Book: My Life as an Explorer

Overview
Roald Amundsen’s 1927 memoir surveys three decades of polar endeavor with a brisk, matter-of-fact voice that favors method over mystique. He sketches a life organized around a single idea: that exploration is a craft governed by planning, discipline, and the humility to learn from those who already thrive in extreme environments. From the Antarctic pack ice to the skies over the Arctic Ocean, he threads together voyages by ship, sledge, and airship, while addressing the money problems, rivalries, and press controversies that shadowed each venture.

First Lessons in Ice
Amundsen’s apprenticeship begins aboard the Belgian Antarctic Expedition (1897–99) under Adrien de Gerlache. Trapped in polar night, the crew endured illness and despondency; survival demanded strict routines and a practical approach to diet, light, and hygiene. The experience convinced Amundsen that polar work hinges less on heroics than on systems that conserve human strength, a conviction that would guide every later decision.

Northwest Passage and Inuit Knowledge
As leader of the small vessel Gjøa (1903–06), he accomplished the first navigation of the Northwest Passage. The expedition’s true harvest, he insists, came ashore at King William Island, where he and his men learned from the Netsilik Inuit, dog handling, clothing, sledging, and calm economy of movement. He also carried out magnetic observations that refined knowledge of the North Magnetic Pole’s position. The Passage was won by light equipment, patience, and deference to local mastery, not by brute force.

The South Pole
His most famous chapter recounts the 1910–12 Antarctic expedition that reached the South Pole ahead of Robert Falcon Scott. He explains the controversial decision to pivot from a planned North Pole attempt to a southern goal, arguing necessity and timing. Pages dwell on depot-laying, the choice of dogs and skis, the selection of the Axel Heiberg Glacier route, and the rigorous trimming of loads and routines. On 14 December 1911, Amundsen, Bjaaland, Hanssen, Hassel, and Wisting stood at 90°S, left records and a letter for Scott, and returned without loss. The narrative is cool rather than exultant: success is presented as the predictable result of preparation.

Across the Arctic with Maud
After the pole, ambition shifted to the Arctic Ocean’s drift. With the ship Maud (1918–25), he sought to ride the pack from Siberia across the pole, a plan inspired by Nansen’s Fram drift. Ice, currents, and logistics thwarted the clean arc he imagined, and the years became a hard ledger of winters, scientific observations, and financial strain. He is frank about debt, the seizure of Maud in the United States, and the fatigue of managing men, ships, and creditors while trying to conduct science.

Aviation: New Means, Old Principles
The final chapters turn to the air. In 1925, flying boats N‑24 and N‑25 were forced down on broken ice north of Spitsbergen; weeks of labor carving a runway from hummocks ended in a perilous escape in a single overloaded aircraft. In 1926, the airship Norge, financed with Lincoln Ellsworth and built by Umberto Nobile, flew from Spitsbergen over the North Pole to Alaska. Amundsen defends the priority and international character of the achievement, while minimizing theatrics. Air, like ice, rewards forethought; engines and fabric do not replace prudence, rations, or respect for weather.

Leadership, Credibility, and Creed
Threaded through the voyages is a terse philosophy: plan to the last detail, travel light, honor experience wherever found, and distrust luck. He is unapologetic about dismissing those who disrupt discipline and blunt about errors, his own and others’. He challenges sensational claims and insists on records that can be checked. Where critics saw coldness, he offers a consistent ethic of responsibility toward his men and the work.

Legacy on the Page
The memoir closes on a man still in motion, newly armed with wings but governed by the same polar logic learned in the dark aboard Belgica. Its legacy lies less in tall tales than in a manual spirit: a demonstration that great distances yield to careful means, and that true discovery depends on learning, testing, and the courage to do only what can be done well.