![]() ![]() A code specialist from the Norwegian Embassy in Washington, she was the secretary of the expedition. Though remaining on dry land, Gerd Vold Hurum was the seventh, and perhaps most vital, member of the team. Bengt served as steward, in charge of rations, as well as translator, being the only crew member who spoke Spanish. Torstein Raaby was also a wartime telegrapher who had successfully provided the Allies with information on German warships through tapping the German’s communications.īengt Danielsson was a Swedish Sociologist specialising in Human Migration Theory. Knut Haugland was a telegraph operator who, during World War II had participated in the Norwegian heavy water sabotage in 1943, one of the most successful acts of sabotage in the war, preventing the Germans from obtaining heavy water to use in nuclear weapons. Thor made him the navigator on the voyage and, thanks to his arts education, was also the one who created the iconic Kon-Tiki image that adorned the raft’s sails. Throughout the voyage he gathered vast amounts of data, providing insights into this largely unstudied area of the ocean at the time.Įrik Hesselberg was a childhood friend of Thor’s who had, as a trained sailor, spent several years in the merchant navy. He asked if he could join the voyage and Thor agreed instantly, making him second in command. He was in the US studying cooling technology when he met Thor Heyerdahl by chance. Herman Watzinger was a thermodynamics engineer. In total, the six-man crew consisted of five Norwegians and one Swede. All had to be hardy and courageous – this was to be a long and treacherous voyage – and it wasn’t long before he’d found his team. ![]() ![]() Thor set about assembling a crew, each of which could bring a useful skill to the voyage. When making these claims, Heyerdahl was dismissed by most anthropologists with one, Herbert Spinden, exclaiming ‘Sure, see how far you get yourself sailing from Peru to the South Pacific on a balsa Raft!’ Not one to turn down such a challenge, even though it wasn’t necessarily serious, Thor Heyerdahl decided to do just that. There was also the legend of Kon-Tiki Viracocha, a native chief who is said to have set sail from Peru into the sunset on a balsawood raft. His primary evidence was the Moai statues on Rapa Nui (known in the West as Easter Island) which, he claimed, owed more to South American than Asian culture. Thor’s theory was that the islands making up Polynesia were settled from the West by natives of South America using ‘drift voyaging’ – basically building a raft with a sail and letting the ocean take you. But many remained unconvinced, including a Norwegian Explorer and Ethnographer by the name of Thor Heyerdahl. One theory, advanced in the 1930s is that the Islands were populated step-by-step from South-East Asia. One of the great mysteries of anthropology is how Polynesia – a vast pseudo-country in the Pacific spread triangularly between Rapa Nui, Hawaii and New Zealand – came to be inhabited by people with similar customs, cultures and, notably, languages. The Kon-Tiki voyage led by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl was a huge success and proved beyond doubt that Polynesia could have been settled from South America. ![]()
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