The legend of the dog Fram and the fate of the dogs on Georgy Sedov's North Pole expedition

Remember the boy in the film "Podkidysh" who dreamed of becoming, at the very least, a border-guard dog? He probably simply did not know the story of the legendary hound Fram.

Fram belonged to Georgy Sedov, who perished during the ill-starred expedition to the North Pole of 1914. After his master's death the mutt refused to eat and stayed to die on Sedov's grave. Verses and stories were written about this heroic dog, and stamps, children's albums and all manner of other things were made in his honour.

A splendid and heart-rending example of devotion. Yet, alas, Fram's valiant end is most likely just a pretty fairy tale, even if it was told in a book from the series "Lives of Remarkable People".

Sedov's expedition was not financed by the state but was carried out on private donations, and naturally economies had to be made on everything. To the small number of huskies brought from Tobolsk were added plain mongrels from Arkhangelsk. Fram was most likely a husky, while Sedov's favourite dog was a yard mongrel called Varnak. When the journey reached a dead end and the leader of the party died, and the remaining crew headed back, part of the cargo was simply abandoned, and the emaciated dogs were left behind too. Whether Fram was among them (or whether there was a Fram at all) is unknown, but it is unlikely that a husky, after several months of hauling sledges, would have grown so attached to a passenger that it would mourn on his snowy grave.

Nor are the details of Sedov's burial clear. More recent researchers even speak of a version in which the body of the expedition's commander was dismembered and fed to the dogs that had dragged the sledges from the place of his death to the ship. Whatever the truth, this does not diminish the hardships of the lives of the canine participants in the expedition.

But hardly anyone would dream of becoming a sledge dog.

In the photo: the wife of the Russian explorer Georgy Sedov with one of his dogs