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Philosophy For Polar Explorers Updated Edition Download

Philosophy for Polar Explorers by Erling Kagge explores the connection between nature and personal growth through the lens of polar exploration. The book emphasizes the importance of grounding oneself in nature, embracing solitude, and recalibrating one's life amidst modern distractions. It serves as a reflection on the lessons learned from both the physical challenges of exploration and the introspective journey of self-discovery.

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393 views14 pages

Philosophy For Polar Explorers Updated Edition Download

Philosophy for Polar Explorers by Erling Kagge explores the connection between nature and personal growth through the lens of polar exploration. The book emphasizes the importance of grounding oneself in nature, embracing solitude, and recalibrating one's life amidst modern distractions. It serves as a reflection on the lessons learned from both the physical challenges of exploration and the introspective journey of self-discovery.

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ghuangriechphoa.chquuon.g
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Philosophy for Polar Explorers

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English translation copyright © 2006, 2019, 2020 by Erling Kagge
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a
division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in
Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random
House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Norway as Alt jeg
ikke lærte på skolen by Kagge Forlag AS, Oslo, in 2005. Copyright © 2005 by
Kagge Forlag AS. Originally published in English in Great Britain in slightly
different form by Pushkin Press, London, in 2006. This translation
originally published in hardcover in Great Britain in slightly different
form by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd., a division of
Penguin Random House Ltd., London, in 2019.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin
Random House LLC.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to Kenneth Steven for his translation
of the text and to Diane Oatley for her translation of the foreword.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Kagge, Erling, author.
Title: Philosophy for Polar explorers / Erling Kagge ; translated from the
Norwegian by Kenneth Steven.
Other titles: Alt jeg ikke lærte på skolen. English.
Description: First American edition. New York : Pantheon Books, 2020.
Translation of author’s Alt jeg ikke lærte på skolen, published in 2005.
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020019534 (print). LCCN 2020019535 (ebook).
ISBN 9781524749118 (hardcover). ISBN 9781524749125 (ebook).
Subjects: LCSH: Kagge, Erling—Travel—Polar regions. Kagge, Erling—
Philosophy. Polar regions—Discovery and exploration—Norwegian.
Explorers—Conduct of life.
Classification: LCC G875.K34 A3 2020 (print) | LCC G875.K34 (ebook) | DDC
910/.01— dc23
LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/​2020019534
LC ebook record available at lccn.loc.gov/​2020019535
Ebook ISBN 9781524749125
www.pantheonbooks.com
Cover photograph by Arctic-Images/Stone/Getty Images
Cover design by Kelly Blair
ep_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0
For Ingrid, Solveig, and Nor

Snow Globe, Ceal Floyer


Contents

Foreword: Grounding Myself in Nature

1. Setting My Own Compass

2. Getting Up Early

3. Training Myself in Optimism

4. Learning Not to Fear Greatness

5. Not Mistaking Probability for Possibility

6. Courage Can’t Be Kept in a Thermos

7. Having Something to Lose

8. Learning Not to Chase Happiness

9. Learning to Be Alone

10. Enjoying Small Helpings

11. Accepting Failure

12. Finding Freedom in Responsibility

13. Making Flexibility a Habit

14. Being Proactive with Luck


15. Allowing Goals to Come to Me

16. Resetting the Compass

Notes
Acknowledgements
Image Acknowledgements
Foreword: Grounding Myself in Nature

