Sponsors: The Antarctic Circle and The Fram Museum
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Oslo & Norway
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Optional Excursion to Uranienborg
Optional Excursion to Horten, Tønsberg, Sandefjord and Larvik
Optional Excursions: Oslo-Bergen via Finse and Coastal Cruise: Bergen to Tromsø
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FRIDAY Optional all-day bus excursion to the National Library, Ski Museum and Uranienborg, Amundsen's house. We will start off at 9:30am with a visit to the National Library of Norway to view some of the Antarctic material in its collections. Library staff will make a presentation on the Library's polar holdings. (All attendees are invited to this without charge, not just those on the optional excursion.) Lunch will be included at Frognerseteren, a traditional restaurant overlooking Oslo. After lunch there will be a stop at the Ski Museum at nearby Holmenkollen. Price for the excursion will be NOK 650 per person which is approximately US$75, £58, €70.
SouthPole-sium Registration. From 5pm or so onward.
Opening reception of the SouthPole-sium in the Gjøa Building at 7pm.
Antarctic film shown in the Auditorium, Gjøa Building at 8pm. Either an Amundsen film or something not too heavy and a little wacky! The reception will continue outside the Cinema for those who wish. SATURDAY (13 May 2017. Daytime events in the adjacent Norwegian Maritime Museum)
9:30 (necessitated by the bus and ferry timetable). Welcome by the sponsors. Housekeeping items. Roundtable: Attendees introduce themselves and their interests extensively (throughout morning).
Noon. Book launches starting with Brad Borkan and David Hirzel.
12:30 Lunch.
Group photo by the Polar Party statues, weather permitting.
1:30 - 5:00 Afternoon. Expanded talk (up to 40 minutes) on Norway in the Antarctic by Geir Kløver, Director of the Fram Museum. Followed by short presentations (up to 15 minutes) through the end of the day, possibly some moderated discussions.
2:00. Deadline for Contest submissions.
5:00 Adjournment.
7:00 Reception in the Gjøa Building, followed by the Banquet on the deck of the Fram. The Master of Ceremonies at the Banquet and following will be Rick Dehmel. (He did a great job in Scotland.)
Short after-dinner talk(s) and a polar auction. If not on the deck of the Fram then in the Gjøa Building. SUNDAY (14 May 2017. Daytime events in the adjacent Norwegian Maritime Museum)
9:30 Continuation of Saturday's short presentations and possibly some moderated discussions. Book launch(es).
12:30 SouthPole-sium concludes.
12:30 Lunch.
Afternoon. Continuation of sessions or perhaps the showing of several Polar films.
Diehard Dinner. For those still around, come along to the Olympen, an unusual and highly relaxing restaurant in Grønland. It's known for its extensive collection of beers. Those who are interested can gather there at 7pm or so, order off the menu and pay on their own. They have a large somewhat private alcove in the back that we might try to book if there's sufficient interest. MONDAY (15 May 2017)
Optional all-day bus excursion to Horten, Tønsberg, Sandefjord and Larvik. These town have important connections to Antarctic whaling, exploration and C.A. Larsen. Lunch will be included at the Atlantic Hotel. Price for the excursion will be NOK 650 per person which is approximately US$75, £58, €70. MOVIES
We have at least four movies we'd like to show sometime during the SouthPole-sium. Two are serious and two are strictly for entertainment (and may not even succeed in that).
On Friday night as the Reception winds down, probably around 8 or 8:30 we'd like to show in the Cinema one of the wacky ones. It's up to you to decide. The first option is Quick Before it Melts (1964). This has to be one of the worst movies ever made. What saves it for us is it purportedly takes place in the Antarctic. It stars Robert Morse ('How to Succeed in Business without Trying') and George Maharis (remember the TV series 'Route 66?') Actually Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton get a mention. You can see a trailer at http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/278371/Quick-Before-It-Melts-Original-Trailer-.htmlThe second option is South of Sanity (2012). What's interesting about this is that it is the first feature length fictional film shot entirely on location in Antarctica at "Routledge Research Station" (UK's Rothera Station). And the actors are all BAS overwinterers! A caution: "Contains strong gory violence" (such as death by ice ax and electric drill!). Apparently the "crew used a children's face painting kit for makeup and utilized food coloring and syrup for fake blood." The trailer is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So3cFrApCGE
We'll see one Friday night and the other at another time or not at all.
The more serious ones include a restored film on Byrd's Second Antarctic Expedition that Laura Kissel, the Polar Archivist at The Ohio State University, is bringing along, and a preview version of Tom Henderson's film on American Antarctic aviation, "Ice Eagles." See the trailer at a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZa1R4YTUFk
Here's what Laura says about the film: "Culled from ten reels of 35mm film found in the papers of Admiral Richard E. Byrd and recently preserved by the National Film Preservation Foundation, Byrd 1933 is a glorious cinematic record of the famed explorer's expeditions in 1928-30 and 1933-35. This unprecedented visual diary, shot by Paramount Studios cameramen, was largely a silent film with some short studio recreations. Through extensive archival research in Byrd's own papers, filmmaker Pamela I. Theodotou has painstakingly cataloged film clips using the scripts for Byrd's lectures, crafting a film that captures the expedition as a whole. Byrd's own voice and the environmental and animal sounds of Antarctica originally recorded by scientists on the expedition can be heard in the film thanks to audio found in and adapted from Ohio State's Byrd Papers archive."
You can see a trailer at https://vimeo.com/106352841