Journey to Iceland with the subtitle – And Travels in Sweden and Norway was published in English in 1852. The Author is the amazing female explorer Ida Laura Pfeiffer, born in Austria. She was maybe the first female explorer and she was quite famous for her travel books, describing amazing expeditions to Southeast Asia, the Americas, Middle East, and Africa. She travelled around the world twice alone. This book is interesting to me because it is one of a very few old travel books that describe my own backyard, the Nordic and Scandinavian countries. She describes Denmark as a country that cares of the poor, no beggars in the streets as seen in every other Europen capital. Fun fact: Pfeiffer is referenced as “Madam Pfeiffer” in Thoreau’s book, Walden.
Download the Public Domain PDF e-book, Journey to Iceland here (376 pages/17MB):
Captain Roald Amundsen did not fool around, but based his conquest of the South Pole on defining an elegant and simple plan – and sticking with it.
On December 14. 1911, the efforts were rewarded, when Amundsen and his four companions planted the Norwegian flag on the Pole, five weeks before the ill-fated British expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott.
In The South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian expedition in the Fram, 1910–12 (Volumes I and II) he tells the whole story. The book is written in a dry, understated humoristic tone and clinically cleansed from any kind of self-praise. This makes for a very satisfying read.
Originally, everyone – even Amundsens crew! – believed that they were going for the North Pole. But as the rival Americans Cook and Peary each claimed to have reached the North Pole in 1909, Amundsen set his sights on the South Pole instead. He kept his plans secret, though, and when his intentions were revealed, it caused international outrage. But Amundsen was on his way and did not care the slightest bit.
The Norwegian expedition used the same ship, The Fram, as Fridtjof Nansen in his attempt to reach the North Pole more than a decade earlier, and Nansen himself wrote the introduction to this extraordinary book:
“When the explorer comes home victorious, everyone goes out to cheer him. We are all proud of his achievement—proud on behalf of the nation and of humanity. We think it is a new feather in our cap, and one we have come by cheaply. How many of those who join in the cheering were there when the expedition was fitting out, when it was short of bare necessities, when support and assistance were most urgently wanted? Was there then any race to be first? At such a time the leader has usually found himself almost alone; too often he has had to confess that his greatest difficulties were those he had to overcome at home before he could set sail. So it was with Columbus, and so it has been with many since his time. So it was, too, with Roald Amundsen.”
Download the entire The South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian expedition in the Fram, 1910–12 Vol I + II (986 pages / 55 MB) here:
Men have tried to cross Greenland since the Middle Ages. But the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen finally succeeded in 1888 by traversing the island on cross-country skis.
This book is one of the best stories about polar exploration, and it is beautifully illustrated with maps, drawings, and photos all the way through.
Internationally, Nansen is known as the father of modern polar exploration and for reaching a record Northern latitude during his “Fram”-expedition (1893-96). But while crossing Greenland for the first time, he tried out many of his techniques for real. At the same time, he completed the first major goal of Polar exploration.
His innovations and ideas were widely used by many later Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. During his life, Fridtjof Nansen took many roles upon himself; as explorer, scientist, diplomat, and humanitarian. In 1922, Nansen was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Download the entire book (460 pages / 24,9 MB) here:
Sometimes, reading about adventures won’t do the trick. We need to get out there. These two books will give you a basic understanding of survival on both the practical and psychological level. Arctic Survival and Jungle Survival is a compilation of two books. The first, Arctic Survival, was a pamphlet approved by the American Air Ministery and was a mandatory part of the emergency packs on military planes operating in the Arctic in the 1950′. As you might have guessed, it is all about survival, keeping warm, and optimize the chances of being found in time. In the Arctic your worst enemy is yourself. Panicking and bad decisions due to stress can be fatal, and this book will teach how to avoid the most common pitfalls.
How to build iglos
In the second book, Jungle Survival, your worst enemy is dangerous animals. You will learn how to deal with snakebites, mosquitos, and find food.
THE VOYAGES OF THE NORSEMEN TO AMERICA is an impressive historical presentation of the travels by the Vikings to America. The book was written by the dane William Hovgaard and published in English in 1914. His aim was to collect all the historical facts and evidences from various sources, and up to today Voyages of Norsemen is the authoritative compilation of historical descriptions of the travels of the Vikings to Iceland, Greenland and Vinland. The book is richly illustrated with maps and photos from expeditions to places where the Norsemen according to the sagas have been. William Hovgaard has many interesting points and for instance he draws similarities between popular folk games played by Norsemen in Iceland and Inuit games, and thereby supports written sources about Viking travels to remote parts of Greenland and Canada. The book goes into details of the following Viking voyages to America:
List of Viking voyages to America:
Bjarni’s Voyage (985 or 986)
Leif’s Return Voyage from Norway (1000)
Leif’s Voyage of Exploration to Vinland (1001)
Thorvald’s Voyage
Thorstein’s Voyage
Karlsefni’ s Expedition
Download the free PDF e-book here (408 pages/28MB):
The North West Passage by Roald Amundsen is the well written and sometimes dramatic story about the “Gjöa Expedition”, led by Amundsen himself during the years 1903-1907.
