"Titillating photo essays of Sudanese nannies tripping over their own mammaries go only so far."
I see you don't read National Geo.
I was thinking more along the lines of the recent article
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/01/nansen/sides-text
1,000 Days in the Ice
Norway's Fridtjof Nansen was a pioneer of polar exploration.
He built a ship in 1892, stocked it for 5 YEARS and let it freeze in the Arctic ice, hoping the drift would take him to the Pole. When it didn't 2 of them set off with dogs and ended up spending 18 MONTHS on foot in the Arctic. The 2 of them and the ship all made it back. And yes, they had guns.
"For all of Nansen's protean accomplishments (like the first traverse of Greenland), it was the harrowing journey of the Fram between 1893 and 1896 that gave his life story real drama. The expedition was predicated on an idea so outlandish that the leading polar authorities of the day, including the Royal Geographical Society, considered it suicidal. "
"The two men aimed not for the Fram, which had drifted out of reach anyway, but for the distant archipelago of Franz Josef Land, some 600 miles to the south. Their desperate journey over the floes must surely rank as one of the most miserable and arduous polar slogs ever attempted."
The summer passed and another winter set in...
"Using a broken sled runner as a pick, Nan*sen and Johansen built an improvised lair. There they stayed for the next nine months, sharing the same greasy sleeping bag and subsisting on polar bear broth and bear meat fried in walrus blubber. Trapped in such harsh circumstances, they kept their sanity remark*ably intact. "We didn't quarrel," Johansen would say later. "The only thing was that I have a bad habit of snoring "
"As the spring thaws came, Nansen and Johan*sen ventured out of their hovel. They wound south through the archipelago by ski and kayak. When a walrus upended Nansen's kayak, they put in at Northbrook Island to dry out. There they began to prepare for a dangerous journey across the open water to Spitsbergen, where they nursed an overly sanguine hope of being rescued by a Norwegian whaling or sealing vessel."
They ship made it back the same month they did.
Later in life...
"After the death of Eva, Nansen squired an impressive succession of international beauties while pursuing a career as a humanitarian. Named a high commissioner for the League of Nations, he helped repatriate prisoners of war and resolve refugee crises in Turkey and Russia following World War I—hard, peripatetic work that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922. "
