Like a modern Viking, 32-year-old Nansen set sail from Norway in 1893 to reach the North Pole. Experts warned him that his voyage was tantamount to suicide. Compact and nimble, his ship the Fram was equiped with the latest tools to gather scientific data. As yet untested, the ship was specially built to withstand the relentless pressure of the polar ice cap. To complete the final leg, Nansen was to strike out into the polar desert by sledge.

Nansen became an overnight sensation when - having been given up for dead - he emerged three years later, alive. His single-minded struggle against snow drifts, ice floes, polar bears, scurvy, gnawing hunger and the loneliness of the polar night would inspire young explorers such as Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen a generation later to make new conquests. Even Sigmund Freud was enthused.

Today, Nansen's adventure journal is a rare, heroic window on an untamed Arctic world still untouched by man and rising temperatures.