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NANSEN, Fridtjof, Norwegian scientist and High Commissioner for Refugees of the
League of Nations 1921-1930, was born 10 October 1861 in Store Frøen, Norway, and
passed away 13 May 1930 in Lysaker, Norway. He was the son of Baldur Nansen,
lawyer, and Baroness Adelaide Wedel Jarlsberg. On 6 September 1889 he married Eva
Helene Sars, classical singer. They had two daughters and three sons. After Sars’ death
on 9 December 1907 he married Sigrun Sandberg, who had divorced from Gerhard
Munthe, on 17 January 1919.

Source: UNOG Library, League of Nations Archives

On film: www.flyktninghjelpen.no/?did=9106266

Nansen was raised in a simple and frugal environment in Store Frøen, north of the Norwegian
capital Christiana (now Oslo). His father was a lawyer with ambitions for public office and
high moral principles, and his mother was an athletic woman. His parents attached great
importance to outdoor activities such as hunting, fishing and skiing. Nansen became an
experienced skier and prizewinning skater. His parents also deemed moral qualities, such as
integrity, independence and courage, to be essential components of their children’s education.
When Nansen’s mother passed away unexpectedly in 1877, the father and his two sons moved
to Christiana. In 1880 Nansen passed the entrance exam for the University of Christiana and
decided to study zoology, hoping to spend much time outside. While still a student he
participated in a naval expedition off the east coast of Greenland to study Arctic zoology first
hand, which marked the beginning of his career as an explorer. During a five-month voyage
in 1882 he investigated the formation of sea ice and the location of warm Gulf Stream water
underneath the colder surface. When the ship got trapped in the ice, Nansen became interested
in exploring Greenland’s icecap. After the trip Nansen did not return to university, but was
appointed as curator in the zoological department of the Bergen Museum. There he conducted
research on the nervous systems of lower vertebrates, an unexplored field of neuroanatomy.
This constituted the first step of what would become his doctoral dissertation, completed in
1888, which provided a contribution to modern theories of the nervous system. He used a six-
month sabbatical in 1886 to visit several important laboratories in Europe. After the
submission of his thesis, he left for an expedition across the Greenland icecap. Nansen had
prepared the trip well and proposed to cross Greenland from the uninhabited east to the
inhabited west, hence the reverse direction of two previous expeditions carried out by others
in 1883 and 1886. The trip was financed through fundraising, as public funding was denied

 
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given the risks involved. The team of six accomplished the extremely difficult crossing in 49
days and collected important meteorological and geographical information about the
unexplored interior. The group remained another seven months in Greenland and returned to
Copenhagen in May 1889, where a huge crowd received the men as national heroes. The
achievement contributed to the establishment of the Norwegian Geographical Society that
year. Nansen became curator at the Zootomical Institute of the University of Christiana and
wrote his account of the expedition. In June he visited London at the invitation of the Royal
Geographical Society and met with politicians such as Arthur James Balfour and George
Curzon. That summer Nansen announced his engagement to Eva Sars, the daughter of a
zoology professor, whom he had met at a skiing resort a few years before and they married
one month later.
Out of this trip to the icecap Nansen published two books: The First Crossing of
Greenland (London 1891) and Eskimo Life (London 1894) and prepared another expedition.
His plan was to introduce a specially designed ship in the frozen Siberian sea, with the belief
that the east-west current would carry the ship into the North Pole. Although various experts
argued against his plan, Nansen received financial support from the Norwegian parliament
and private donations. In 1893 the polar vessel Fram began its drift in the ice, also serving as
a laboratory for scientific observations, but its slow progress resulted in the conclusion that
the ship would not cross the North Pole. Nansen then decided to prepare a dog sled journey to
the pole. In March 1895 Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen started their trip and went farther
north than anyone else before. After an adventurous return, in which they had to camp for the
winter and then met the British explorer Frederick Jackson by accident, they returned to
Christiana in September 1896. They were again celebrated as national heroes. In the
meantime the Fram had been sighted north and west of Spitsbergen, as Nansen had predicted
(although it had not passed over the pole). Nansen was appointed as professor of zoology at
the Royal Frederick University in Oslo in 1897 and eventually published six edited volumes
based on the observations made during the Fram expedition. He became director of the
International Laboratory for North Sea Research in 1900 and was a co-founder of ICES, the
International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, established in 1902.
The year 1905 saw the beginning of Nansen’s involvement in politics, when he
contributed to Norway’s independence from the union with Sweden. Because of his
newspaper articles in favour of separation and contacts in the country since 1889, Nansen was
sent to London as an unofficial diplomat. He presented Norway’s legal case for a separate
consular service in an article in The Times, in interviews and in the book Norway and the
Union with Sweden (London 1905), published under his name, with contributions by the likes
of Eric Colban of the Foreign Ministry. Two referendums in Norway resulted in votes for
separation and a monarchy. The government then sent Nansen on a secret mission to persuade
the prince of Denmark to accept the Norwegian crown. His success in this endeavour led to
his appointment as ambassador of the newly created Norwegian state to the United Kingdom
in 1906. Using his contacts he contributed to the signing of the Integrity Treaty by the major
European powers in November 1907, which guaranteed Norway’s international position.
Because his wife was ill with pneumonia, Nansen returned to the family home Polhøgda
(Polar Heights) in the Lysaker district, where they had lived since 1902. By the time he
arrived she had already passed away. The government later persuaded him to return to
London, but, after a visit of the British King to Norway in April 1908, Nansen retired from
the diplomatic service and became professor of oceanography in Oslo. After the outbreak of
the First World War in 1914 Norway declared its neutrality and Nansen became president of
the Norwegian Union of Defence. When shortages of food became pressing as a result of
trade restrictions imposed by the United States in 1917, Nansen headed an official Norwegian
delegation to Washington DC that sought the relaxation of the allied blockade on food