This fine work was published after his successful return and it is richly illustrated with maps and high-quality photographs, considering the time. The expedition was sometimes quite dramatic, and only sheer luck separated survival from total catastrophe:
“In the pitch-dark night, which luckily was perfectly calm, a mighty flame, with thick suffocating smoke was leaping up from the engine-room skylight. A fire had broken out in the engine-room, right among the tanks holding 2,200 gallons of petroleum. We all knew what would happen if the tanks got heated: the “Gjöa” and everything on board would be blown to atoms like an exploded bomb. We all flew in frantic haste.”
The expedition was spectacular since it was the first time man navigated The North West Passage – the northern link between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. At the time, the passage was only partly open for short periods in the summer, making the voyage very difficult and the risk of getting stuck in ice was imminent.
Today, though, due to climate changes, the passage is increasingly open for commercial traffic and it has the potential to disrupt global sea transport.
The objective of the expedition was met, but the Norwegian Roald Amundsen was disappointed that he was not able to reach the magnetic north pole, which also was a goal of the journey.
Download The North West Passage PDF here in full length (349 pages/10MB):
The People of the Polar North is a work by the Danish adventurer Knud Rasmussen. He was born 7 June 1879 in Ilulissat in Greenland and explored huge parts of the Arctic by dog sledge. Rasmussen is most known for his Thule-expeditions, the most important was the fifth Thule expedition 1921-1924 with the goal to explore the origin of the Inuit people.
The expedition took 16 months and led him to so far unknown regions and tribes in northern Canada. From the foreword:
“When I was a child I often used to hear an old Greenlandic woman tell how, far away North, at the end of the world, there lived a people who dress in bearskin and ate raw flesh.”
Knud Rasmussen was a close friend of Peter Freuchen and Roald Amundsen.
Download The People of the Polar North here (608 pages/14.5MB):
Travel and Adventure in the Territory of Alaska by Frederick Whymper is the accounts of travels to the Arctic America, at that time known as Russian America, in the middle of the 1800′. The book was published in 1868 and contains great descriptions of meetings with inuits, dramatic stories of survival, meetings with trappers and colorful eyewitness account of the stunning arctic nature. When the book was published it received a lot of attention since Alaska had just been acquired by the United States Government from Russia.
The aquisition was ridiculed and mocked in public. The critics believed the price was too high for “waste lands and worn-out colonies”. Not much was known about the 400.000 square miles, besides what Bering and Tschirikoft had reported from their expeditions.
Download Travel and Adventure in the Territory of Alaska here in full length:
The First Crossing of Spitsbergen, Svalbard, is an account originally published in 1897 of an journey of exploration and survey to the Arctic. The author Sir William Martin Conway describes several mountain ascents, boat expeditions in the ice fjord, voyages to the North -East-Land, the Seven Islands, expeditions to Hinloopen Strait and Wiches Land, and into most of the Fjords of Spitsbergen, and of an almost complete circumnavigation of the main Island. This journey led the men to areas not touches by man before.
Spitsbergen was discovered by the Dutchmen Barendszoon and Heemskerk on the 17th of June 1596. They were at the time sailing northwards to rind a way over the Pole from Holland to China. In 1607 the same coast was revisited and further explored by the English navigator Hudson, sailing with a purpose similar to that of Barendsz ; but Hudson observed the prevalence of whales, walruses, and other valuable animals, and fisheries were immediately established by Englishmen in consequence. During the first quarter of the seventeenth century the Spitsbergen waters became the scene of much international rivalry, the English attempting to annex the land and secure a monopoly of the fisheries, whilst foreign ” interlopers ” of various nationalities successfully resisted their pretensions.
Svalbard is today Norwegian territory and Spitsbergen is the only permanently inhabited island there. Download The First Crossing of Spitsbergen here as a free, Public Domain PDF e-book (371 pages/24 MB):
Free Public Domain PDF e-books about adventurers, explorers, sailors and mountaineers from all over the world – and exciting novels of adventure. Be inspired and learn how the world was discovered.
