Fram Strait Drift

The Fram Strait drift was Fridtjof Nansen’s 1893 to 1896 expedition that deliberately froze the purpose-built ship Fram into the Arctic pack ice to test his theory that the polar drift carried ice from Siberia across the Arctic Ocean and out between Greenland and Svalbard. Fram entered the ice off the New Siberian Islands in September 1893 and drifted with it for nearly three years. Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen left the ship in March 1895 to sledge toward the North Pole, reaching 86 degrees 14 minutes North, a record then.