Helmer Hanssen

This article is about the Norwegian polar explorer. For the research ship named after him, see Helmer Hanssen (ship) .

Helmer Hanssen

Amundsen, Hanssen, Hassel and Wisting at the South Pole. Photographer: Bjaaland

Helmer Julius Hanssen (born September 24, 1870 in Bjørnskinn , today part of the Andøy municipality , † August 2, 1956 in Tromsø ) was a Norwegian polar explorer . He accompanied Roald Amundsen on several expeditions.

Life

Helmer Hanssen grew up on his father's farm in Bjørnskinn. Up to the age of 24 he helped his father in agriculture and worked seasonally in fishing . In 1894 he hired a whaler who hunted minke and white whales in the waters between Jan Mayen and Spitzbergen . In 1896 he worked as a seal hitter . In March 1897 he passed his tax man examination in Kristiansund . Then he went on board the Laura to Novaya Zemlya . In the same year Hanssen married and settled in Tromsø with his wife. He found a job with Vesteraalens Dampskibsselskab and sailed the Norwegian coastal waters and the Arctic Ocean. In the summer of 1898 he chartered the Ellida for seal hunting in Spitsbergen and was in command of a ship for the first time. In 1901 he left his previous employer and hired the Leander , with which he went to England , the Black Sea and Hamburg .

From 1903 to 1906, Helmer Hanssen, who has since become an experienced ice pilot, took part as second officer in Roald Amundsen's successful voyage through the Northwest Passage on board the Gjøa . During the expedition's almost two-year stay in a natural harbor on the south-east coast of King William Island , he learned how to lead sled dogs from the Inuit .

In 1910 he set out with Amundsen to reach the South Pole , this time he drove as an experienced dog handler . He was also responsible for navigation and carried the guide compass with him on his sled. On December 14, 1911, he was the first person to reach the South Pole together with Roald Amundsen, Olav Bjaaland , Oscar Wisting and Sverre Hassel . It is likely that Hanssen passed the mathematical point with an accuracy of about 200 meters during the stay at the South Pole, which is very precise for the navigational possibilities of the expedition.

In 1919 Hanssen took part in Roald Amundsen's expedition through the Northeast Passage as captain of the Maud . George Binney hired him in 1924 for the Oxford University Arctic Expedition to Northwest Spitsbergen. In 1926 Hanssen accompanied a UFA film crew to Spitsbergen and Northeast Greenland . The film Milak, the Greenland Hunter, was directed by Bernhard Villinger and with Sepp Allgeier at the camera . Two years later, Hanssen became a ship inspector in Tromsø. In 1936 he published his autobiography The Journeys of a Modern Viking .

For his extraordinary seamanship on Roald Amundsen's expeditions in the north and south of the world, he was decorated as a knight of the second class with the Order of Saint Olav . Roald Amundsen named Mount Hanssen in Antarctica after him.

Fonts

• The journeys of a modern Viking . Rutledge, London 1936
• The hard way . Brockhaus, Wiesbaden 1955

Web links

• Susan Barr: Helmer Hanssen . In: Norsk biografisk leksikon
• Hanssen, Helmer Julius (1870–1956) , biographical information on the Frammuseum homepage (English)
• Helmer Hanssen in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Caroline M. Pond: Charles Elton's Accounts of Expeditions from Oxford to the Arctic in the 1920s (PDF; 409 kB). In: Arctic . Volume 68, No. 2, 2015, pp. 273-279 (English).