One month before departure…
95 years ago on April 10th, airship NORGEleft Rome for the North Pole, with the aim of achieving the first complete overflight of the Arctic region. Project Shadow Of Norge intends to celebrate this crucial historical step by a series of initiatives and events that will narrate and virtually retrace the journey.
What we wish to remember
May 12th, 1926, the NORGE airship, built in Italy but registered in Norway, flew over the North Pole, connecting Europe and America for the first time through an Arctic transpolar route, crossing unexplored regions. The expedition, officially named “Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile Transpolar Flight” departed Rome on April 10th and reached the village of Teller, Alaska, on May 14th.
The journey, divided into different stages, was a record for an airship like the NORGE; stopovers were in the United Kingdom, Norway and the Soviet Union; in the latter country, the NORGE remained for a relatively long time, to prepare the subsequent part of the trip, and a technical-scientific collaboration was established between the crew and various local institutions.
NORGE’s expedition leader was the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (1872-1928), holder of many world records in polar exploration and the first man to reach the South Pole on December 14th, 1911. He was responsible for the institutional organization and the conceptual plan of the journey. The NORGE, technically called N1, had been built and was conducted – both from an operational and logistical point of view – by the Italian engineer Umberto Nobile (1885-1978). The expedition was made possible through crucial financial support of the American tycoon Lincoln Ellsworth (1880-1951), who had the role of assistant navigator of the airship.
Initiatives
Project Shadow of Norge involves the creation of an augmented reality App that will allow you to see the airship in the places of its journey, a historical reconstruction of the events “in real-time” that will be available on the ad-hoc website and social networks. A cycle of Webinars will be proposed in the project’s framework to foster cultural discussion of the historical events.
More updates coming soon!