Fram Museum

The Fram is the strongest wooden ship ever built, and the only vessel in history to have sailed both furthest north and furthest south of any ship on earth. She was designed by Colin Archer for one specific, insane purpose: to be frozen into Arctic pack ice and survive. The hull's genius was in its shape — rounded like an egg so that pressing ice would lift the ship up rather than crush it. Hand-picked oak ribs were laid only five centimeters apart, double-bolted, with an outer sheathing of greenheart wood that could be torn away by ice without damaging the structure underneath.

Three legendary expeditions used this ship. Fridtjof Nansen deliberately froze her into Arctic ice in 1893 and drifted for three years to prove the existence of a trans-polar current. Otto Sverdrup took her to Arctic Canada from 1898 to 1902, mapping what is now Nunavut. Then Roald Amundsen retrofitted her with a Swedish diesel engine — a first for polar exploration — and sailed her to Antarctica in 1910. He beat Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole by thirty-four days. The Fram carried Amundsen's team to the edge of the ice, and the rest was dog sleds and willpower.

By 1929 the ship was rotting and nearly lost forever. Otto Sverdrup personally campaigned to save her, and whaling magnate Lars Christensen funded the restoration. Getting the Fram into the museum building took over two months — a small electric motor pulled her at one centimeter per minute. The museum opened on May 20, 1936.

You can board the Fram and walk her decks. Stand where Nansen stood in Arctic darkness and where Amundsen planned his race to the Pole. Few museum objects anywhere in the world have as much concentrated history in their timbers.