The Material Culture of Polar Exploration

Our fascination with the explorers and scientists of the polar regions is one shared in Britain by successive generations from the Victorians to the present day. Behind the story of an enduring interest in the mysteries of the Poles, lies an admiration for the ingenious ways in which explorers sought to make their mark. For each genration, new technologies of travel held out new prospects reaching the Poles; even after the epic voyages of Scott and Amundsen, explorers invented new, challenging ways to reach the Pole, keeping the feat of polar exploration alive, while transforming the way that the challenges were accomplished.

The Scott Polar Research Institute is launching an initiative to make publicly accessible artefacts from two centuries of polar exploration. The expeditions of Scott, Amundsen and Shackleton brought to light the importance of technologies to travel. Key decisions - whether to cross the Frozen continent with dogs or ponies - are of course well known, but the use of animals is only one element in the full story of polar technologies. Sleds, motorised tractors, and high performance skis were adopted by later explorers learning from their predecessors. Protecting the explorer's body from the cruelties of the environment also became a focus for innovation. Much of the clothing of past expeditions look scarcely warm enough to protect us from a cold British winter's day.

Two workshops - 'Technologies of Travel' and 'Field Stations' will ocnsider many of these unexamined technologies that transformed the polar world. The workshops will bring together leading experts from the world of museums, universities - and modern-day explorers themselves - to discuss the history and the cultural meaning of these relics that were once the engine of polar innovation. Snow goggles, hats, gloves, skis, bindings, and many other objects will be made available for viewing by the public at the museum and online.

Were these new technologies the product of home-made ingenuity and invention, or were they part of a larger international circulation of ideas? Did British explorers improve upon and share methods tried in other countries? To what extent were these inventions acquired from the indigenous peoples of the Arctic and adapted for the purposes of expeditions? By tracing these links, we will be able to compare the paths of technology sharing and innovation between indigenous and European cultures.

We will uncover the stories of how and why explorers incurred the physical risk to their wellbeing by bringing home these artefacts. Were they signposts to conjure up those terrible moments in their polar travels known to them alone? Were they hoping that a prominent place in a national museum would give the real recognition earned by these polar travelling companions? And when they decided which artefacts to leave in the polar regions, what obligations did they feel to preserving the polar environment as they knew it?

Disussion and debate at these workshops will inform the work of researchers based at Scott Polar Reserach Institute (SPRI) on polar technologies in 2007 to mark the start of the Fourth International Polar Year (IPY), 125 years after the First International Polar Year. Parts of the exhibition will contribute to a collaborative international exhibition with Canada, the USA, Sweden, and Finland, that will tour these leading IPY nations.