Fridtjof Nansen
Fridtjof Nansen is one of those historical figures I would not not only want to meet, but totally have my fangirl way with. This guy was the last of the Vikings--if he'd been leading the Norse at Stamford Bridge instead of Harald Hardraada, William the Bastard woulda been a fat wannabe sack of fail in history footnotes.
It's nice to see other people share my squee about him--thanks to sasha_khan, I came across the remarkable site Badass of the Week, put together by Ben Thompson (whom I suspect is not quite sane), which tears off its shirt and rants in barechested, erect-nippled uber-admiration of the guy.
Here's an excerpt:
Fridtjof Nansen was a tough-as-nails Norwegian psychopath with an impossible-to-spell first name and an unstoppable desire to constantly freeze his balls off and risk his life in the name of science and kickassery. Born in 1861 in a town near Oslo, as a teenager this super-brilliant, ultra-hardcore crazy person constantly went outside into the frostbite-inducing snow-covered wilderness Bear Grylls-style to test himself against the most volatile bullshit Mother Nature could furiously dump on him. Spending days and weeks at a time alone in the wild with just his faithful dog, a sharp knife, and his badass 'stache to keep him company, this guy quickly forged himself into a high-endurance asskicker.
See? Thompson understands.
And my beloved Fram gets a shoutout too....
It's nice to see other people share my squee about him--thanks to sasha_khan, I came across the remarkable site Badass of the Week, put together by Ben Thompson (whom I suspect is not quite sane), which tears off its shirt and rants in barechested, erect-nippled uber-admiration of the guy.
Here's an excerpt:
Fridtjof Nansen was a tough-as-nails Norwegian psychopath with an impossible-to-spell first name and an unstoppable desire to constantly freeze his balls off and risk his life in the name of science and kickassery. Born in 1861 in a town near Oslo, as a teenager this super-brilliant, ultra-hardcore crazy person constantly went outside into the frostbite-inducing snow-covered wilderness Bear Grylls-style to test himself against the most volatile bullshit Mother Nature could furiously dump on him. Spending days and weeks at a time alone in the wild with just his faithful dog, a sharp knife, and his badass 'stache to keep him company, this guy quickly forged himself into a high-endurance asskicker.
See? Thompson understands.
And my beloved Fram gets a shoutout too....