Roald Amundsen leads the first expedition to reach the South Pole

Story: 1911 C.E.  |  Last updated: December 14, 1911

On 14 December 1911 C.E., five men planted a Norwegian flag at the bottom of the world. They had traveled nearly 1,400 miles on skis and dog sleds across the most hostile terrain on Earth — and they made it back alive. It was one of the most precisely planned, expertly executed feats of exploration in human history.

Key facts

• Amundsen South Pole expedition: Roald Amundsen and four companions — Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting — reached the Geographic South Pole on 14 December 1911 C.E., becoming the first humans confirmed to have stood at that point on Earth.
• Dog sled travel: The team relied on expert handling of sled dogs and advanced skiing technique, covering the roughly 1,400-mile round trip from their base at the Bay of Whales with remarkable efficiency and relatively few casualties among the crew.
• Axel Heiberg Glacier: During the journey, Amundsen’s party discovered and named this previously uncharted glacier, which gave them their ascent route onto the polar plateau — a geographic contribution that extended well beyond the goal of reaching the Pole itself.

Years of preparation behind one moment

Amundsen had spent nearly two decades preparing for something like this. He had served on the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897 C.E., surviving a year trapped in pack ice — a period marked by scurvy, psychological breakdown, and near-starvation among much of the crew. Amundsen responded by studying every aspect of polar survival: diet, clothing, equipment, and the psychology of small groups under extreme stress.

He had also led the first successful navigation of the Northwest Passage between 1903 C.E. and 1906 C.E., a feat that had defeated explorers for centuries. By the time he turned his attention south, he was not a dreamer chasing glory — he was a craftsman who had tested his methods in conditions as punishing as any on Earth.

His Antarctic preparations were equally meticulous. He chose the Bay of Whales as his base, some 60 miles closer to the Pole than the British team’s starting point. He spent months laying supply depots before winter set in. He calibrated food rations down to the calorie. His decision to use sled dogs rather than motorized vehicles or ponies — which the competing British expedition relied on — proved decisive. The dogs were fast, adapted to cold, and in a grim but practical calculation, could feed the team if food ran short.

The secrecy and the stakes

Amundsen’s expedition came with a layer of controversy that has followed his legacy ever since. When he departed Norway in June 1910 C.E., even his own crew believed they were heading to the Arctic. He revealed the true destination — Antarctica — only when the ship reached Madeira in September 1910 C.E. He then sent a telegram to his British rival, Robert Falcon Scott, informing him of the change in plans. The race to the Pole had begun.

Historians have debated Amundsen’s secrecy. His backers and the Norwegian public had funded what they believed was an Arctic expedition. Some contemporaries found the deception unsporting. Others have argued it was simply a recognition that the public, the funders, and even his own crew might have balked had they known the full plan from the start. What is not in dispute is the result: Amundsen’s party reached the Pole on 14 December 1911 C.E. and returned safely. Scott’s party arrived five weeks later and perished on the return journey.

What made it possible

The Amundsen South Pole expedition was not only a triumph of individual courage — it was a synthesis of knowledge drawn from multiple traditions and peoples. The use of sled dogs as a primary means of polar transport was a practice Amundsen learned directly from Inuit peoples of the Arctic, whose generations of accumulated expertise in cold-weather survival he studied and adapted with deep respect. His clothing design — layered, loose-fitting, allowing moisture to escape — was likewise adapted from Indigenous Arctic knowledge rather than from European military or naval tradition.

Norway itself was only six years independent when Amundsen’s expedition set out. For a young nation still defining itself on the world stage, the achievement carried enormous symbolic weight. Skiing, a practice deeply embedded in Norwegian culture for thousands of years, gave his team a crucial advantage over explorers from nations where it was still a novelty.

Lasting impact

The expedition transformed what humans believed was possible in extreme environments. It established a template for logistics-first polar travel — precise calorie planning, expert animal handling, route scouting — that influenced nearly every major polar expedition that followed.

The Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, operated by the United States and named jointly for both rivals, has been continuously staffed since 1956 C.E. It now hosts year-round scientific research into climate, glaciology, astrophysics, and atmospheric science. The polar regions Amundsen helped open to sustained human attention have since become among the most important observatories on Earth for understanding climate change.

His discovery of the Axel Heiberg Glacier also contributed to early mapping of Antarctica’s interior geography — knowledge that later researchers built upon across the twentieth century.

Blindspots and limits

The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, of which this expedition was a defining moment, was an exclusively European enterprise. The Indigenous knowledge systems that made it possible — particularly from Arctic peoples — were adopted without formal credit or compensation, a pattern common to the era. The expedition also left behind equipment, waste, and the remains of sled dogs on a continent that was, and remains, extraordinarily fragile. Modern Antarctic science operates under strict environmental protocols that stand in sharp contrast to the practices of 1911 C.E.

The story of Scott’s death, meanwhile, long overshadowed Amundsen’s achievement in the English-speaking world — a cultural framing that shaped how exploration history was written for decades and whose bias scholars are only now more fully correcting.

Read more

For more on this story, see: Amundsen’s South Pole expedition — Wikipedia

For more from Good News for Humankind, see:

• Uganda brings rhinos back to Kidepo Valley
• Ghana establishes a marine protected area at Cape Three Points
• The Good News for Humankind archive on Norway

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