 
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provisions. He negotiated an agreement and signed it himself, when the government hesitated
to accept the requested introduction of a rationing system.
During the 1918 Paris Peace Conference Nansen was an observer and lobbied for the
recognition of the rights of small states. He became the president of the League of Nations
Society in Norway and advocated Norway’s membership in the League of Nations
(effectuated in 1920). At the first session of the League’s Assembly, Nansen acted as one of
the three Norwegian delegates. He retained this position until his death and received a
government salary that would sustain him throughout his life. The architects of the new
institution did not expect to deal with humanitarianism (which was not covered by the
League’s Covenant), nor did they foresee that postwar health, food and social emergencies
would be so dire and massive. Through a joint initiative of League Secretary-General Eric
Drummond and Secretariat member Philip Noel-Baker in the spring of 1920 Nansen was
asked to set up relief plans for prisoners of war and to expedite the repatriation of two groups,
Russians still in Germany and prisoners of war from the Central Powers in Siberia. He had to
learn about, coordinate and encourage the work already accomplished on their behalf by
governments and organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
and to regularly report to the Council. During the following months Nansen, supported by the
ICRC, helped to organize repatriation plans for approximately 428,000 prisoners of war from
26 different nationalities, of whom 407,000 were repatriated through the Baltic Sea and
railroads, 12,000 via the Black Sea and 9,600 through Vladivostok. The repatriation plans
were made possible thanks to his coordination of the work of various organizations providing
relief to prisoners of war, mediation among ex-enemy countries and a complex financial
scheme, which Nansen helped set up and which was framed within larger projects of postwar
national reconstruction. In July Nansen visited Moscow, where he met with Georgy
Chicherin, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and Lev Kamenev, chairman of the
Moscow Soviet and a member of the party’s five-man ruling Politburo. In a highly ideological
context that characterized the divide between bolshevism and the League of Nations (a league
of ‘capitalist’ states), Nansen was received in Moscow on the basis of his scientific success,
rather than as a League representative. This and later contacts with Bolshevik, then Soviet,
authorities led to accusations (from national delegations to the League and the Russian
community abroad who expressed fears about involuntary repatriation) that he was politically
naïve, easily manipulated and even pro-Bolshevik. When reporting to the Assembly in
November that 200,000 people had returned to their homes, Nansen stated that he had never
been brought into touch with such suffering. Contrary to other humanitarians, who came from
the missionary tradition or the army, or had had scientific training in medicine or engineering,
Nansen was a neophyte to humanitarianism.
While still involved in repatriation plans for prisoners of war, and despite some
reluctance from Nansen himself who wished to reintegrate into academia, Nansen obtained
the title of High Commissioner for Refugees in 1921. The appointment of a High
Commissioner, rather than the creation of a body, paralleled the member states’ waning
interest in displaced persons and their growing financial and political disengagement. On 27
June the League’s Council approved his mandate for one year (and later renewed it on a
yearly basis). He was asked to determine the legal status of Russian refugees, to repatriate
them or to allow them to find employment in countries of asylum, and to coordinate the
efforts already undertaken on their behalf by humanitarian organizations. The office would
only address displaced needy Russians and would have to end as soon as possible, while no
direct relief would be provided or funded. Nansen began work on 1 September. Almost
contemporaneously, through an ad hoc conference convened by the ICRC in August 1921, he
was appointed High Commissioner of the Geneva Conference for the fight against famine in
Russia. This task was carried out outside the framework of the League, whose member states

