Fram — Nansen & Amundsen's Polar Ship Model, Painted Medium | Fully Assembled

The strongest wooden ship ever built, and the one that went furthest north and furthest south.

Fram was designed to be squeezed, not crushed — a rounded hull with no keel to grip, so that closing pack ice would lift her out of the water rather than stave in her sides. Our model keeps that unmistakable tub-like profile, hand-painted and fully assembled.

Construction

• Plank-on-frame hull, hand-painted, with the characteristic rounded polar profile
• Three masts with hand-knotted rigging
• Hand-stitched linen sails
• Deck detail: boats, davits, deckhouse, wheel and fittings
• Solid wood base with engraved brass nameplate

History

Designed by Colin Archer and launched in 1892, Fram — Norwegian for "forward" — carried Fridtjof Nansen into the Arctic ice in 1893 to test his theory that a ship frozen into the pack would drift across the pole. It worked. She was released three years later, undamaged. In 1910 she took Roald Amundsen south instead, delivering the party that reached the South Pole on 14 December 1911. She holds the record for the northernmost and southernmost wooden ship, and is preserved today in her own museum in Oslo.