From heroic-age narrative conventions to professional historiography

Polar exploration has long been embedded in narrative traditions emphasising national prestige, exemplary leadership, and heroic endurance. Historical surveys repeatedly note that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century polar exploration writing often circulated more as public memory and national myth than as professional historiography (Bravo & Sörlin, Reference Bravo and Sörlin2002; Launius, Reference Launius, Launius, Fleming and DeVorkin2010). These conventions produce recognisable narrative effects: coherence, competence, and unity appear as naturalised features of expeditionary life, while ambiguity, contradiction, or friction may be rendered narratively inconvenient.

Recent scholarship has shown how these traditions continue to shape the afterlives of polar expeditions. The historiography of the Heroic Age is not static; its central figures—Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen—have been repeatedly reframed as cultural values, institutional contexts, and media forms have changed (Barczewski, Reference Barczewski, Howkins and Roberts2023). The point for the present article is not that heroic narratives are “wrong,” but that they represent one genre of representation among many, and that they do not themselves establish the interpersonal dynamics of daily life on a 1911–1912 sledging journey.

A persistent feature of the major narrative and biographical accounts of Amundsen’s South Pole expedition is the assumption—often implicit rather than defended—that the polar party operated as a uniformly cohesive and harmonious unit throughout the march. Works such as Huntford’s The Last Place on Earth (1999), Bomann-Larsen’s Roald Amundsen (Reference Bomann-Larsen2006), and Bown’s The Last Viking (Reference Bown2012) all emphasise logistical mastery, strategic foresight, and disciplined execution, but they do so by presenting the five-man party as a self-evidently integrated team whose internal relations require little or no examination. In these accounts, the absence of interpersonal detail functions rhetorically as evidence of cohesion: harmony is not demonstrated, but presumed—either because friction is considered narratively irrelevant or because logistical success is taken to guarantee social unity.

This narrative pattern aligns with broader Heroic-Age representational conventions, in which coherence, competence, and orderly teamwork were foregrounded for both national and reputational reasons. As a result, tension, disagreement, or irritation—unless dramatically consequential—rarely appear in these standard accounts, not because the evidence disproves them but because these micro-interactional dimensions were not treated as analytically meaningful. This historiographical environment is the backdrop against which the present study positions itself. By returning to contemporaneous diaries, the analysis interrogates precisely the interpersonal micro-context that these conventional narratives leave unexamined.

Amundsen historiography and the unexamined Pole-march micro-context

Within the Amundsen literature, specifically, cohesion during the Pole march has rarely been treated as an explicit analytical object. Major biographies—Huntford’s sharply contrasting dual study of Scott and Amundsen (Reference Huntford1999), Bown’s narrative biography (Reference Bown2012), and Bomann-Larsen’s detailed account (Reference Bomann-Larsen2006)—emphasize planning, logistics, leadership image, and strategic execution but provide almost no systematic analysis of day-to-day interactional behaviour during the southbound and northbound journeys. More recent Norwegian scholarship has nevertheless complicated the heroic image of Amundsen. Kvam (Reference Kvam2000), in particular, presents him as a highly capable but authoritarian leader, marked by strong demands for loyalty and limited tolerance for contradiction. Related perspectives appear in Aas (Reference Aas, Battaglini, Russo and Casagrande2022), Berg (Reference Berg, Drivenes and Jølle2004), Eriksen (Reference Eriksen, Drivenes and Jølle2004), Fulsås (Reference Fulsås, Drivenes and Jølle2004), and Næss (Reference Næss, Drivenes and Jølle2004), which together situate Amundsen within broader debates about leadership, national memory, and changing historiographical representation. These works overwhelmingly treat the five-man polar party as a competent, largely harmonious unit whose efficacy requires little further examination; what they do not provide, however, is a systematic, source-critical reading of the contemporaneous Pole-march diaries as evidence for the expedition’s interactional micro-context.

Published diary editions and related cultural-historical studies do not close this gap. Huntford’s Race for the South Pole (Reference Huntford2010), for example, makes key expedition diaries available but offers little sustained analysis of small-scale interpersonal strain, while cultural-historical work on polar representation remains focused on mediation, spectacle, and hero-construction rather than day-to-day interaction within the marching party (Huntford, Reference Huntford2010; Lewis-Jones, Reference Lewis-Jones2017). The issue is therefore not a lack of source material in general but the absence of a systematic, diary-led analysis of the Pole march as an interactional micro-context. By concentrating on the only contemporaneous diaries that intermittently record such moments, the present study addresses that specific historiographical gap.

