Amundsen Faced Financial Difficulties

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6809, 12 January 1929, Page 13

Amundsen Faced Financial Difficulties

Medals Sold for £BSO

BLL the creditors of Captain Roald Amundsen, the explorer, will be paid in full as the result of the sale of the dead explorer’s medals. Nothing was heard .of Captain Amundsen after he left Tromsoe, Norway, in a seaplane on June IS to search for General Nobile, whose Arctic expedition was in dilliculties. Amundsen had quarrelled with Nobile, but as soon as he heard that the general needed aid he volunteered to search for him. Nobile was subsequently rescued. Amundsen was the first man to accomplish the North-West Passage, and he reached the South Pole in 1911.

In 1926 he flew over the North Pole in an airship. He became bankrupt in 1924. After the war his private fortune was estimated at £55,000, but this and a State

subvention of £28,000 were insufficient to cover the expenses of his Polar expeditions. Friends in 1924 bought his home at Svartskog and afterwards presented him with it. Amundsen called these episodes the most humiliating and tragical in his life, and his last words to his lawyer before starting out to the rescue of General Nobile were: “Make me a free man.’’ The bankruptcy proceedings now concluded show that Captain Amundsen’s estate is solvent. His 51 medals were sold for £BSO, but the buyer, Mr. Conrad Langaard, of Oslo, afterwards presented them to Oslo University for its coin cabinet. At, the suggestion of Signor Mussolini, the Italian Prime Minister, the King has conferred, posthumously, the Gold Medal for Valour in the Air upon Captain Amundsen and Commandant Guilbaud, who accompanied him in his search for General Nobile.