In Thor Heyerdahl's footsteps
Provided by:
Larvik kommune
Thor Heyerdahl was born an raised in Larvik, and remained in close contact with his city of birth throughout his life. In this audioguided track, you may follow in his footsteps from his peculiar and beautiful childhood home at the top of Steinbakken via places that had significance for his early education and youth. We will also take you to some of the memorial monuments erected in his honour, and perhaps show you how the Larvik environment might have has inspired the young Thor to explore new horizons.
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Points of interest
#1
Outside the childhood home
We are now standing outside Steingata 7, Thor Heyerdahl’s childhood home, and turning the clock back to Tuesday the 6th of October 1914, during the First World War. Inside the house, champagne corks are being popped. Thor Heyerdahl, the manager of Vestfold Brewery and Soft Drinks Factory, has a son. He already has a son and two daughters from a previous marriage, but they live with their mother in Germany. As for most men of the time, it was perhaps an even more joyful event when a male heir was born, especially as the manager is now 45 and his new wife, Alison Lyng is nearly 42 and the chances of further expansion of the family were not the best. A proud father and hopeful mother toast the fortunes of the new arrival. The manager will later say that this was the happiest day of his life. Alison is a positive woman. She has grand plans as she welcomes her youngest son, her eighth child. The joyous occasion at home contrasts with world events this Tuesday in October. The shocking news in August of a world on fire has caused fear and anxiety in the small local community under the beech trees. Many people fear for the future and the markets are down. Manager Heyerdahl is also facing challenges. The period of good years has begun to wane recently. There is a war and a recession and the temperance movement is growing in popularity. Temperance is one of the biggest social movements during this period. A new law on spirits in 1894 opened for voting on local legislation on the sale of alcohol and there have been regular votes on this in Larvik since 1897. The temperance movement won in 1913 and sales points had to close. The town becomes tea total the following year. This might have guaranteed a recovery for beer and soft drinks producers, but politics have long been involved in the case against alcohol and the town’s two breweries are fighting a losing battle. One brewery was located at the site we know today as “Bryggerikvartalet” and the other, of which Heyerdahl’s father was manager, was right behind his own house in Steingata, where you can see the block of flats today. But the manager is courageous and has a cheerful disposition. He is a good businessman and asserted himself in several fields after he arrived in the town in the 1890’s, becoming a strong competitor to the traditional Laurvig’s Beer Brewery. The thought of his former competitor is another reason why the proud father is drinking champagne with a good conscious today. Heyerdahl developed a warm relationship with the manager of the competition, the seven-year younger Christian Christiansen and just three weeks before the birth, the two breweries had decided to work together to meet future challenges with a new brewery. Larvik Bryggerier AS was launched on the 17th of September. By the autumn of 1914, there were still uncertainties as to whether the merger would have a positive outcome for the champions of beverages in the town, but everything points to a bright future for the new arrival.