By contrast, the diary material examined in this article records a set of concrete interpersonal moments—sharp disagreements, reprimands, irritation, sarcasm, and communicative withdrawal—that do not appear in the dominant narrative sources. The present study, therefore, uses these diaries not to overturn existing accounts wholesale, but to test how far the Pole march’s internal social history can be reconstructed when micro-interactional evidence is treated as analytically meaningful.

Diaries as egodocuments: evidentiary potential and interpretive constraints

The methodological status of diaries requires explicit treatment. Following scholarship on egodocuments (for example, Mascuch, Dekker, & Baggerman, Reference Mascuch, Dekker and Baggerman2016), diaries are understood not as transparent records but as first-person sources in which the writing subject continuously selects, frames, and omits material. Under sledging conditions, this selectivity is sharpened by fatigue, cold, instrument duties, and ration constraints.

Three principles follow. First, diaries capture what the diarist chose to record under extreme conditions, not a complete map of group life. Second, the absence of comment cannot be read as evidence of harmony, and the presence of irritation does not represent an exhaustive picture of interpersonal relations. Third, empirical claims in this article rely solely on explicit diary statements—disagreements, reprimands, refusals, criticisms, and tensions—not on inferred motives or personality traits. This approach treats the diaries neither romantically nor sceptically, but as deliberately partial records that nonetheless contain identifiable friction events.

A minimal and bounded analytical vocabulary for identifying friction

To avoid impressionistic interpretation, the analysis employs a limited coding scheme grounded in well-established distinctions from conflict research. Jehn’s (Reference Jehn1995) differentiation between task conflict (disagreements about work content, decisions, or resource allocation), relationship conflict (interpersonal incompatibility, irritation, and antagonism), and process conflict (disputes about roles or procedures) provides a functional structure for classifying diary-recorded episodes. This typology does not impose modern organisational psychology onto a 1911–1912 expedition; it merely ensures that like cases are compared with like in a transparent manner.

Studies of teams in ICE environments further indicate that conflicts in such contexts typically arise in domain-specific forms—work disagreements, interpersonal tensions, and authority-related disputes—rather than as undifferentiated “dysfunction” (Golden et al., Reference Golden, Chang and Kozlowski2018; Marcinkowski et al., Reference Marcinkowski, Bell and Roma2021). This insight is used here only to reinforce the methodological point that conflict episodes can be categorised by their immediate functional domain without inferring deeper psychological dynamics.

Scope limitation. These frameworks are not employed to explain expedition behaviour or to evaluate leadership quality. They serve solely as classificatory aids to answer the narrow empirical question: What kinds of friction were explicitly recorded, and how can these episodes be grouped for systematic analysis? No interpretive claims depend on modern behavioural theory.

Later representations and the status of “narrative smoothing”

Work in Antarctic humanities has shown that diaries can play complex roles in shaping and reshaping expeditionary reputations (Leane, Reference Leane2016). Diarists often write with uncertain future readerships in mind—including superiors, editors, and national audiences—which may influence tone, frankness, and the recording of complaints.

However, this article does not analyse later published accounts, nor does it claim that narrative smoothing occurred in any specific text. “Narrative smoothing” is used here solely as a historiographical reminder: retrospective expedition narratives often omit minor frictions even when they appear in contemporaneous diaries. Its sole relevance is to support the methodological choice of treating the diaries as the primary evidentiary base for documenting friction episodes. No causal claims are made about why later accounts emphasise unity or omit discord.

Together, these historiographical, methodological, and theoretical considerations justify the approach set out in Section Sources and methods: to construct a transparent, source-critical classification of interpersonal friction during the Pole march, grounded strictly in contemporaneous diary text and informed—but not explained—by minimal typological distinctions.

