115 years after the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition that took Roald Amundsen and his four companions to the South Pole in 1911, the granddaughter of Ludvig Hansen gave his personal diary from the South Pole Expedition and the gold pocket watch to the Fram Museum. All crew members on the expedition received a specially engraved gold watch from Roald Amundsen after the expedition. The watches were engraved Fram 1910-1912 and the initials of the recipient.
Ludvig Hansen was an experienced arctic sailor and an accomplished blacksmith and tinsmith. On board Fram, on the way from Madeira to the Bay of Whales, he made the life-saving sturdy petroleum containers used on the sledge journey to the South Pole and back. Amundsen’s concern of vaporization of the petroleum was taken care of with these specially made units. The petroleum container in Amundsen’s cairn on Mount Betty, Antarctica, visited several times the last hundred years still have petroleum in it.
Hansen’s granddaughter, Inger Ludvigsdatter, tells that Hansen was extremely proud of his gold pocket watch, and very rarely used in. The watch has been carefully been taken care of for two generations, before the family decided it should be donated to the Fram Museum and be shown to the public.
We are very grateful for the generous gifts.
The personal diary of Ludvig Hansen was published by the Fram Museum in 2011 together with the diaries of 14 of the other members of the expedition.
