A slab of driftwood and a fisherman's chart may be the crucial pieces of evidence which finally help to put to rest the mystery of what happened to Roald Amundsen - who beat the British explorer Captain Robert Scott in a race to the South Pole in 1911. Roald Amundsen went missing in June 1928 while searching for a fellow explorer, an Italian member of an airship crew which had itself disappeared in the Arctic. Amundsen's French-built seaplane is believed to have crashed near Bear Island in about 100 metres of water. Earlier this year, a chart was discovered from a Norwegian fishing boat, marking the spot where in 1933 it had snared a 3 metre object - possibly from the plane's wing. Tantalisingly, the object slipped away and disappeared into the sea.

Now the Norwegian Fisheries Minister Svein Ludvigsen, says Norway has a national responsibility to discover the fate of one of its famous sons. He said he'd personally bring pressure to carry out a search with a mini submarine as soon as possible.