Alternative diary-based approaches and the rationale for a minimally interpretive coding scheme

Several established diary-based methodologies could be applied to this material. Genre-analytic approaches, for example, highlight how heroic-age expedition diaries reflect literary conventions, expected masculine performance, and institutional reputations (Bravo & Sörlin, Reference Bravo and Sörlin2002; Lewis-Jones, Reference Lewis-Jones2017). In this view, passages describing irritation or reprimand may be seen as rhetorical acts shaped by expectations of leadership or discipline, while scholarship on egodocumentary “silences” suggests omissions might represent deliberate self-presentation rather than mere recording choices (Mascuch et al., Reference Mascuch, Dekker and Baggerman2016).

While these methods offer valuable insight, they involve interpretive moves—such as genre reconstruction or inferred audience orientation—that go beyond the diarists’ explicit words. In contrast, this study uses a deliberately bounded, diary-led coding scheme for three main reasons. First, the empirical aim is modest: to document the forms of interpersonal friction explicitly recorded in contemporaneous diaries during the Pole march, using minimal coding vocabulary (task, process/authority, and relationship/tone) to organise the material without assuming additional diaristic intentions. Second, alternative interpretive models risk bias by reading passages as broader representational patterns rather than as specific descriptions; this study restricts itself to explicit interactional elements without attributing rhetorical purpose. Third, a strictly text-bound method ensures transparency, with every claim directly traceable to explicit diary phrasing.

This approach does not dismiss alternative models but clarifies that its analytical goal is different. While genre, performance, and silence-based approaches are suitable for studying how diaries construct expeditionary identities, the present study focuses only on classifying and describing recorded friction episodes, using a conservative evidentiary method.

Process/authority friction

The six process/authority episodes concentrate on moments when disagreement intersected with role hierarchy—that is, when alternative views, procedural deviations, or interpersonal responses were recorded as consequential in an authority-structured setting (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011; Hassel, Reference Hassel2011).

1. (1) Major confrontation and threatened removal (Hassel): 19 November 1911.

The most explicit process/authority episode in the diary material is Hassel’s account of “a heated (and rather loud) argument” between Amundsen and Bjaaland “regarding the odometer and other matters.” Hassel records that the disagreement escalated to a formal instruction: Amundsen “ordered Bjaaland to turn back” after accompanying the party through the ascent, and Hassel (as navigator) was ordered to accompany him; Hassel further records that Bjaaland “quickly relented” and asked Amundsen to reconsider, which he did while stating that he “would not tolerate contradiction” (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 19 November 1911).

Bjaaland’s entry for the same day corroborates the broader operational context of equipment damage and collisions in the sled train, reporting that “the front of my sled broke” and “the back of Hassel’s sled was also damaged” during a dramatic descent in which dogs and sleds “crashed into each other” (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011, 19 November 1911). The argument itself is recorded only by Hassel; the shared evidentiary core is the logged sequence of collision/equipment disruption and Hassel’s reported escalation to an order and its retraction (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011, 19 November 1911; Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 19 November 1911).

1. (2) Crampons dispute framed as intolerance of alternative views (Hassel): 1 December 1911.

Hassel records a disagreement about ice crampons and writes that his suggestion (“it was unlikely we would need them”) “as usual, irritated” Amundsen, adding the contemporaneous characterisation that Amundsen “does not tolerate differing opinions” (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 1 December 1911). This is treated as process/authority friction because it centres on the acceptability of dissent within the decision procedure, as recorded by the diarist (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 1 December 1911).

1. (3) Goggles dispute explicitly labelled “sharp disagreement” (Bjaaland): 11 January 1912.

Bjaaland records: “The captain is impatient, tolerates no contradiction, sharp disagreement over goggles,” and then explicitly marks uncertainty by asking whether the captain is annoyed because he refuses to wear “those damned Roald-style snow goggles” (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011, 11 January 1912). The disagreement and the “tolerates no contradiction” characterisation are treated as evidence of friction; the causal question is retained as Bjaaland’s speculation and not converted into a stronger explanatory claim (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011, 11 January 1912).

1. (4) Depot crisis: proposal, silence, and reversal (Hassel): 3 January 1912.

In the depot-search episode, Hassel records Amundsen proposing abandonment of the depot and heading toward the Butcher’s Shop; when Amundsen asks if anyone has a better suggestion, Hassel reports that “everyone remained silent,” except Hanssen who “as usual” readily agreed, followed by Amundsen’s later reversal once the location of the depot became visible (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 3 January 1912). This episode is coded as process/authority because the diary foregrounds decision procedure (solicitation of alternatives; silence; assent) rather than direct interpersonal confrontation (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 3 January 1912).

