As a stateless Russian refugee, Vladimir Nabokov possessed no travel documents other than a Nansen passport. In “Speak, Memory,” he writes: “The League of Nations equipped émigrés who had lost their Russian citizenship with a so-called ‘Nansen’ passport, a very inferior document of a sickly green hue. Its holder was little better than a criminal on parole and had to go through most hideous ordeals every time he wished to travel from one country to another, and the smaller the countries the worse the fuss they made.”
Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930), a Norwegian national, at various periods in his remarkable life was a champion ice skater and skier, Polar explorer, scientist and diplomat. In 1921 he was appointed by the League of Nations to be the first High Commissioner for Refugees.
