Today I would like to present Mr. Nansen to you. Mr. Nansen (or Herr Nansen in German/Norwegian) is a polar bear I met a few weeks ago. He loves the Arctic and would like to try out some mountaineering, so we decided we could do some trips together.

Mr. Nansen has got the same surname as the famous Norwegian Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen who is his big hero. His dream is to become the first polar bear who reaches the South Pole.

I don’t know Mr. Nansen’s first name. He is a bit old-fashioned, and we are not on a first name basis yet. He says, that is “because we haven’t slept in the same sleeping bag for ten months yet.” (I guess you have to be Norwegian to understand this.)

Anyway, Mr. Nansen is a very cool bear with a good sense of humour. Despite his young age, he has got a lot of experience from the Arctic region, having travelled mainly around Svalbard and Franz Josef Land. On the other hand he is very inexperienced in the mountains. Until recently, he said, he preferred to stay at sea level, “because that’s where you find most seals. They are rarely seen up in the mountains, you know.” Now he wants to go to the mountains because he has heard that there are other bears in the mountains which are brown – which he says he won’t believe until he has seen one.

Mr. Nansen is going to join me on the Mont Blanc trip. He couldn’t afford the plane ticket, so I will smuggle him in my hand luggage. He said he would pay me back in Swiss chocolate. Let’s see how Mr. Nansen tackles the high altitude in the Alps!