1. (5) Trailbreaking/role allocation dispute with tone marker “sarcastically” (Hassel): 7 January 1912.

Hassel records an interaction over who should make tracks: Hanssen drives forward; Amundsen questions why no one is in front; Hanssen justifies; Amundsen asserts tracks are preferable and orders Hassel to go ahead, adding that he would do it himself “he said sarcastically” if Hassel could not manage (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 7 January 1912). The diary provides explicit speech acts (question, justification, and order) and a tone marker; the analysis restricts itself to that record (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 7 January 1912).

1. (6) Communication withdrawal (“refusing to speak”) after disagreement (Hassel): 18 January 1912.

Hassel records that Hanssen “has fallen out of favor” after expressing a differing view about whether a dog carcass (“Else”) smelt bad and writes: “Amundsen is now refusing to speak to him!” (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 18 January 1912). The evidentiary claim is the recorded communication withdrawal; any broader interpretation remains explicitly Hassel’s framing (“fallen out of favor”) rather than an asserted causal mechanism (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 18 January 1912).

These process/authority episodes are predominantly recorded in Hassel (4/6), which reflects the diarists’ different thresholds and styles of recording interpersonal events. Bjaaland provides fewer but pointed instances—most notably the goggles dispute (11 January 1912)—while Hassel provides longer sequences with more explicit description of interactional structure and tone (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011; Hassel, Reference Hassel2011).

Task disagreements

The task-coded episodes are concentrated around route/depot judgment, ration adequacy, and operational proposals. They document disagreement over what should be done, not primarily over interpersonal compatibility—although some task episodes include sharp phrasing (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011; Hassel, Reference Hassel2011).

1. (1) Suggested pace increase rejected (Bjaaland): 12 November 1911.

Bjaaland records: “Suggested traveling 25 miles per day, but the response was that it wouldn’t be wise for the dogs” (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011, 12 November 1911). The responding actor (presumably Amundsen) is not named; consistent with the method, the episode is retained as a task disagreement with actor-uncertainty (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011, 12 November 1911).

1. (2) Pemmican increase proposed “for the second time” and refused (Hassel): 10 December 1911.

Hassel records: “Tomorrow, I will propose for the second time that we increase the pemmican rations… However, this does not meet with Amundsen’s approval” (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 10 December 1911). The diary documents proposal and refusal rather than an argument, which is analytically important: the record supports “internal negotiation over ration adequacy” but does not warrant claims about escalation beyond what is written (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 10 December 1911).

1. (3) Depot judgement disagreement (Bjaaland): 2 January 1912.

Bjaaland records that others believed they were east of the depot, while he believed “just as firmly” that they were slightly west (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011, 2 January 1912). The entry is treated as a task disagreement in judgement, with no reconstruction of dialogue (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011, 2 January 1912).

1. (4) Depot disagreement resolved: “my theory” (Bjaaland): 3 January 1912.

The next day Bjaaland records: “After much deliberation, the conclusion was that we had drifted westward—my theory” (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011, 3 January 1912). The finding extracted is limited: the diary records deliberation, a conclusion, and Bjaaland’s note that the conclusion aligned with his prior view (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011, 3 January 1912).

1. (5) “Bet a million” denial followed by concession (Bjaaland): 7 January 1912.

Bjaaland records a sharp disagreement over recognising a passage while descending the Axel Heiberg Glacier: “There is the passage,” followed by Amundsen’s “No way! I’ll bet a million that it’s not,” and then “You’re right” shortly afterwards (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011, 7 January 1912). This is treated primarily as task disagreement (route recognition), while the “bet a million” phrasing is treated as a diary-recorded feature of how the disagreement was expressed in that moment (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011, 7 January 1912).

1. (6) Dog-food miscalculation and generalised critique (Hassel): 5 November 1911.

Hassel records that Amundsen “miscalculated” dog-food use, leading to reduced dog rations at the depot, and then generalises: “Time and again, Amundsen’s calculations prove unreliable. Theory is one thing, practice another” (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 5 November 1911). This is treated as task-domain friction expressed as explicit evaluation of another member’s planning competence; it is not presented as a recorded argument unless the diary states it as such (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 5 November 1911).

