While visiting friends in Norway, I discovered that Oslo's Fram Museum was full of traditional kayaks. Of all the kayaks on display, there was one that I recognized. It was one of the canvas-and-bamboo kayaks used in 1895 by expedition leader Fridtjof Nansen and Fram crewmember Hjalmar Johansen in their attempt to reach the North Pole. I'd seen it before in an engraving of bamboo kayaks in Derek Hutchinson's book, The Complete Book of Sea Kayaking, showing Nansen and Johansen in the kayaks lashed side by side, sailing the arctic waves. And there in the museum was one of the actual kayaks! I had no idea that any of these boats still existed.

When I got home, I checked through all the books I knew of about kayak surveys and found no mention of the Fram kayaks. The only reference I could find was a web page by canoe, kayak and small-boat historian, Craig O'Donnell, who had reverse-engineered pictures of Nansen's kayak into a set of plans. Even O'Donnell didn't know whether or not the kayaks still existed. When Harvey Golden, a well-versed student of traditional kayaks, came to my town to talk about competing in the 2000 Greenland National Kayak Championship, I asked him about the bamboo kayaks. He had never heard of the Fram kayaks either, but he said someone should survey them before they aged further and deteriorated. A seed was planted in my mind.