Token given to a sponsor of Georgy Sedov's expedition to the North Pole Gold and enamel, In 1912 Georgy Yakovlevich Sedov gave a talk on his planned sledge expedition to the North Pole. As the tsarist government had declined to provide the essential finances for the expedition, a collection of voluntary funds was organized, and gold, silver and bronze badges issued (depending on the size of the contribution) with the inscription: [trans.] For a contributor to the expedition of Lieutenant Sedov to the North Pole. The Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen owned a gold badge of this type.