The Norwegian coastguard ship KV Svalbard on Wednesday carried out what the Arctic sailors Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen never managed – namely to sail to the North Pole.
The ship reached 90 degrees north at 9.32 on Wednesday morning, writes Aftenposten.
KV Svalbard is on assignment from the Nansen Center in Bergen, and the assignment consists, among other things, of placing measuring instruments on the seabed that will observe temperatures and the climate in the Arctic sea, according to TV 2.
“It went much faster than we had anticipated. We thought we were going to meet thicker ice along the way and were aware that we might not have reached it,” says Chief Ottar Haugen of the Coast Guard to the channel.
“For us in the Coast Guard, this is a milestone and a confirmation that we have a vessel that can operate up here, to the north pole and across the Arctic,” he says.
KV Svalbard was launched in 2001. The vessel is 103 meters long, 19 meters wide and weighs 6,375 tonnes.
Nansen set his course north in 1893 in the polar ship Fram, but never got further north than 86 degrees north. Amundsen attempted to reach the North Pole on the Maud Expedition in 1918, but never reached the goal of drifting across the North Pole. In 1926, however, he flew over the pole point on the airship Norway.
© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today