#2
A window on adventure
Young Thor had a spectacular and panoramic view from his bedroom window on the top floor on Steinbakken. In his own words: “The house was on a steep hill and I was three floors up on the side facing the sea looking over red tiled roofs all the way down to the long quay and further out towards open sea. The journey continued south when I went back to bed. If I was lucky, I continued to dream when I was asleep”. He was not the only one in the town beneath the beech trees to experience this. Many young boys and girls have felt the draw of the Larvik Fjord. They have gazed at the roofs, the chimneys and church spires down to the two quays in the Inner Harbour, which continues to point towards the big wide world, and allowed their dreams to take them out over the Skagerrak to adventures beyond Svenner and Stavernsøya. Today, the huge pear tree you can see obscures the view down to the quays and the fjord. The seafarer was very disappointed to see this when he was finally able to come back to his childhood home on the 31st of August 1997 for his first and only visit after he left the town in the 1930’s. He was there to film a Japanese documentary. “My childhood home has been totally changed. It is not my home”, he commented to the local newspaper. He did, however, spend the most important years of his life in this house. The years from birth to puberty and young adulthood are formative in everyone’s life and the seafarer never denied that he was privileged to have grown up in Larvik. Quoting Heyerdahl: “It was the ideal environment to grow up in. Nearly everyone had backyards which served as playgrounds and fruit gardens with fences to climb. The forests and beaches provided unlimited to space to knock about in where the cobbled streets ended. (…) Up in Steinbakken, where I lived, it only took three minutes to run to the Byskogen Forest. (…) My childhood heaven was made up of a lot of other things as well: Farrisvannet Lake, The Beech Forest, the fjord, Stavern – beaches where we collected shells and starfish.” Steingata nr. 7 itself was most likely built in the 1790’s during the period after the devastating fire of the 17th of June 1792, which destroyed many of the buildings in Storgata and in “The Stones”, as the area was called. The name comes from the extensive stone deposits which occur in the moraine forming the ground here. In spite of the fact that the houses were smaller and the inhabitants poorer than in the impressive properties along Storgata, the Steinane area belonged to the town proper in the 1700’s, unlike the areas of Langestrand and Torstrand at that time. It was mainly populated by workers, craftsmen and seamen. In the early 1800’s, Steingata 7 is said to be one of the most expensive properties in the area and the house is a good example of better homes built in the 1700’s. It occupied a relatively large area compared with neighbouring properties, had a large balcony garden with an outhouse on two floors with small, square glass windows and gables facing the sea. The main house looks very much as it did when Thor grew up here, but without the wild boar which decorated the façade. Thor Senior had the steps built. The house has had many owners over the years, both merchants, ship’s captains and pilots. The first Brunlanes Bank was located here around 1875. The man in charge must have been an enterprising soul as he also started up a brewery on the property. The operation was sold to a consortium from Tønsberg under the name of “Vestfold Brewery” in 1882 and was in turn purchased by citizens of Larvik and Thor Heyerdahl of Kristiania was employed as manager in 1891. Two years later, in 1893, he moved into the property on the steep hill under the beech trees.
#3
Inside the house - A refined civil home
If we had visited the house during the period when young Thor was growing up, we would have entered a refined civic home with clear touches of cultural history from Trøndelag, according to his mother’s tastes. Alison was born into a wealthy family business home and when she moved into Steingata 7 with her ten-year-old daughter Ingerid, she decorated the house according to her own cultural background and artistic talents from Trøndelag. The sitting room, for example, contained a corner cupboard from Uv in Rennebu and a table and furniture from Oppdal. There were also rare examples of earthenware from the old pottery at Hospitalløkken in Trondheim. All the textiles in the three rooms on the first floor were woven by Alison herself and the woven piece over the full bookshelves depicted “Salome’s Dance”. Thor Heyerdahl’s first biographer and childhood friend Arnold Jacoby has described the house and pays special attention to the extension added by Heyerdahl Senior in 1900. This became the domain of the lady of the house and was a very pleasant addition: “If you went through the door to the left, you came to the rooms, three in a row and filled with old, stylish furniture and artwork. The Empire Style furniture in the dining room was made of birchwood, with intarsia in a darker wood. I remember it well, but without fondness, perhaps because it shocked me. The images on the ancient wallpaper in the living room could cause you to dream of wandering though groves and pavilions for secret meetings in dark summer houses”, remembers Jacoby and continues: “Once inside the innermost room, an annexe Thor’s father had built for his wife to have space for her activities, that is where I first felt real enjoyment. The extension looked like a tumour growing out of the side of the house from the outside, but it was beautiful inside; a hearth, beams, walls decorated with woven pieces and a cupboard with windows which was a masterpiece of rustic rococo… Thor Heyerdahl had his own room on the second floor with a window looking towards the Larvik Fjord. It was a large room painted white and sparse, with his mother’s bed in a dark corner behind a screen in the furthest corner of the room, a cupboard, a hearth and nothing else.” The home’s main living room on the first floor mirrored his mother’s tastes. It was decorated with spectacular manor house wallpaper portraying images of ancient ruins. They were so interested in the history of art that a national interior magazine paid a visit to Steingata 7 in the 1920’s in order to write about them: “The old-fashioned main living room is cheerful with its classic Empire Style furniture and manor house wallpaper. It is wallpaper that was once ordered for the palace in Oslo, but when it proved to be inadequate, was sold at auction and set up in a farm in Larvik’s Storgate”, writes the journalist Ingerid Skancke. The farm was most likely Postmaster Christian Ludvig Pind’s home. He took over the office from his father in 1792 and lived at Storgata 34 – the house in question being built there in 1801, and he died at 95 years of age in 1859. The farm was later fitted out as a hotel and it was after this that Heyerdahl Senior got his hands on the wallpaper at auction. “This wallpaper is especially fine and an attraction for Larvik”, said the architect Lars Jacob Hvinden Haug. He is an expert on the Manor House, the count’s residence in Larvik, where the wallpaper was kept for a long period of time. “Panorama wallpaper like this was first presented in Paris in 1806 and they are found in important farms in Norway such as in Lade in Trondheim, portraying images of the Battle of Austerlitz. The wallpaper is a typical example of the Empire Style, in which paying homage to the Roman period is a central element. Napoleon’s plan was to recreate the Roman Empire, hence the name “Empire Style”.
