Norwegian Adventurer Heyerdahl Dies

AP | DOUG MELLGREN

[junta]

Will the multiculturalist kooks list him as another "dead white male?" He lived life as it was supposed to be lived though I suspect he would have chosen a blood death over a straw death as was the case.

[mfulstone]

Thor Heyerdahl 1914-2002

Crossing The Bar

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

[RLK]

Don't forget Mr Joshua Slocum..........I really liked his life story.

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After years of study I came to the conclusion the Spray was one of the best rugged cruising sailbot designs ever done.

[RLK]

His theory about the South Pacific Islands being settled from South America that inspired the whole Kon-Tiki trip has since been proven completely wrong by DNA evidence; they were in fact settled from Southeast Asia.

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I never believed in Thor's theory, but the adventure was a high.

[truth_seeker]

His theory about the South Pacific Islands being settled from South America that inspired the whole Kon-Tiki trip has since been proven completely wrong by DNA evidence; they were in fact settled from Southeast Asia.

That is probably true, but it doesn't detract from his lifetime of challenging previously held beliefs about man's journeys across the many seas.

The man was a big dreamer and a big doer. May he rest in a peacefull Valhalla, with his Nordic explorer brethren.

I have a book compliling his various voyages. The title is "Early Man and the Ocean", Thor Heyerdahl, 1978, Vintage Books.

[XBob]

6 - bttt - "To Thor Heyerdahl: God be with you sir....many dreams of my youth were inspired by you. "

And may I add, many of my accomplishments in traveling around the world, though I did it in a bit more comfort.

[Squantos]

Indeed , I have a model of it on my shelf here as we speak....... not a bad little oyster boat rebuilt eh.....

Stay Safe !

[lentulusgracchus]

Thor Heyerdahl went his mother's hopes one better: instead of becoming a scholar of the great deeds of ancient men, he went out and replicated them. Like you said, it doesn't matter that science has shown that he was wrong about the ancient migrations; it matters a lot more that, although he could have spent his life in comfort ashore, he went out into the elements and positively emulated the great navigations that made the Polynesians' names for them.

I read Kon-Tiki and Aku-Aku, which were staples when I was growing up; both were fascinating reads. I also read Richard Halliburton's Magic Carpet and The Royal Road to Romance. For a kid growing up, they were magic. Why substitute a more "modern" book? Give your boys copies of the Real Deal.

Halliburton was, IIRC, executed by the Japanese when he fell afoul of their Mandates. At least, he was supposed to be close to the Marianas when he vanished. Whether he was working for the U.S. Navy, ....who knows? That was said about both Halliburton and Amelia Earhart. While they think they know what happened to her, his story is probably rotting in some footlocker full of old captured but untranslated Japanese documents in a U.S. government warehouse somewhere.

[snopercod]

Gene Landrum? No, I've not.

[IronJack]

Bingo.

[texlok]

He was what you'd call a man's man. People told him something he believed was impossible, he'd risk his life to prove them wrong. You don't find too many people these days who are like that. To think, about 10 years or so before his first "little" journey, he was deathly afraid of the water (until he fell into a raging river and had to swim his way out of it).

[texlok]

A while back I remember reading about his theory that the Norwegian "Vikings" were actually Christian. Other than exploding what is taken as standard history, I can't recall precisely why this was so important and controversial. Can someone explain why this discovery was so important

I believe it had something to do with him saying the "Vikings" who came to North America hundreds of years before Columbus was even born came as basically "missionaries" so to speak.

[Travis McGee]

YES! on R. L. Stevenson.

Did you know he wrote Treasure Island in a month on a vacation as a serial to be read to (faulty memory at work here) an ill nephew? A chaper a day, no rewrites. Pure natural God given genius for novels and poetry.

[steve-b]

It depends on the exact period you mean. The era of Viking raiders spanned the period when Christianity was making inroads into Scandinavia.

[My back yard]

Adventure; the man defined the word in the 20th century. My son had a World Geography project recently that required him to write of an adventurer and tell of his expedition. Heyerdahl wasn't even on the list of choices. I recommended the Kon-Tiki expedition and my son loved the idea. He loved the book. The whole class enjoyed it too, though they had never heard of him. Sail on, brave man, to such an adventure we cannot imagine.

[wardaddy]

"Spray" bump!

[wardaddy]

Didn't he live out his final days in Samoa?