The Swedish polar explorer and geologist Nils Otto Gustaf Nordenskold (1869-1928) is best known as the leader of the Swedish South Polar Expedition of 1901-1903.

On Dec. 6, 1869, Otto Nordenskold was born in Småland. He entered the University of Uppsala in 1886, obtaining a doctor's degree in 1894. Between 1895 and 1897 he began his polar and subpolar travels on an expedition to the Tierra del Fuego and other Magellanic lands. In 1898 he visited the Alaskan Yukon and followed this in 1900 with a summer on Georg Karl Amdrup's expedition to eastern Greenland.

At the turn of the century, mainly through Nordenskold's initiative and with private funds, several nations, including Sweden, sent out Antarctic expeditions. One of the ships sent by the Swedes was the Antarctic, a sailing vessel with steam power that was captained by Carl Anton Larsen. Nordenskold's party, which left Sweden on Oct. 16, 1901, was landed by the Antarctic in...