#4
A Time of Restrictions – Behind the Walls
We continue our journey into the house and see young Thor growing up and realise that the emotional atmosphere in the home is cold, with two overprotective parents. “I had old parents. They lived in fear that something would happen to the only child the couple had together, so I got the impression that everything was dangerous. Other children were allowed to walk along the quays on their own and play outside after dark, but not me.” This is how Thor Heyerdahl summed up his “time of restrictions” at Steinbakken. The only child received the unintentional task of being the glue in the emotionally cold marriage. The atmosphere was not improved when his mother, Alison, caught her husband kissing the servant girl in the kitchen. She never regained respect for her husband after the event. Thor’s mother took control of her son’s upbringing. She filled his bed with soft toys she had selected herself; monkeys and teddy bears that related to his education. It was based on liberal and progressive thinking, atheism and Darwin’s theory of evolution and involved solidly reprimanding her husband when she caught him scuttling up the stairs to pray the Lord’s Prayer with their son. “What are you teaching the boy!” she demanded. Any objections to a Christian baptism did not win through though. Thor was baptised in Larvik Church. The youngest child did not experience a lot of intimacy and warmth and his mother had clear ideas about who and what he should be allowed to play with and what he should eat and spend his time doing. His toys reflected her own interests and consisted of figures representing giant lizards, apes, giraffes, elephants and crocodiles, dolls based on African and Native American figures, books about animals and picture books from the South Sea Islands. Later, when the boy was able to read himself, books about other cultures and on geography and history were chosen for him. The house was also filled with classical music from the gramophone and the walls were decorated with art. The boy was only allowed limited contact with children his own age. His nanny Laura was his playmate. She provided the hugs which he never received from his mother, she read for him and presented him to Pinocchio and played football with him in the yard in front of the outhouse. His mother, Alison, contributed with regimented care. She slept behind a screen in her son’s room on the second floor and it was a regular morning rite for Thor to show his potty to his mother to prove that his bowels were in full working order. Then it was breakfast consisting of goat’s milk and healthy fare and rough play in the garden – in all weathers. “I had to go out in the fresh air and play even when it was raining. I couldn’t go downstairs in the morning without having proved that my digestion was in working and order it was so embarrassing that I once put a scarf and woolly hat in the potty, emptied it into the toilet and pulled the chain”, says the seafarer in a laconic memory from his childhood. Alison was a truly unique woman, who had irrefutable ideas about what was healthy or true. Even before women got the vote in 1913, she had experienced two broken marriages, had seven children and a “clandestine” abortion. Young Thor was overprotected and spoilt, you could almost say he was a victim of his mother’s overbearing care. His education didn’t end in the home. When Thor went to study in Oslo, his mother joined him.
