A hearing on Thursday in Canada could determine the fate of plans to repatriate Norwegian explorer Roald Amun-dsen’s three-mast ship Maud from the Arctic.
A Norwegian group has asked the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board to revisit a decision in December denying an export permit for the ship, after residents of Cambridge Bay, Canada opposed losing a treasured artefact that has become a tourist attraction in the far north.
The remains of the ship that once belonged to the Norwegian explorer sit at the bottom of Cambridge Bay in Nunavut, but its hulk is partly visible above the frigid waters that preserved it for decades. “We understand that the whole hearing will be focused on the importance of Maud to Canada as a historical vessel,” Jan Wanggaard, manager of the effort to bring the Maud to Norway, said. In 1906 Amundsen became the first European to sail through the Northwest Passage searching for a shorter shipping route from Europe to Asia, something explorers had been trying to find for centuries.
In 1911 he became the first person to reach the South Pole. His attempts to reach the North Pole however failed. Amundsen again sailed through the Northeast Passage with the Maud, built in Asker, Norway and named after Norway’s Queen Maud, in 1918-20, but was unable to get far enough north to launch a North Pole expedition.