1. Otto Neumann Knoph Sverdrup was a Norwegian sailor and Arctic explorer.
14 Facts About Otto Sverdrup
1. 2.
Otto Sverdrup was born in Bindal Municipality as a son of farmer Ulrik Frederik Suhm Sverdrup and his wife Petra Neumann Knoph.
3.
Otto Sverdrup was a great-grandnephew of Georg Sverdrup and Jacob Liv Borch Sverdrup, first cousin twice removed of Harald Ulrik and Johan Sverdrup, second cousin once removed of Jakob, Georg and Edvard Sverdrup, third cousin of Georg Johan, Jakob, Mimi, Leif and Harald Ulrik Sverdrup.
4.
In 1877 Otto Sverdrup's parents moved from Bindal to the farm Trana outside the town of Steinkjer.
5.
Around this time Otto Sverdrup met the lawyer Alexander Nansen who lived in the town of Namsos.
6.
Otto Sverdrup was the brother of Fridtjof Nansen and through him Sverdrup and Fridtjof Nansen learned to know each other.
7.
In 1893 Otto Sverdrup was given command of the ship, and in 1895 he was left in charge of it while Nansen attempted to reach the North Pole.
8.
Otto Sverdrup attempted to circumnavigate Greenland via Baffin Bay but failed to make it through the Nares Strait.
9.
Otto Sverdrup officially claimed all three islands he discovered for Norway in 1902, setting off a sovereignty dispute with Canada, which claimed sovereignty over all land, discovered or undiscovered in what is the Canadian Arctic.
10.
In that year Otto Sverdrup signed a deal with the Canadian Government, who would buy the records of Otto Sverdrup's expeditions for $67,000 Canadian dollars.
11.
Otto Sverdrup died just two weeks after the deal was signed, but the money secured the future of his family.
12.
Otto Sverdrup has an unsuccessful business venture in Cuba, a plantation project in the Oriente Province in 1904.
13.
Otto Sverdrup was made a Commander 1st Class of the Royal Norwegian Order of St Olav in 1896, and promoted to Grand Cross in 1902.
14.
Otto Sverdrup had been made a Knight 1st Class of the Prussian Order of the Crown in 1902, but in an open letter to the German legation in Oslo on 25 October 1917 declared that he was returning the order in protest against the unrestricted warfare then being waged by the German U-boats in the First World War, causing the deaths of hundreds of Norwegian sailors.