#5
The Garden, Thor Tarzan and the Animal House
The hanging garden behind the fence formed young Thor’s safe playground. It looks a bit different today than it did then. The shed and his father’s brewery are absent, among other things. The block of flats you see here today is in the same position as the brewery used to be. The climbing frame where the boy played at being Tarzan is no longer here. His interest was first and foremost in books and nature, not sport, which was usual in Larvik at the time. His father tried to compensate for his lack of interest in sport by setting up two very high poles in the garden so his son was at least able to develop some physical skills inspired by the young boy’s interest in Edgar Rice Burrough’s books about an aristocratic boy who, after a shipwreck off the coast of Africa, was brought up by apes and lived out in the jungle. Thor lapped up the popular Tarzan books and loved to play Tarzan using the solid climbing ropes with two rings. However, Thor’s favourite place in his childhood jungle garden was a newly fitted room in the old brewery stable in the red, two floor outhouse, today a veranda with a roof. The youngster, who was interested in nature, developed a zoological museum here known as the “Animal House”. The janitor lived on the second floor of the outhouse with his family, but there was a brew house, a woodshed, rooms and stables which had ceased to be used for their intended purposes after the brewing process was moved to Larvik Brewery’s property at Torget, which today is the “Bryggerikvartal”. This is where the collection took form. It consisted of butterflies and insects in boxes with glass lids, shells, conches and tortoise shells, dried starfish and crabs, freshwater creatures from the Herregård Pond and snakes and reptiles well preserved in jars and bottles filled with formaldehyde and alcohol. On the floor along one wall, the young zoologist laid a sandbank using sand collected from the beaches along the fjord. Here he laid out all kinds of shells, dried crab shells, sea urchins and starfish in a natural environment with seaweed and driftwood worn down by the sea. His father contributed exotic butterflies, stuffed animals and other suitable animals including sea creatures and monkfish from the quays down in the Inner Harbour. Dead butterflies and insects were carefully prepared and fixed with nails and aquaria and terraria were built in the garden outside. Boxes filled with earth and turf and large jars and containers were stuck into the ground. Containers were filled with water and live salamanders and other creatures from expeditions to the ponds in the Byskogen Forest. And the different species reproduced. The salamanders, frogs and diving beetles began to lay eggs. Rumours soon spread in the local society about the collection and children from other areas of the town were allowed to come and see. The general public soon flocked to see the collection and one day, a teacher of biology marched up with his whole class to admire the town’s zoological museum. The story of the animals would not be complete without saying that Thor’s mother bought two goats for the young natural scientist. They provided fresh milk every morning, which was healthier than cow’s milk according to her. The two small goats, as well as Fanny’s dog, became good playmates for the lonely and overprotected explorer. He admitted that he was really quite a scaredy cat when he was a child. Steingata 7 is owned by Larvik Borough today and Trine Lise Gran of Stavern runs the house. After our visit to Heyerdahl’s childhood home, we continue our journey eastwards along Karlsrostredet to Damveien at the top of Herregårdsbakken.
