Forgotten Fridtjof

Coming to you today with another academic paper of mine recently published with Endeavour. I hope you enjoy it!

Abstract

The tragic story of Captain Robert Falcon Scott and the British Antarctic Expedition (1910–13) is a cornerstone of British cultural memory. While Scott’s heroism has been widely studied in historiography and biography, the commercial mobilization of his public image has received comparatively little attention. This paper offers the first systematic analysis of advertisements associated with Scott’s final expedition, combining visual social semiotic analysis with archival research to examine the interplay of commercial representations and public perceptions of polar exploration. Building on the work of Nielsen, it identifies three overlapping themes — Heroic Masculinity in Extreme Environments, Domestic Comfort and Civilized Consumption, and Scientific Authority and Rationalized Expertise — through which advertisers constructed Scott’s image and conveyed values associated with the expedition. The analysis shows that scientific labour was consistently marginalized; instead, brands prioritized emotionally imagery of endurance, suffering and—following Scott’s death—martyrdom. When invoked, science served primarily to signal technical ingenuity and product reliability, often supported by testimonials. At the same time, references to domestic comfort served to bridge Antarctica and home, enabling consumers to participate imaginatively in the expedition. The paper also examines more recent reinterpretations of Scott’s image in advertising, demonstrating how he endures as a flexible cultural symbol and a lasting emblem of British exceptionalism.

Read more here:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160932726000220

My thanks to the Open University’s RESDEV fund for financial assistance with the images used in this paper.