Compasses are pretty useless at the Poles, so how did they find it?
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The geographic poles and the magnetic poles are very far apart from each other. So a compass will work reasonably well near the geographic south pole but will point towards the magnetic south pole. However it is still not as accurate as closer to the equator because the magnetic field lines does not always point directly to the magnetic poles.
The Norwegian expedition that reached the South Pole first used techniques developed for ship navigation. The daily navigation were done by dead reckoning, basically go in a straight line and count on the odometer how far you have gone. They either used the compass for this or they used land features like mountains and rocks or even the position of the Sun. But for more accurate navigation throughout the trip they used astronomical observations. Depending on where you are on the globe the position of the stars, Sun, Moon and planets will be different. By measuring the position of these accurately they were able to locate their position with very high accuracy. At the South Pole they spent days making these observations to make sure they were in the correct position. This also involved making small excursions in four directions to make observations that indicated what hemisphere they were in.
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