Returning from his ascent of Mount Saint Elias in 1897, the Duke of Abruzzi set about preparing an expedition with the aim of achieving what Nansen had failed to do: reaching the North Pole. Naturally, the duke, like every other explorer and adventurer of the time, held great admiration for Nansen and drew much inspiration from his innovations when planning his mission, including the use of skis, dog sleds, minimal equipment, and a non-military organization of his team. "I had companions with me, not subordinates," the duke claimed about the eleven Italians he had chosen for the journey and the nine Norwegians who would serve as officers and crew. All of them, upon returning home, made sure to praise the duke's leadership abilities. As with previous polar expeditions, all participants in this one were men, reflecting the era's views on the roles of the two genders. During the preparation of the mission, the duke met privately with Nansen in Norway, visited Spitsbergen for training in Arctic conditions, and traveled to Siberia to purchase sled dogs.

On each of these preparatory journeys, he was accompanied by his military assistant and kindred spirit in adventure, the ship captain Umberto Cagni, who was ten years his senior, whom he had met during his first naval operation in 1889 and who served as his right-hand man on the Mount Saint Elias mission. Additionally, the duke utilized what he had learned from the American explorer Robert Peary, who had already twice repeated his initial expedition to Greenland, which took place in 1886. In both of Peary's later expeditions, one during 1891-1892 and the other from 1893 to 1895, he crossed a corner of the island's ice sheet from the northwest coast to a bay in the northeast – two journeys of over 1,600 kilometers with dog sleds, through which he believed he proved for the first time that Greenland was an island and did not extend further north.