The volumes, Fram over Polhavet (1897), formed part of the working library of the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and accompanied him on multiple expeditions. Signed and annotated in his own hand, they represent an exceptional survival from the practical world of exploration.

As noted in Country Life, books of this kind were seldom carried in the field, making examples with direct expeditionary association particularly rare. Their survival offers a rare insight into what explorers read and relied upon in conditions of extreme isolation.