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Primary sources for the human history of Antarctica prior to the mid-20th century are scanty. Of the total number of individuals who landed on its shores, sailed over its waters, or flew through its skies prior to 1950, only a small number left behind insightful accounts of their time on the ice, their reasons for going, their impressions of the last continent, what befell them there. Thus it is no wonder that diaries, and diarists, have assumed unusual importance in Antarctic historiography. Indeed, for the great expeditions of the heroic age, other than letters sent back home and the occasional book or interview written years or even decades after the fact, diaries are the only direct voices of record. Because they effectively control what can be chronicled or discussed, they impose both directionality and limitations on the historian's narrative. Yet despite the inherent interest of such personal records, surprisingly few are available in a convenient and inexpensive published form. This especially applies to diaries not written in one of the major European languages. It is therefore especially pleasing to note that, thanks to the efforts of the Fram Museum in cooperation with the National Library of Norway, Roald Amundsen's complete Antarctic diaries are now available in English translation for the first time.
I emphasise the word 'complete' because Roland Huntford's recently published Race for the South Pole: the expedition diaries of Scott and Amundsen (Huntford 2010) also presents excerpts from Amundsen's South Pole diaries (along with those of Olav Bjaaland and Robert Falcon Scott), but only for 1 September 1911 to 5 March 1912, the period spanning the race for the pole and its immediate aftermath. By contrast, the Fram Museum's version provides the entirety of Amundsen's text: it begins on board Fram in early June 1910 during the vessel's shakedown cruise, and ends in Buenos Aires in March 1912 with Amundsen's recording, with evident satisfaction, his completion of the first part of what would become The South Pole (Amundsen 1912). This version also includes such extras as a register of the contents of each crate carried on the southern journey, an appendix on modifications made to Fram for its Antarctic voyage (reprinted from The South Pole), and...