The 12 November (pace proposal) and 5 November (miscalculation critique) episodes are less dramatic than the 19 November confrontation, but they matter for the core claim that friction appears repeatedly in routine operational domains (pace planning; ration calculations) rather than only in exceptional crisis events (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011, 12 November 1911; Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 5 November 1911).

Relationship/tone friction

The relationship-coded episodes record interpersonal irritation, complaints, and negative appraisals of tone or character. Here the asymmetry between diarists is especially important: Hassel provides most of the explicit evaluative language, which must be treated as Hassel’s perspective rather than “the group view” (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011; Hassel, Reference Hassel2011).

1. (1) Peer irritation: “annoyed that I drive too slowly” (Bjaaland): 11 December 1911.

Bjaaland records: “Hanssen is annoyed that I drive too slowly” (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011, 11 December 1911). This is a direct statement of interpersonal irritation with identifiable individuals and no reported escalation (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011, 11 December 1911).

1. (2) Breakfast question → “wrath” → grievance persistence (Hassel): 5 December 1911.

Hassel records that Amundsen asked whether Hassel and Bjaaland had eaten breakfast; Hassel replied that they had eaten “a few biscuits,” which “provoked… wrath,” and Hassel adds that the issue was raised again later that evening in the tent (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 5 December 1911). The finding is limited to the diary’s record of affect (“wrath”) and persistence (“brought up… again”), without inferring motive (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 5 December 1911).

1. (3) Snoring complaint and Hassel’s evaluation of communicative style (Hassel): 12 January 1912.

Hassel records Amundsen’s complaint that Hassel and Bjaaland’s snoring disturbed him and then offers his own evaluative commentary: “there are different ways to say things,” “the most unpleasant and arrogant way,” and “an unpleasant character to share a tent with” (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 12 January 1912). The evidentiary claim extracted is that Hassel experienced tent-life interactions as strained and attributed that strain to communicative style; the stronger character judgement is treated as Hassel’s phrasing, not as an objective diagnostic (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 12 January 1912).

1. (4) Food practice as perceived preference/fairness issue (Hassel): 26 December 1911.

Hassel describes Amundsen’s “cup of soup” habit and records that Hanssen—described by Hassel as Amundsen’s “favorite”—ensured he did not lose “his fair share” (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 26 December 1911). This is not presented as a logged confrontation; it is treated as a relationship-salient episode because the diary explicitly frames the practice in terms of preference and fairness (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 26 December 1911).

1. (5) Explicit appraisal of Amundsen’s “inaccurate” estimates (Hassel): 15 November 1911.

Hassel writes: “Amundsen’s estimates regarding distance and conditions here are proving quite inaccurate” (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 15 November 1911). This is included as relationship/tone friction because it is an explicit negative appraisal directed at another member’s judgement. Importantly, it is treated as Hassel’s evaluation, not as a verified measurement of error beyond the diary text (Hassel, Reference Hassel2011, 15 November 1911).

Bjaaland contributes only one relationship-coded irritation episode (11 December), and it is notably terse compared to Hassel’s explicit tent-life evaluations. That contrast supports the methodological point from Section Sources and methods: diary silence or brevity cannot be read straightforwardly as harmony; it may reflect a different recording threshold and style (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011; Hassel, Reference Hassel2011).

Synthesis

The complete set of 17 coded episodes documents that interpersonal friction was recurrently recorded during the Pole march across multiple domains, rather than confined to a single crisis or to one interpersonal dyad. The diary record shows (i) repeated process/authority tensions around contradiction, decision rights, and communicative control (e.g., 19 November; 1 December; 11 January; 18 January), (ii) task disagreements in navigation and resource governance under uncertainty (e.g., 12 November; 2–3 January; 7 January; 10 December; 5 November), and (iii) relationship/tone episodes emerging in the confined tent environment and in evaluative attributions (e.g., 5 December; 12 January; 26 December; 15 November). These findings answer the empirical component of the research question posed in Section Introduction: the diaries do contain explicit, classifiable friction episodes during both the southbound and northbound phases of the march (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011; Hassel, Reference Hassel2011). Any broader interpretation about what these episodes imply for leadership, cohesion, or narrative representation is reserved for the Discussion and is not asserted here beyond what the diary entries explicitly record (Bjaaland, Reference Bjaaland2011; Hassel, Reference Hassel2011).