ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the image of the Norwegian polar explorer and national icon, Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930) in some recent Norwegian illustrated books and graphic narratives for children and young adults. All demonstrate a subversive urge to revise an earlier heroic tradition in ways that revitalize Nansen for less reverent and less patriotic generations of young readers, with inevitable consequences for the representation of the Arctic as a setting for a particular form of male heroism. Paradoxically, however, even the books in which Nansen is parodied, deflated or lampooned affirm his enduring centrality in the national imaginary.
