Oscar Adolf Wisting (6 June 1871 – 5 December 1936) was aNorwegian Naval officer and polar explorer. Together withRoald Amundsen he was the first person to reach both the North and South Poles.[1]
Oscar Wisting was born inLarvik, inVestfold county, Norway. He was the son of Ola Martin Olsen Wisting (1843–1927) and Abigael Helene Andersen (1843–85). He became the eldest of 13 children. His father ran a trucking business. At the age of sixteen, he went to sea and in 1892 joined theRoyal Norwegian Navy.[2]
He was working as a naval gunner atKarljohansvern, the naval base inHorten during 1909 when Roald Amundsen asked him to go north with him on his forthcoming North Pole expedition. Amundsen later secretly changed his plans.[3] Wisting went to sea believing they were heading for theNorth Pole. Instead he learned that they were going south to pick up the race withRobert Falcon Scott to theSouth Pole.[4]
As a participant inAmundsen's South Pole expedition, on 14 December 1911 along with Amundsen,Helmer Hanssen,Olav Bjaaland andSverre Hassel, Wisting planted theNorwegian flag on theGeographic South Pole, the first explorers to have reached that point. From 1918 to 1925 Wisting was chief officer on board theMaud in Roald Amundsen's attempt to traverse theNortheast passage. From 1923 to 1925 Wisting more or less acted as leader of the expedition after Amundsen left to try to fly to the pole instead.[5]
In 1926 Wisting participated in Amundsen's successful attempt to fly over the North Pole. In the airshipNorge they reached the pole on 12 May 1926. The three previous claims to have arrived at the North Pole—byFrederick Cook in 1908,Robert Peary in 1909, andRichard E. Byrd in 1926 —are all disputed, as being either of dubious accuracy or outright fraud. Some of those disputing these earlier claims therefore consider the crew of theNorge to be the first verified explorers to have reached the North Pole. In addition Wisting, along with Amundsen, was one of the two first persons who had been to both the North Pole and the South Pole.[6]
In later years Oscar Wisting was an active force behind the preparations and building of theFram Museum inOslo, a museum built to store and display the polar shipFram. On 5 December 1936 Wisting was found dead from heart attack in his old bunk on board theFram, a few days before the 25th anniversary of the successful South Pole expedition.[7]
For his participation in the expedition, he was awarded theSouth Pole Medal (Sydpolsmedaljen), the Royal Norwegian award instituted by KingHaakon VII in 1912 to reward participants in Roald Amundsen's South Pole expedition.
Oscar Wisting wrote about his experiences with Roald Amundsen in16 år med Roald Amundsen (Oslo: Glydendal Norsk Forlag, 1930). Roald Amundsen wrote about the expedition inSydpolen published in two volumes in 1912–1913. The work was translated into English by A. G. Chater, and published asThe South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the "Fram" 1910–1912.[8]
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