Erling Kagge is a Norwegian explorer, publisher and author, famous as the first explorer to conquer the three poles on foot: the North and South Poles and Mt. Everest. What makes his conquests all the more remarkable, is that all were unsupported.
An appeal of this book is his examination of his own and his peers’ impulse for adventure, an impulse he says, only a few humans retain into adulthood – some as an obsession.
He and fellow Norwegian, Børge Ousland, conquered the North Pole in 58 days in 1990. Both were in their late twenties and were the first to do so on skis, hauling all of their food and equipment on sledges without huskies, motorised aids or supply depots en route.
Now in his early sixties, he writes lucidly and with authority on the conditions to be overcome, and the tests of endurance and character involved. He writes modestly of his own achievements, admitting personal failings – concluding he should have embraced even greater hardships.
He explains there are three North Poles: the celestial (the North Star, or Polaris), magnetic, geographic and imaginary (mythic) North Poles, plus the North Pole as a state of being, the spirit of adventure lodged within every human heart, epitomised he says, by the outstretched limbs of a baby, reaching out towards each compass point.
His assessment of the character, the wide-ranging challenges in different eras and of differing leadership styles, is even-handed. He maintains this balance, whether writing of those he admires or not, exposing the all too human flaws of all without being judgemental.
He tells a good story too, whether of a sorrowful love story or of extreme peril when expeditions encountered a hungry polar bear, as two instances.
He ends by contemplating what motivates explorers to overcome such hardships. In his research, he discovered that many explorers had absent fathers, or fathers who died when their son was young, or (including himself) the father/son relationship was problematic. He cites Odysseus and Telemachus as an ancient model of the cost of adventuring on the whole family, but concludes that he cannot completely fathom even his own reasons.
On his victorious return, Kagge’s father told him bluntly that his adventure had been ridiculous and that if anyone in the family should have gone on the expedition, it should have been Erling’s brother, who was the better skier. But he was not as obsessed about the North Pole, he adds.
Available from good booksellers, in hard back, at £22.00