for the North Pole in the Fram, a ship specially designed to be frozen into the polar ice cap, withstand its crushing pressures and drift to the North Pole as a scientific experiment to prove that the polar cap was a sheet of ice floating on the oceans. Experts said that such a mission was tantamount to suicide. His disappearance for three years created such a media sensation that when he was found paddling back to civilisation dressed in walrus skin his stirring first-person account of the expedition's historic achievements became an instant international bestseller, the first of its kind!