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Large octavo. Blue full morocco with elaborate gilding to inner and outer boards, spine and all edges. Marbled endpapers in blue and multi-colored capital threads to head and foot of bookblock. Signed by Zaehnsdorf, London, and decorated with Jonas Liedâs personal supralibro on front board and his book plate on inner front board (both bearing the identical coat of arms). Minor rubbing to end of spines only, else in perfect shape. 3 ff., 162 pp., with a frontispiece and 58 illustrations on (unnumbered) plates in b/w, one inset-map along the text and 2 further maps on a fold-out sheet. The front free endpaper bearing the manuscript dedication from Olof Sverdrupâs hands, page 20 with an interesting manuscript annotation in pencil, signed by Lied (see commentary below, please)., a well preserved copy. A widely travelled book throwing light on the relationship of two widely travelled prominent figures of Arctic and North-East-Polar-Exploration including Otto Sverdrup, one of the Norwegian polar explorersâ triumvirate, that else only included Fritjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen. The story behind this particular copy of the memories of Otto Sverdrup, the captain of Nansenâs famous ship âFramâ, goes as this : At the age of almost 75 years, Sverdrup published some accounts of his travels in the polar north. This one at hands, deals with his travels along the northern coast of Siberia all the way to Alaska. Sverdrup sent a copy of it with a short manuscript dedication to Jonas Lied - at that time based in London - as a rememberance of an event, that had bound these two people together forever, which namely was when one of Jonas Liedâs vessels in the Northern Seas saved Sverdrup, whose ship had run aground, from an unvoluntary overwinter in the polar drift ice. Jonas Lied apparently higly estimated this gesture from the much elder polar explorer and had the London book bindery Zaehnsdorf, who frequently worked for him, to bring the book in his personal binding, i.e. with his coat of arms as a supralibro on the front board. While Otto Sverdrup was one of the most prominent figures in the history of Artic exploration, Jonas Lied certainly is lesser known to the general public, but his life as an extremely skilled entrepreneur, as an illustrious person in world politics and diplomacy, as a wanderer between the worlds of East and West, and last but not least as a connoisseur in and supporter of the arts would all together certainly serve as the perfect blueprint for a blockbusting Hollywood-biopic : Lied was the founder of the Norwegian Siberian Company, which aim was to explore the Far East of Siberia through the rivers Ob and Yenisey, as there still was a lack of accessibility of these regions through other means like railway networks. For that purpose Lied gained Russian citizenship, which was neccessary to become a shareholder of Russia-based companies. Lied was extremely successful in this and it is said, that at the peak he ran over 400 marine vessels serving the route from Europe to Inner Siberia through the Russian rivers mouthing in the Polar Seas. One of the main tasks of his fleet therefore was to deliver construction material, cement and ironware, for the expansion of the Transsiberian railway network (which was established first about a decade before) in Inner Siberia. It is no exaggeration at all to call Lied a daredevil in that respect as a huge part of his fleet consisted of ships that actually were not designed to navigate other than coastal waters and certainly not to sail the rough Polar Seas. Anyway, the employment of coastal steamers, which silhouette on the horizon is relatively flat, reminding of military vessels used to defeat submarines led to another rather curious encounter between Sverdrup and Lied shortly after the outbreak of WWI. This was when Sverdrup on his way north was informed about a group of ships, that were identified as German destroyers (âTorpedojägerâ). Upon that notification he left his route and seeked shelter in a nearby fjord to ungo the risk of getting hit by a torpedo. In the book at hands, the scene is described on p. 22. And exactly there, in the margins, Jonas Lied annotated in pencil: âOur ships. J. L.â (in Norwegian: âvore skibe. J. L.). Meaning : A convoy of Liedâs fleet was apparently mistaken by Sverdrup as the German Navy at war! During the years of civil war following the Revolution in 1917/1918, Lied had to engage in international politics and diplomacy to save his investments in Russia from bolshevistâs seizure, in that course he closely met and negotiated with world prominent figures such as Lenin, Trotzki, King George, Winston Churchill and many more. These very times probably also contain what could be called the most illustrious story to tell from Liedâs life - this was, when he was engaged in a serious plan to unset the family of the Russian Czar, who was a close relative of King George, from bolshevistâs captivity using his fleet of vessels on Yenisey. Although that plan never saw the light of day, its existence was verified by several independend sources. Surprisingly Lied thereafter was able to continue his economic activities in Russia under Leninâs New Economy Deal from 1921 until 1931, when Lied secretly regained Norwegian Citizenship, leaving Russia for good. At that moment, Lied - as he tells us in his memoirs - had lost almost everything that not yet had been relocated from Russia to abroad. Fortunately his important collection of icons for the most part was not affected (it survived the vicissitudes of history and was exhibited in Russia in 2005). - Simply a beautiful book with a fine historical background. - Exactly this copy was sold on auction in Oslo in April 2022 (Sagen & DelÃ¥s, The polar library of Otto R. Norland, No. 145, estimated at 8.000 to 12.0000 NOK, reaching a hammer price of 16.000 Norwegian Crowns, app. equal to Euro 1.650 at the date of sale, buyers premium of 25% and VAT not i.