Roald Amundsen

Hello! My name is Roald Amundsen, and I was an explorer. I was born in a beautiful country called Norway on July 16th, 1872. Even as a little boy, I dreamed of adventure. While other kids might have wanted to be firefighters or doctors, I wanted to explore the coldest, iciest, most unknown parts of the world. The snow and ice called to me, and I knew I had to answer!

For hundreds of years, sailors dreamed of finding a secret path through the icy waters of the Arctic, called the Northwest Passage. No one had ever made it all the way through. In 1903, I decided to try. With a small crew on my little ship, the Gjøa, we set off. It was a long and dangerous journey. We had to be very careful to avoid getting trapped by the giant sheets of ice. After three whole years, in 1906, we did it! We were the first people to ever sail the entire Northwest Passage. It was my first big adventure, and it made me want to explore even more.

My next big dream was to be the first person to reach the North Pole. But just as I was getting ready, I heard someone else had already made it there. I was disappointed, but then I had a new, even bigger idea: I would go to the South Pole instead! No one had ever been there, either. It turned into a race! A brave British explorer named Robert Falcon Scott was also trying to get there at the same time. He used ponies to pull his supplies, but I chose to use strong sled dogs. I had learned from the Inuit people in the Arctic that dogs were the best for traveling over snow and ice. The race was on to reach the bottom of the world.

My team and I traveled across the huge, white continent of Antarctica. The sled dogs were amazing, and our hard work paid off. On December 14th, 1911, we stood at the very bottom of the Earth. We had reached the South Pole! We were the first humans to ever stand in that spot. To show we had been there, we proudly planted the flag of my country, Norway, in the snow. It was one of the happiest days of my life.

I never stopped exploring. In 1926, I even flew over the North Pole in an airship. My life was full of incredible adventures. In 1928, I heard that another explorer was lost in the Arctic, and I went on a mission to try and rescue him. My plane disappeared during the search, and I was never seen again. I lived to be 55 years old. Today, people remember me as a careful planner and a brave explorer who went to places no one had ever seen before.