On June 17th 1896, a bizarre encounter occurred in Franz Josef Land, in the Arctic wastes. Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930), the Norwegian scientist and arctic explorer, met Major Frederick Jackson (1860-1938), the leader of a British arctic expedition. Their meeting was an incredible piece of luck: Nansen and his companion, Johansen, had left their ship, the Fram, more than a year previously to try and reach the pole, and were presumed – by Major Jackson and the general public – to have died. They had, in fact, survived an arctic winter on walrus blubber and polar bear meat, but would surely have perished eventually had it not been for that chance meeting. Nansen later wrote that both gentlemen raised their hats and said ‘How do you do?’ Nansen and Jackson each went on to lead extraordinary lives.

That much is all true, what follows below is an imagined further meeting that never took place.

‘Major, I’m very grateful for your visit. I find myself rather incapacitated, or I would have met you off the ferry.’

‘Professor Dr Nansen, please don’t try to get up. I’m delighted to see you again; I’m only sorry to find you unwell. Jeg ønsker deg en rask utvinning.’

‘Ha, I congratulate you on your accent, Major, and thank you for your good wishes. But there will be no speedy recovery for me: the doctors tell me that my heart is damaged.’

‘I see. Then I would have the doctors say that you have worn-out a heart by tasks that would stretch the capacity of a half a dozen hearts of half a dozen men. I thinking not just of your arctic explorations, but also of your work for the League of Nations: the repatriation of the starving Russian prisoners of war, the ending of the Armenian killings in Turkey, the sending of famine relief to the Ukraine…’

‘Goodness me, if there is any truth in what I have heard of your doings, Major, then your compliment surely fits yourself equally well, or better? You were the oldest officer to command frontline troops in the late war. And, at the supposedly responsible age of sixty-five, you crossed Africa from Mozambique, in the east, to the mouth of the Congo, in the west. I hope you will tell me something of your time with the pygmy people?’

‘They were indeed most interesting. I was especially curious to learn their hunting techniques. But I don’t wish to tire you today. I took the liberty of bringing you a copy of my manuscript, reporting on my journey.’

‘Most kind, Major. I look forward to studying it. But tell me this at least: are the pygmies a fortunate people? more fortunate than we Europeans?’

‘It is difficult for me to generalise, old chap: there are a number of different tribes living in different circumstances. But my understanding is that they live in some fear of their Bantu neighbours, who have encroached on their hunting grounds to practice their horticulture and to graze their cattle. One might compare their situation to that of the desperate straits of the Plains Indians of North America, were it not for the pygmies’ lack of martial ardour. And I’m afraid that I saw a number of instances of pygmy slavery in Bantu villages…’

Jackson faltered and flushed. When he spoke again it was in a different voice: ‘…Forgive me, Nansen old chap, we got to know each other pretty well in those weeks in the arctic, waiting for the return of my supply ship to carry you back to what we call ‘civilisation.’ I counted you a dear friend. So permit me to say that I detect a sadness in your voice and manner that I never knew before. Is it your illness that has begun to erode your spirit? If so, I should say what an old friend has the freedom to say: namely, you should surely have – you are entitled to – the quiet satisfaction of having had a life well lived.’

‘You’re shrewd observer, Major. Since our time together in Franz Josef Land, I have come across a number of British army officers and I’m afraid that very few of them were a match for you in shrewdness. And you are correct to suggest that I am troubled somewhat in spirit. It is not my present physical weakness that is to blame. Say rather that I am worn down by the world we have somehow, surprisingly, unintentionally, created. Would you not agree that, back in 1896 in Franz Josef Land, we counted ourselves masters of our fate: we believed that stern resolve would carry us through to a brighter a future?’ Nansen picked abstractedly at the unravelled edge of his woollen shawl. ‘How wrong we were, Major. You know this: you served in those Flanders killing fields.’

‘I understand, old chap. Stern resolve, as you put it, was only likely to carry you into lethal machine gun fire in Flanders. In 1896, we were quite blind to the horrors that civilisation would have in store for us. But you weren’t dismayed by the slaughter and the inhumanity: I believe you saved, by sheer force of character, hundreds of thousands of lives from starvation, or butchery, or both. Certainly those who awarded you the Nobel Peace Prize thought so.’

‘Thank you, but I was not working alone. And it’s true that I laboured long and hard in the vineyard to bring in some sort of harvest. But what of the future, Major? Will there be another harvest, or is there a blight already on the vine? Do you have any hope at all?’

‘I do, old chap, I do. I should have mentioned this before: last year, Mrs Marguerite Wigan Fisher did me the honour to accept my proposal of marriage.’

Nansen ceased picking at his shawl, smiled and nodded. ‘My hearty congratulations on your wedding, Major. How strange – I believe no-one else of my acquaintance could have given me such an answer.’

Michael Bloor