When I am feeling cold beneath the open sky, there’s an easy way
to warm up: I pull the hood of my anorak over my head, draw
the zipper up to my throat, and pick up my pace. When my body
heats up, first in my torso and then down my arms to my wrists,
and finally underneath my fingernails, I can stop. Then I take out
a mandarin, peel it, and slowly suck out the juice by pressing
each section gently against the roof of my mouth with my
tongue.
Suddenly I feel connected: connected with the person who
planted the tree, with the water the tree has drunk through its
roots, the earth that cushions these roots, the branch that has
carried the mandarin from fertilization to fruition, and the sun
that has helped to ripen it. And I feel grateful: grateful for being
warm again and for the feeling of being in contact with the
rhythms of nature.
At other times when I’m out on a walk, it’s as if I’m not
thinking at all. I seldom notice any activity along the way. My
mind goes into hibernation, and only very occasionally a solitary
thought will cross it: how the snowflakes beneath my skis are
created by a tiny drop of water, ten or twenty kilometres above
the Earth’s surface, becoming, piece by piece, a six-sided prism,
consisting of 90 per cent air. How it then floats down through the
atmosphere and lands on the ground in front of me. No two
snowflakes are alike, and none follow the same route. They are
often, though not always, symmetrical. Until my skis compress
them, that is.
Nature has its own language, experiences, and consciousness.
It tells us where we come from and what we should do on the
road ahead. I grew up without a television or a car (my father
considered both to be dangerously unhealthy) and spent a lot of
my free time in the forest, by the sea, and in the mountains, so I
have been spoon-fed this knowledge. Today, when the modern
world expects us to be available at all times, grounding yourself
in nature can be hard. I forget about it sometimes, and when I
look around, I get the feeling that many people forget about it all
the time.
Nature is about diversity. The more I remove myself from
nature and the more I increase my availability to the modern
world, the more restless I become. The more unhappy too. I am
no scientist, but my experience has been that, to a large extent,
feelings of insecurity, loneliness, and depression stem from the
flattening of the world that occurs when we are alienated from
nature. There is, of course, much to be said in favour of man-
made environments and new technology, but our eyes, nose,
ears, tongue, skin, brain, hands, and feet were not created for
choosing the road of least resistance. Mother Earth is 4.54 billion
years old, so it seems arrogant to me when we don’t listen to
nature and instead blindly place our trust in human invention.
In 2010, my Norwegian friend Børge Ousland, the Icelandic
polar explorer Haraldur Örn Ólafsson, and I crossed Vatnajökull,
Iceland’s largest glacier. We travelled light and carried all the food
and equipment we needed on our respective small runnerless
sleds, called pulks. By volume, Vatnajökull is the largest glacier in
Europe. It is made up of 3,100 cubic kilometres of ice and covers
8,100 square kilometres of south-east Iceland. As is often the
case with Icelandic glaciers, there are a number of volcanoes
beneath the ice. While we were on our way across it, a volcanic
eruption broke out in the neighbouring glacier, Eyjafjallajökull.
Hundreds of people were immediately evacuated and the air
traffic above a large part of Europe was suspended because of
the clouds of volcanic ash. We were never in danger, but the
experience showed me how a small volcano erupting in a
remote region of Iceland can have huge consequences for an
entire continent. Large volcanic eruptions can change the whole
world. I sometimes wonder if we need natural disasters like
these to remind us of the Earth’s rhythms and forces. I’d like to
think that’s not the case, and that people can choose to
reconnect with nature from time to time in a more peaceful way.
During the first twelve years of my life, my parents sent me
outdoors in all kinds of weather. I believe that at first I liked it,
but then I grew bored with it in my early teens. I began putting
my energy into indoor activities and partying instead. Seven or
eight years later, I started yearning for nature again. I missed the
forest, the mountains, and the ocean, the feeling of physical
exertion in the outdoors. It was a yearning that came from inside
me, a deep-felt need for close contact with elements not made
by machines. To feel the sun, rain, cold, wind, mud, and water on
my body. To listen.
I can identify with some of the thoughts Ernest Shackleton
described towards the end of his life as an explorer: “We had
seen God in his splendours, heard the text that Nature renders.
We had reached the naked soul of man.”
I have begun to wonder more about the paths I have chosen,
and those I have taken less consciously, to arrive at my current
location. In thinking about this, I found myself confronted with a
series of questions: Why push your endurance to the breaking
point? And why, with frostbite, blisters, and hunger still fresh in
your mind, would you choose to do it all again? When I started
doing expeditions, I was most interested in everything hidden
behind the horizon and not what was right in front of me. If I
went out walking, I wanted to walk for a long time and cover
great distances. I had not yet discovered the pleasure of a short
walk. Later, with teenage daughters, a demanding job, and a
newfound interest in art, I became aware that my life had
gradually changed, and I directed my thoughts inwards. This
resulted in two books—Silence: In the Age of Noise and Walking:
One Step at a Time—both of which are, in different ways, about the
silence we carry inside us.
Most important for me, all three books—this book and the
other two—are about being in contact with nature. One of the
things I have learned as an explorer is that every so often along
the journey, you have to stop and recalibrate, to take stock of
unexpected events or changes in the weather. This book is a
recalibration of sorts.

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