Polar Explorer's Day

May 21, representatives of one of the most dangerous, but at the same time romantic professions – polar explorers - celebrate their professional holiday in Russia. This is not a rare profession in this country: thousands of Russians work on the shores of the Arctic seas, at weather stations, and on icebreakers on the Northern sea route.

The date was not chosen by chance: it is the anniversary of the establishment of North Pole-1, the first Soviet manned drifting station in the Arctic Ocean in 1937, in May 1937. Four polar explorers - Ivan Papanin, the head of expedition, hydrobiologist and oceanologist Peter Shirshov, astronomer and magnetologist Evgeny Fedorov and radio operator Ernst Krenkel - spent 274 days, from the end of May 1937 to February 19, 1938 at the station. During this time the station and the researchers drifted more than 2000 km from the pole to the shores of Greenland.

In addition to four polar explorers, whose names became known to the whole world, the other expedition members were the staff of the Northern sea route (its head Otto Schmidt was the initiator of the North Pole-1) and the pilots who took the researchers to the station including Heroes of the Soviet Union Mikhail Vodopyanov and Vasily Molokov.

The expedition was based in Rudolf Island, is the northernmost island of the Franz Josef Archipelago. In the summer of 1936, the camp for 60 people with an airfield and radio beacon was built there. 

The major goal of the expedition was to study weather conditions, sea currents and ice in the heart of the Arctic. Soon after the start of the drift, the station provided meteorological data for transarctic flights of Valery Chkalov and Mikhail Gromov from the USSR to North America.

After the expedition, four explorers were awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union title. At the end of the campaign, the explorers became honorary members of the State Geographical Society (the Russian Geographical Society was so called at that time).