Roald Engebreth Gravning Amundsen of Norway took pride in being referred to as "the last of the Vikings." A powerfully built man of over six feet in height, Amundsen was born in 1872 into a family of merchant sea captains and prosperous ship owners. As a youth he insisted on sleeping with the windows open even during the frigid Norwegian winters to help condition himself for a life of polar exploration. In honor of his accomplishments, Scandinavians in Chicago in 1928 requested that the new high school at Damen and Foster be named after him.
In 1897 Amundsen sailed as first mate on the Belgica in a Belgian expedition that was the first to winter in the Antarctic. In 1903 he established himself as a sailor and explorer of the first order when he successfully led a 70-foot fishing boat through the entire length of the Northwest Passage; the arduous journey took three years to complete as Amundsen and his crew had to wait while the frozen sea around them thawed enough to allow for navigation; his east-west journey ended at Herschel Island in the Yukon in 1905. This achievement whetted his appetite for further polar exploration.
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