In this grand and astonishing tale, Alec Wilkinson brings us
the story of S. A. Andrée, the visionary Swedish aeronaut
who, in 1897, during the great age of Arctic endeavor, left
to discover the North Pole by flying to it in a hydrogen
balloon. Called by a British military officer “the most
original and remarkable attempt ever made in Arctic
exploration,” Andrée’s expedition was followed by nearly the
entire world, and it made him an international legend.
The Ice Balloon begins in the late nineteenth century, when
nations, compelled by vanity, commerce, and science,
competed with one another for the greatest discoveries, and
newspapers covered every journey. Wilkinson describes how in
Andrée several contemporary themes intersected. He was the
first modern explorer—the first to depart for the Arctic
unencumbered by notions of the Romantic age, and the first
to be equipped with the newest technologies. No explorer had
ever left with more uncertainty regarding his fate, since
none had ever flown over the horizon and into the forbidding
region of ice.
In addition to portraying the period, The Ice Balloon gives
us a brief history of the exploration of the northern polar
regions, both myth and fact, including detailed versions of
the two record-setting expeditions just prior to
Andrée’s—one led by U.S. Army lieutenant Adolphus Greely
from Ellesmere Island; the other by Fridtjof Nansen, the
Norwegian explorer who initially sought to reach the pole by
embedding his ship in the pack ice and drifting toward it
with the current.
Woven throughout is Andrée’s own history, and how he came by
his brave and singular idea. We also get to know Andrée’s
family, the woman who loves him, and the two men who
accompany him—Nils Strindberg, a cousin of the famous
playwright, with a tender love affair of his own, and Knut
Fraenkel, a willing and hearty young man.
Andrée’s flight and the journey, based on the expedition’s
diaries and photographs, dramatically recovered thirty-three
years after the balloon came down, along with Wilkinson’s
research, provide a book filled with suspense and adventure,
a haunting story of high ambition and courage, made tangible
with the detail, beauty, and devastating conditions of
traveling and dwelling in “the realm of Death,” as one
Arctic explorer put it.
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