Telling a story that connects to the Odyssey and to a character like Ulysses is a daunting task. I will try to do so, treading carefully. There have been many travelers into the unknown, especially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. After Christopher Columbus, who sailed westward to “seek the East,” we must mention Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese sailor who, in the service of the Spanish crown, navigated toward the Moluccas, finding a passage south of the American continent — the strait that now bears his name. His boldness cost him his life.
But instead, I would like to speak about a lesser-known adventurer: “I demolish the bridges behind me, so there is no choice but to go forward.” The Norwegian, with the impossible name Fridtjof Nansen, on August 15, 1888, at less than eighteen years of age, embarked with five companions on an unprecedented enterprise: the crossing of Greenland on skis. They departed from Umivik and, on October 12 of the same year, reached Godthåb on the western coast, covering about 560 kilometers in just under two months, reaching altitudes of over three thousand meters along the way. Not bad for a first adventure!
After that, Nansen accomplished many other feats, one of which deserves particular mention. After a journey of about three years, he reached the vicinity of the North Pole, setting foot in places where no human had ever been before. He truly led an extraordinary life. After a period as a scholar, during which he put his great abilities at the service of science, Fridtjof became a diplomat. Before long, he rose to the position of High Commissioner of the League of Nations. He put his talent at the service of thousands of stateless people who, following World War I, had lost their citizenship. They could not emigrate and had no rights in the new nations that had been formed — a surreal situation.
He created the Nansen Passport, a document that granted a new identity to these outcasts and allowed them to emigrate wherever possible. Here we see the man’s great pragmatism, his direct pursuit of his goal — which was also the good of others. Tirelessly, he addressed various crises of his time (and the world never lacks them): the famine in the Soviet Union, the Greco-Turkish war, and the Armenian genocide (1915–1923) — a Gaza of that era.
This gentleman received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922, and never was an award more deserved (though a few years later it was also given to a certain Obama, a serial bomber, and to Dario Fo and Bob Dylan). He died in 1930 at the age of sixty-eight. Neither the League of Nations nor, in my opinion, the United Nations ever had a better man. I like to imagine him among the Elysian Fields, among the righteous!
I wonder how men of such stature can live in total oblivion and not be remembered in schools as positive examples to follow. Many rest in cemeteries — or sometimes lost at sea, or who knows where — without even history taking notice of them or holding them up as examples. They don’t capture public attention; it’s easier to talk about rogues disguised as masters!
This article also comes from Greek Myths and Beyond by Nino Salzone, alias Cenide.
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