The legend of Georgy Sedov's dog Fram and the fate of the dogs on his polar expedition

Remember the boy in the film "The Foundling" who dreamed of becoming a border guard dog, if nothing else? He probably just did not know the story of the legendary hound Fram. Fram belonged to Georgy Sedov, who perished during the ill-fated expedition to the North Pole in 1914. After his master's death, the mutt refused to eat and stayed on to die on Sedov's grave. Poems and stories were written about this heroic dog, and stamps, children's albums and all the rest of it were made in his honour. A splendid and tear-jerking example of devotion. Alas, however, Fram's valiant end is most likely just a pretty tale, even if it was told in a book from the "Lives of Remarkable People" series.

Sedov's expedition was not funded 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 that had sailed from Tobolsk were added plain mongrels from Arkhangelsk. Fram was most probably a husky, while Sedov's favourite dog was a yard dog named Varnak. When the journey reached a dead end and the leader of the party died, and the remaining team set off back, part of the cargo was simply abandoned, and the emaciated dogs were left behind as well. Whether Fram was among them (or whether there ever was a Fram at all) is unknown, but it is unlikely that in several months of hauling sledges a husky would have grown so attached to a passenger that it would mourn at his snowy grave.

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

But hardly anyone would dream of becoming a sled dog