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Those who love tales of Arctic exploration and discovery will not be disappointed by Stephen R. Bown’s fresh look at the man many consider to be the world’s greatest polar explorer. From beginning to end, the Canadian writer’s telling of Roald Amundsen’s life is a thrilling yet thoughtful narrative.

Of course, it’s hard to make Amundsen sound less than intriguing: The dashing but dour–faced Norwegian was the first to reach both the south and north poles and the first to cross the Northwest Passage. He wrote voluminous accounts of his adventures, was generally liked by his crew, and learned valuable lessons of survival from Canada’s Inuit, whom he seemed to regard with genuine respect and admiration. “My sincerest wish for our friends the Nechilli Eskimo is that civilization may never find them,” he wrote. While he was careful to cultivate a clean image of himself as an honourable servant of his country, Amundsen also maintained a secretive private life that involved affairs with a succession of married women. And he never really dug himself out of a lifetime of debt

History hasn’t always been kind to Amundsen. His victory in reaching the South Pole almost five weeks ahead of Britain’s Robert Falcon Scott has sometimes been seen as unsporting because he kept his plans under wraps. While some believed this was a deliberate ploy to deceive Scott and leave him at a disadvantage — Scott didn’t realize until the last minute that he was competing with Amundsen to be first at the pole — Bown is sympathetic to Amundsen’s situation.

A meticulous planner, Amundsen had spent years preparing for a North Pole expedition, but his funding was pulled by the Norwegian government and private sponsors in 1909 after Americans Robert Peary and Frederick Cook separately announced competing claims to have reached the pole first. The North Pole was no longer seen as a prize to be won, but the South Pole was still up for grabs. Amundsen realized he could obtain private support to challenge Scott in a dash to the South Pole, and more money would flow in from articles, books, and lecture tours if he succeeded. So he secretly changed plans — most of Amundsen’s crew did not know about the switch until they were well underway.

Both expeditions set out in the latter part of 1910, setting up base camps at different locations and following different routes. For transport, Scott’s Royal Geographic Society expedition relied heavily on ponies, motorized sledges, and snowshoes; Amundsen relied on sled dogs and skis. Scott believed in the superiority of British know-how and he applied the latest science and technology to his effort. However, the Royal Navy officer had less experience in polar conditions than Amundsen; the latter had lived with the Netsilik Inuit of northern Canada for two years, where he learned how to build snow houses, drive dog teams, eat raw meat, and dress for extreme cold. (Interestingly, Bown updates claims that Amundsen fathered a child among the Netsilik Inuit — recent DNA tests have disproven this.)

Both parties reached the pole, but only one returned alive — Amundsen’s. Scott and his crew perished after being halted by poor weather. The British immediately lauded Scott as a hero while portraying Amundsen as a villain undeserving of victory. “The apparent antipathy for him that developed in Britain in the wake of Scott’s death was something that Amundsen never forgot or forgave,” writes Bown.

The Scandinavian explorer was more favourably received by the Americans, who never tired of his tales of adventure, told to packed halls in halting English with a strong Norwegian accent. He hated lecture tours but grudgingly endured them to raise money for future journeys. In 1925 Amundsen completed a west–to–east crossing of the Northeast Passage, and in 1926 he flew over the North Pole in a dirigible. Then, in 1928, his life came to an end when his plane went down during a mission to rescue an Italian explorer whose airship had crashed on its return from the North Pole.

As Bown notes, Amundsen packed more into his fifty–six years than seems possible. He fulfilled his youthful dreams and died a heroic, highly public death. “He had earned the title bestowed on him by the popular press — ‘the last of the Vikings.’”