women's day. Yes, none of us miss them a great deal, but out of habit
there is much talk about them, and they do often best at a distance.
"
(Sverre (24), Karl (28) and August (31), overwintered at Hopen 1923-
1924)
"I can not participate in my children's celebrations. Edit and Martha
were confirmed while I was gone. Elsie will marry this year while I have
voluntarily spent two years in exile."
(Bernhard Eilertsen, working at
the Leith Harbour whaling station on South Georgia Island, in letters
to his daughter on Easter Monday, 1930)
Source: polarhistorie.no
44
•••
Labyrint E/11
– University of Tromsø
Fridtjof Nansen and Fredrik Hjalmar Johansen paddle in the ice. The picture was taken in July 1896
in Franz Josef Land, Russia. Photo: National Library
Eva and Fridtjof Nansen as newlyweds in 1889. Photo: Christian Gibsson / National Library
Others were also gone a long time, and missed those they left behind: