ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a particularly fraught nexus of discovery and imperium: the First Austro-Hungarian North Polar Expedition (18724). More commonly known as the Tegetthoff Expedition or the Weyprecht-Payer Expedition, the expedition was celebrated for its discovery of Franz Josef Land, the northernmost terrain in Eurasia. After briefly discussing the key events in the chronology of the expedition, the chapter demonstrates how, despite all its majestic rhetoric, the Tegetthoff Expedition and the discovery of Franz Josef Land proved too slippery for any one project, imperial or otherwise. Just as the Tegetthoff Expedition was too slippery an entity for any singular imperial project or political interpretation, the knowledge it produced proved liminal and contradictory. Over time, the ice conveyed the ship to one of the last significant discoveries of new land in the European age of exploration, which they christened Franz Josef Land in November 1873.