 
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refused to take over the responsibility. Nansen was the protagonist of the humanitarian film
The Russian Famine (Nansen Film) (1922), directed by G.H. Mewes for the Swedish Red
Cross. Nansen organized European relief efforts for famine-stricken regions of the Volga
through the summer of 1923. For this task he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922,
while attending the conference of Lausanne. He donated the prize money to international
relief efforts and in Oslo delivered a speech on ‘The Suffering People of Europe’. However,
his major task as High Commissioner of the League remained the refugee question. He
proved a centralizing element of governmental and private actions on behalf of refugees by
collecting data, converging initiatives, lobbying and negotiating. As such his position
embodied humanitarian practises that set the basis for the later international refugee
architecture, with international conferences being privileged spaces of negotiation,
information sharing and decision making for both governments and international
organizations. Upon the suggestion of the League’s Secretariat and non-governmental
organizations directly engaged with the relief of refugees, Nansen created the Advisory
Committee for Private Organizations in September 1921 and gave it the task of consulting
with the League’s High Commissioner on matters of common interest. He also convened
general conferences in August and September 1921. A third one, in July 1922, established a
document of identification, which allowed Russian refugees to cross-border legally. At the
same time this document became known as ‘Nansen passport’ and fostered the coordination
of governmental efforts, and was extended to Armenian refugees in May 1924. In May 1926
the Nansen passport was modified according to problems raised by its implementation
nationally, due to differences in fees and lack of clarity regarding the right to return to the
country that had issued it. As a result Russian and Armenian refugees were also legally
defined. The Nansen passport was extended to Assyrians, Assyro-Chaldean and Turkish
refugees in 1928 and eventually recognized by 52 governments.
The end of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), brought about with the defeat of the
Greek army by the Turks and the fire of Smyrna that destroyed much of the city in September
1922, occurred while the Russian refugee question was still far from being settled. On 19
September the League’s Assembly authorized Nansen to use the services of the ‘Russian
refugee organization’ to provide assistance for the relief of refugees from the Near East and to
administer the money collected for this purpose. The Greek government gave Nansen ‘full
powers’ to proceed with negotiations for the exchange of prisoners of war and detained
civilians between Greece and Turkey. In addition, thanks to the backing of the Allied High
Commissioners, who had administered the city of Constantinople after the General Armistice
of November 1918, he negotiated the terms of the reciprocal exchange of populations. The
question then became part of the peace negotiations in Lausanne. Nansen and the leader of the
Greek delegation, Eleftherios Venizelos, concurred on the necessity of making an exchange of
populations between Greece and Turkey compulsory. Nansen left on an investigative trip to
the Near East, accompanied by Noel-Baker and Arthur Salter, head of the League of Nations’
Financial Section. In October, while in Athens, he proposed to head all foreign and national
organizations under a centralized coordination committee. The latter did not become
operational as such, but turned out to be a clearing-house for information through the
publication of an Information Bulletin. In November Nansen and his staff established a
mission in Western Thrace, which relieved and resettled 10,000 refugees. In September 1923
Nansen presented this settlement to the League’s Assembly as a model that could be
reproduced a number of times in the country. He also argued in favour of an international loan
to Greece and wanted the Refugee Settlement Commission, which worked within the
framework of the League, to be put under his control. This did not occur and this Commission
maintained a large degree of autonomy.

