The Voyage of the Vega Round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II

The first successful navigation of the Northeast Passage. That's what Nordenskiöld achieved with the Vega expedition of 1878-1880, a voyage that had eluded explorers for four centuries. This is the Arctic explorer's own account of that triumph: two volumes chronicling the relentless ice, the brutal cold, the near-disasters and ultimate vindication of a dream held by generations before him. The narrative moves through uncharted waters along the northern coasts of Asia and Europe, where Nordenskiöld documents everything: the indigenous peoples encountered, the wildlife, the geography, the scientific observations that made this about far more than mere conquest. He writes of previous failed expeditions, of the Swedish Crown's patronage, of the eighteen men who sailed into uncertainty and returned as heroes who had cracked open a passage no ship had ever completed. This is adventure as it was originally recorded, in the language of the men who lived it. For readers drawn to polar exploration, to the history of human endurance, or to the birth of our modern understanding of the Arctic.