Posted by Peter Roche on 01/17/00 from 212.49.242.229:
In Reply to: Re: Nansen "Furthest North" pb/Why not Scott etc in WH? posted by alan truelove on January 17, 2000 at 17:08:16:
Alan, just in case your AR Autobiography has taken an extended Winter Holiday here's the text, circa 1921;
"I had several meetings with Nansen, a hero since my childhood. I spent an afternoon sitting with him on the shore of the Gulf of Riga being smilingly scolded for swimming much too far out to sea. He was then and for years afterwards doing much more than any other man to mitigate for thousands upon thousands the miseries caused by the political upheavals of those times. I shall always see him as I saw him that day, the great, blond Norseman sitting under the tall pines which grow to the very edge of that glittering tideless sea, the most civilised person of his generation, unmoved by party bitterness of any kind, imperturbably doing what he knew was right in spite of the vicious attacks that came at him from all sides. Nansen knew the Collingwoods (through the Viking Club) so we also talked of the Skald and my dear aunt".