One of my childhood’s mysteries was: who was the mysterious Queen Maud, whose name I saw on a large part of Antarctica in maps?
The grownups, whom I asked this question, were too busy in their affairs or about improving my deaf speech to take this question seriously.
No queen in the history books, which I read, had this name. I wondered whether there is a fairy tale, whose heroine has this name. I never saw or read about a real woman having this name.
In fact, the first time I saw Maud used as a woman’s name was in the movie “Harold and Maud”, which I saw several years after having seen Antarctica’s map.
The above happened in the pre-Internet era, when it was very difficult for me to find information which one’s parents and teachers don’t consider to be important or valuable.
For several years I forgot about this mystery. Once I remembered it again, few minutes’ worth of googling yielded the following facts.
The surprising conclusion was that even in pre-Internet stone age, it would have been sufficient to briefly glance through a book about modern history of Norway to find the answer to the Queen Maud mystery. The Queen Maud Land part of Antarctica is the area claimed by Norway. Queen Maud herself was a real person, and she was queen of Norway. The land in question was named by Roald Amundsen in honor of his queen.