 
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In August 1923 Gabriel Noradounghian, president of the Armenian National
Delegation, addressed two letters to the League’s Council, reporting the conditions of post-
genocide Armenians and asking for the extension of Nansen’s mandate to this group. Nansen
formulated two plans for the settlement of Armenian refugees to Soviet Armenia and Syria.
On 25 September 1924 the Council passed a resolution asking the High Commissioner and
the International Labour Organization (ILO) to make a formal enquiry into the possibilities of
creating an Armenian settlement plan in the Caucasus. Two days later Nansen convened a
conference in Geneva where it was stated that 300,000 Russian and 200,000 Armenian
refugees still needed to be settled. Although repatriation was considered to be the best
solution, the opposition of Soviet and Turkish authorities made it almost impossible. Also
fighting against the unwillingness of some within the League of Nations’ circles to end its
involvement in the refugee question, Nansen held private negotiations with ILO Director
Albert Thomas in the spring of 1924, because Nansen believed that employment was central
to the solution of the refugee question. The arrangement between the League and the ILO
came into force on 1 January 1925. While Nansen continued with political negotiations and
issues connected with the Nansen passport, the ILO began to find employment for the
refugees. In line with Nansen’s mandate the ILO would not provide direct relief to refugees
and the organization’s involvement was to be temporary. Nansen visited Armenia and
proposed a settlement scheme with a modest plan for an area where refugees could be settled.
The League created a Commission for the Settlement of Armenian refugees, however this
body did not produce any concrete results and the proposed settlement scheme was
abandoned. When it became evident that the Caucasian settlement scheme could not be
implemented, Nansen gave the green light to settlement plans in Syria and Lebanon. In his
book Armenia and the Near East (London 1928) Nansen expressed reproach for the Western
powers of Europe and the United States that had long and unsuccessfully promised the
creation of a ‘national home’ for the Armenians.
In 1929 the League’s Assembly decided to bring the service of the High
Commissioner under the authority of the Secretary-General and incorporate it into the
Secretariat. In early 1930 Nansen’s physical condition weakened. He returned to Oslo, where
he suffered from influenza and phlebitis and died of a heart attack in his house Polhøgda in
May. This pioneer and innovator in fields such as skiing methods, polar expeditions and
oceanography became the public face of the League of Nations’ humanitarian work, based on
his international reputation, diplomatic skills and genuine (some say heroic) interest in
alleviating the suffering of people in distress. He is mostly remembered as the champion of
Russian and Armenian refugees, then refugees tout court, for the entire decade leading up to
his death. In a lecture given at the University of St. Andrews, where the students had elected
him as (honorary) rector in 1926, Nansen advised them to always go forward, never retreat.
This seems to have been the perspective that he brought to humanitarianism based on his
previous Arctic enterprises. Without completely dismissing this interpretation, revisionist
narratives point out the danger of such over-simplification in examining historical events and
actors. Being at the forefront of humanitarianism fits Nansen’s multi-talented, complex and
narcissistic personality and by the time of his appointment he was already used to and
acquainted with ‘celebrity’. Moreover, a strong and internationally known public face was the
only way to overcome the intermittent interest that the League of Nations and its most
prominent member states showed towards humanitarian matters. In 1931 the League of
Nations honoured him by setting up the Nansen International Office for Refugees. In 1954 the
United Nations established the Nansen Medal, renamed the Nansen Refugee Award, given to
those who have significantly contributed to alleviating the suffering of refugees. In 1968
Sergei Mikaelyen directed a film of Nansen’s life, called Bare et Liv: Historien om Fridtjof
Nansen (Just as Life: The Story of Fridtjof Nansen).

