Neither Amundsen Nor Scott: Who Was Really First to the South Pole?

Who was first to the South Pole? Does the question seem banal? Far from it. Of his own accomplishment, Roald Amundsen stated unequivocally: “we were not standing on the absolute spot”. Captain Robert Scott thought he had reached the Pole, but was misled by a Norwegian marker intended for another purpose. If it wasn’t Amundsen or Scott, just who was first? This book introduces the candidates, examines their credentials, and reveals who can really claim primacy.

It is an absorbing journey, full of twists and turns. It runs from the creation of Antarctica 23 million years ago, takes in humanity’s first imaginings of and encounters with the continent, and passes onwards through the first, tentative explorations to meet the originals who reached, then penetrated, its heart.

Unpicking Amundsen’s and Scott’s own words unravels their complex interactions with each other and their puzzling actions near the Pole. The fascination of the post-Scott era resides in the largely unknown and often absurd efforts to explore Antarctica and make territorial claims there. Across the years, over-ripe individual and national egos sought it as a stage. The culminating struggle to establish a permanent South Pole base in the 1950s is a classic of collective human endeavour overcoming enormous odds. Finally, there is the drama of the ultimate goal achieved.

And throughout, indifferent to humanity, is the austere beauty and ever life-threatening implacability of the Antarctic and the high plateau that guards its Pole.