About Thor Heyerdahl

Thor Heyerdahl was born on 6 October 1914 in Larvik (a small coastal city south of Oslo), where he also grew up. His father, also called Thor, was a brewer, and his mother, Alison, was head of the Larvik area museums association. It was Alison who inspired Thor’s life-long interest in animals and the natural sciences. At one point he even had a zoological museum in his father’s old brewery. Thor was good at drawing, and by the age of eight he was drawing imaginative pictures of South Sea islands and had resolved to become an explorer when he grew up.

Thor enjoyed cross-country running and long hikes in the wilderness.  In his youth there were many outings in the mountains of southern and central Norway where he learned how to survive on his own in nature with limited means. Later on he and his friend Erik Hesselberg went on long treks together, exploring the Rondane and Jotunheimen mountain regions, camping under open skies – or in snow caves.

Thor always had his dog, Kazan, along with him on these trips. Heyerdahl was very much a dog person and had dogs most of his life. Kazan was behind Thor’s one and only appearance in an advertisement – for a brand of dog biscuit. And on one of their wilderness treks, when weather conditions forced Heyerdahl and a companion to remain encamped in their snow cave, dog biscuits were their only food.

Thor wrote about his treks in articles that were published in the weekly magazine Tidens Tegn (Sign of the Times) and a variety of other publications, often illustrated with his own photographs or his subtle and witty line drawings. Gradually the articles he wrote became more pedagogical in tone, with such topics as “How to build an igloo”, and Heyerdahl gained experience in communicating ideas while becoming a familiar presence in a network of outdoor enthusiasts.

The peoples of South America did not have seaworthy rafts or boats that could take them as far as the Polynesian islands, according to scholars with whom Heyerdahl discussed the subject. So in order to prove that it was possible, he decided to build a raft and make the journey himself. On 28 April 1947 Thor and five other men left Callao in Peru on a balsawood raft called the Kon-Tiki, destined for Polynesia. The raft ran aground on the Raroia atoll in Polynesia after 101 days in open waters. Heyerdahl had disproved the skeptics who had insisted such a journey was impossible.

The next destination was Easter Island. When Thor was 16 years old he told one of his classmates, Arnold Jacoby, that one day he would solve the mystery of Easter Island. In search of irrefutable proof of his theory about the population of the Polynesian islands, in 1955 Heyerdahl took five archeologists to Easter Island to look for traces of the first people to have arrived there. Among their discoveries was an engraving on one of the island’s hallmark stone statures depicting a boat with sails. It resembled boats depicted on several objects in South America. Heyerdahl believed that the engraving clearly evinced that peoples from South America were the first to settle on Easter Island. While Heyerdahl believed he had found much evidence, not all Pacific researchers were similarly convinced. Nevertheless a solid basis for further investigation into the island’s prehistory had been made.

Many more years passed before Heyerdahl resumed his search for the first inhabitants of the eastern Polynesian islands. It was not until 1986 that he returned to Easter Island, this time with a Czech engineer and archeologists from the Kon-Tiki Museum.

This expedition is best known for the experiment in moving a 15-ton stone statue, upright – using rope – and succeeding. This was how the natives would have transported the monumental statues around the island several hundred years ago, Heyerdahl claimed.

Excavations at Anakena Beach showed that the first human beings to arrive on the island were Polynesians from the west. This was contrary to Heyerdahl’s theory. Other research however made clear that there must have been contact at a later point in time between Easter Island and areas that today constitute Peru and Bolivia.

Thor Heyerdahl’s voyage on the Kon-Tiki raft in 1947 reinforced the prevailing scholarship on the role of the oceans in the dissemination of culture in ancient times. Later Heyerdahl repeated the crossing on other primitive vessels, to again demonstrate that the world’s oceans were conduits for the ancient civilizations, rather than insurmountable obstacles. In the process, he established a new methodology that later became an accepted discipline: maritime experimental archaeology.

As human beings we are all the same, we all face the same practical challenges in life. This was one of Thor Heyerdahl’s fundamental beliefs with respect to humanity. Furthermore, he believed in the capability of people to live and work together harmoniously, all ethnic, political, and religious differences notwithstanding.

By the end of the 1950s and up until the beginning of the 1990s Heyerdahl was particularly devoted to working for global peace. He appealed to the highest authorities and most powerful politicians in several countries, including Andrej Gromyko and John F. Kennedy.

Heyerdahl’s ideas and values resonated with those of the World Federalist Movement, and he became a dedicated member. WFM is an organization that works for peace, for cooperation across national borders, and for a world order grounded in international law and justice. Thor was eventually appointed honorary vice president of the organization.

Heyerdahl was also involved in the work of World United Colleges. This organization runs several secondary schools around the world where youths from different countries live and study together. The organization was founded during the Cold War on the idea that such schools would stimulate young people with varied cultural backgrounds to learn from and about each other.

In 1978 Heyerdahl and an international crew sailed from Iraq to Djibouti on the reed boat Tigris. Heyerdahl intended to sail into the Red Sea as well, but warfare in the region prevented him from doing so. Instead he chose to burn the Tigris and send an impassioned letter to then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kurt Waldheim, signed by the boat’s entire crew:

“Our planet is bigger than the reed bundles that have carried us across the seas and yet small enough to run the same risks unless those of us still alive open our eyes and minds to the desperate need of intelligent collaboration to save ourselves and our common civilization from what we are about to convert into a sinking ship.”

A side of Heyerdahl unfamiliar to most is that of the artist. His interests lay in ancient history, in anthropology and archeology, but his natural talent lay in the ability to engage people in discourse around a particular phenomenon. He was perpetually communicating all that he experienced, and masterfully, through his well-written books, his films, pictures, lectures and presentations.

Like most children, Thor Heyerdahl loved to draw and paint when he was little. His early drawings were illustrations for stories about treks in the Norwegian wilderness published in newspapers and magazines. These drawings were somewhat naive, but nevertheless amusing. While traveling the South Pacific with his wife Liv in 1937–1938 he made a series of caricature drawings based on their experiences. In the following years and up until the time of the Kon-Tiki expedition, his drawings were infused with social commentary, with, for example, respect to perceptions of race, blind faith in progress, and the politics of wealth distribution, and he often added comments or captions.

Wood carving was another skill that captivated Thor Heyerdahl throughout his life. Early in his teens he displayed a talent for this particular handicraft. The Heyerdahl family has preserved a fantastic little tableau of a South Pacific island that Thor carved on the lid of a wooden chest. And when he was much older Heyerdahl carved two Kon-Tiki heads on the immense entrance portal to Casa Kon-Tiki, his home in Túcume, Peru.

Thor Heyerdahl was honorary vice president of the World Federalist Movement, an organization working for peace, collaboration across borders, and for a world order in accordance with international law and justice. He was also vice president of the Worldview International Foundation which works to implement new technical assistance in various educational forms in developing countries, and through practical instruction tries to improve understanding between developing and developed nations. Heyerdahl was also an international trustee of the United World Colleges which brings students with different cultural backgrounds together at schools in many countries. As a natural scientist, he held many presentations and published articles about the threats to the global environment, with a particular view to oceanic pollution. He was an advisor to World Wildlife Fund International and a member of the committee responsible for selecting the annual winner of the UN’s Environment Programme awards. Heyerdahl was also involved in establishment of the Green Cross organization with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1993.