 
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ARCHIVES: Fridtjof Nansen papers in National Library, Oslo, Norway, Ms.fol. 1988, see
www.nb.no/; Refugees Mixed Archival Group (Nansen Fonds), 1919-1947 in League of
Nations Archives, Geneva, Switzerland, see http://biblio-archive.unog.ch/detail.aspx?ID=256;
Fridtjof Nansen correspondence in Philip Noel-Baker’s papers, Churchill Archives Centre,
Cambridge, United Kingdom, see http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR
%2F0014%2FNBKR%209%2F101.
PUBLICATIONS: Farthest North: Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship
‘Fram’, 1893-1896, and of a Fifteen Months’ Sleigh Journey by Dr. Nansen and Lt.
Johansen, 2 volumes, New York 1897; The Norwegian North Polar Expedition, 1893-1896,
London 1900-1906; In Northern Mists: Arctic Exploration in Early Times, New York 1911;
Through Siberia the Land of the Future: Russia & Peace, London 1923; Adventure and Other
Papers, London 1927; Scheme for the Settlement of Armenian Refugees: General Survey and
Principal Documents, Geneva 1927; Brev, Oslo 1961-1971 (5 volumes, edited by S.
Kjaerheim: 1882-1895; 1896-1905; 1906-1918; 1919-1925; 1926-1930); Verker, Oslo 1961
(edited by M. Greve and O. Nansen).
LITERATURE: R.N. Rudmose Brown, ‘Obituary Fridtjof Nansen’, The Geographical
Journal, 76/1, July 1930, 92-95; J.H. Whitehouse (Ed.), Nansen: A Book of Homage, London
1930; K.E. Innes, The Story of Nansen and the League of Nations, London 1931; C.A.
Macartney, Refugees: The Work of the League, London 1931; J. Sørensen and J.B.C.
Watkins, The Saga of Fridtjof Nansen, New York 1932; L.W. Holborn, ‘The League of
Nations and the Refugee Problem’ in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, 203, May 1939, 124-135; A.G. Hall and B. Artzybasheff, Nansen, New York 1940;
R. Ristelhueber, La double aventure de Fridtjof Nansen: Explorateur et philanthrope,
Montreal 1945; F. Wartenweiler, L’aventure d’une vie Fridtjof Nansen, le Viking intrépide,
Geneva 1945; L. Nansen Høyer, Nansen: A Family Portrait by His Daughter, London 1957;
E. Shackleton, Nansen: The Explorer, London 1959; C.A.R. Christensen, Fridtjof Nansen: A
life in the Service of Science and Humanity, Geneva 1961; E.-A. Frick, ‘Fridtjof Nansen’ in
The International Review of the Red Cross, 34/514, 1961, 510-516; P. Vogt (Ed.), Fridtjof
Nansen, Explorer-Scientist-Humanitarian, Oslo 1961; Ph. Noel-Baker, Nansen’s Place in
History, Oslo 1962 (Nansen Memorial Lecture); J.M. Scott, Fridtjof Nansen, Sheridan 1971;
C.M. Skran, ‘Profiles of the First Two High Commissioners’, Journal of Refugees Studies,
1/3-4, 1988, 277-296; T. Greve, Fridtjof Nansen, Lausanne 1989; L.C. Triarhou and M. del
Cerro, ‘The Multifarious Personality of Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930), Early Neuronist’ in The
FASEB Journal, 13/5, 1999, A677; R. Huntford, Nansen, the Explorer as Hero, London
2001; V. Chetail, ‘Fridtjof Nansen and the International Protection of Refugees: An
Introduction’, in Refugee Survey Quarterly, 22/1, April 2003, 1-6 (Special Issue: Fridtjof
Nansen and the International Protection of Refugees); D. Kévonian, Réfugiés et diplomatie
humanitaire: Les acteurs européens et la scène proche-orientale pendant l’entre-deux-
guerres, Paris 2004; C.E. Vogt, ‘Fridtjof Nansen: Peace 1922’ in O. Njølastad (Ed.)
Norwegian Nobel Prize Laureates: From Bjørnson to Kydland, Oslo 2006, 119-153; W.F.
Fuller, ‘Peace Profile: Fridtjof Nansen’, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 20/2,
2008, 239-243; M. Housden, ‘White Russians Crossing the Black Sea: Fridtjof Nansen,
Constantinople and the First Modern Repatriation of Refugees Displaced by Civil Conflict,
1922-1923’, Slavonic and East European Review, 88/3, 2010, 495-524; F. Piana,
‘L’humanitaire d’après-guerre: Prisonniers de guerre et réfugiés russes dans la politique du
Comité International de la Croix Rouge et de la Société des Nations’ in Relations
Internationales, 2012, 151/3, 63-75; F. Piana, Towards the International Refugee Regime:
Humanitarianism in the Wake of the First World War, Geneva 2012 (doctoral thesis); D.
Rodogno, with S. Gauthier and F. Piana, ‘Relief and Reconstruction Programs in Greece,

 
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1922-1925’ in J. Paulmann (Ed.), Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid in the Twentieth Century,
Oxford forthcoming.

Francesca Piana

Version 17 March 2014

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