100th Anniversary of Roald Amundsen’s Reaching the South Pole Event
The University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the taking of the South Pole with two days of events including a keynote address by polar explorer Olav Orheim.
Orheim will speak at 7 p.m. on Nov. 21, at the Collins Center for the Arts on the UMaine campus. He will discuss new knowledge on the attainment of the South Pole on the occasion of the 100th anniversary, and reflections on the personalities of legendary explorers Roald Amundsen, Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott, who were three legendary polar explorers involved in the race to the South Pole. Amundsen was the first to reach the South Pole.
The celebration continues Nov. 22, with a day of activities sponsored by UMaine’s Hudson Museum, including several events designed for school-aged children.
All activities, including Orheim’s talk, are free and open to the public.
“We’re very excited to have a celebration of the first taking of the South Pole and to have Olav Orheim coming to speak,” said Climate Change Institute Director Paul Mayewski, who has spent more than 40 years working in Antarctica. “He’s very, very prominent in European glaciology.”