#6
The Herregård Pond
We are standing outside the area where the Herregård Pond used to be. It was a paradise where small children could play and, since Thor was able to borrow the key to the gate from his father, the pond provided the otherwise shy boy with a chance of becoming popular. A dramatic event also occurred at the pond which would affect the young man for many years and caused the internationally renowned seafarer to be afraid of water for a long time to come. He also suffered from a fear of heights and of the dark. One cause of his fear of water was a dramatic episode at the pond located here. One winter’s day, Thor managed to get hold of the key and let the children next door into the icy paradise. The pond froze over in the winter. The eldest boys were showing off by jumping onto loose blocks of ice. Thor was also drawn in and wanted to show he was brave enough too. The ice block ended up tipping over and the boy disappeared into the ice-cold water and he got into difficulties coming back up. He lost his sense of direction and panicked, hitting his head on the ice. It could have gone badly wrong if a couple of the older jumpers hadn’t managed to get hold of the boy’s wriggling pitch-seam boots and drag him back to dry land, more dead than alive. The experience had a big effect on Thor Heyerdahl while he was growing up and he kept well away from anything wet for a long time. The Herregård Pond has also given its name to the road between Herregårdsbakken and Kristian Fredriksvei where we are now standing. It was called Damveien. Gyldenløve had the pond made to create enough water pressure for the fountains in the gardens at the manor house. The pond was also called “Slusa” as the level of the water was regulated using a lock. It drained out into a stony stream downwards through the gardens along the manor house, over the so-called Alleløkka and out to Karistranda Beach. The breweries in Larvik, including Thor Heyerdahl’s father, collected ice from the pond and it enabled them to sell cold beer in the summer. It was used for a lot of other things as well. The public witnessed a spectacular figure skating show at the pond in 1894, with Axe Paulsen and his brother Edvin. The pond was filled in 1933. The house at the end of Herregårdsbakken has an interesting story as well. It belongs to the Trøim family today, but Police Chief F. T. Salicath (1847-1911) lived there in 1902. He had plenty of work to do when the hotel at the corner of Storgata – Thaulowsvingen burnt down in 1903. A 15 year-old girl died in the fire and the populace believed that the police chief’s behaviour towards the victims of the fire led to the riots which followed. Several hundred angry citizens marched up Herregårdsbakken and surrounded the police chief’s home for two days. They threw stones at the windows, pulled stakes off the fence and used them as weapons, pulled the police chief’s gate off and threw it through the window, stormed in and went up to the second floor to get him. The police chief was waiting with a revolver and threatened to shoot the first person to cross the threshold. The mob had no idea that he hadn’t managed to find bullets for the revolver in the dark but, faced with the weapon, they retreated to the street and trooped on to the police station, walked into the station and freed four of their comrades from arrest. The riots went on for several days and the army was eventually brought in to calm the situation down. Salicath was granted a leave of absence and disappeared from the town a short time afterwards. From here we continue the tour to the east, over to Kristian Fredriksvei and down to the brick building which was the high tower of learning in Heyerdahl’s time, Larvik High School.
#7
Larvik High School
We are standing in the schoolyard at Larvik High School, later named Mesterfjellet Secondary School, where Thor Heyerdahl took his school certificate in early summer 1931 and graduated from high school two years later. Thor began his studies here in 1928. There were few high school graduates in Larvik at the time. Of the 60 pupils that spent three years at the middle school in Larvik, a relatively high number, 22, continued on to the final two years. In 1906, the town only had nine students after the first group of pupils took their school certificate at Larvik High School in 1904. Teaching took place at the manor house at that time, but now the budding natural scientist began his studies in a modern school building. The building with its characteristic onion dome was completed in 1918 and was designed by the architects Morgensierne and Eide from Kristiania. They had previously designed the Farris Factory amongst other things. It was built by master builder Nils S. Hansen and the mason Oscar Hansen. At school, Thor was the smallest and youngest, just as he was at primary school. “The quietest boy in the class”, Heyerdahl’s first biographer Arnold Jacoby states and says that his friend achieved something that others envied – never getting a nickname. He was so lacking in distinctive features that, “He seemed almost too normal, just light-haired and good looking.” He did indeed prove to have a special apptitude in biology, but this subject was now beginning to become more theoretical. He enjoyed mathematics, however, which is clearly reflected in his examination grades at the end of middle school in 1931. At the time, grades were published in the newspaper and tell us that “Heyerdahl, Thor” received the following grades: Satisfactory in Norwegian and German, quite satisfactory in English and very satisfactory in mathematics. Thor Heyerdahl is for many the fearless adventurer and foolhardy ocean rider. That image contrasts with the scared little boy among the goats and slopes beneath the beeches. “You couldn’t get him to go over the hobby horse in PE lessons”, remembers Kristian Smidt, Norway’s foremost expert on Shakespeare, who went to school with Thor. Smidt was from Sandefjord, but there was no high school there at the time, so he travelled to Larvik every day and became Thor’s schoolfriend. They were in different classes; Kristian focussing on English and Thor on the sciences, but they had physical education together. At the time, physical education lessons took place in the old gym hall at the manor house (beside the prison building of today, built in 1863 and torn down in the 1970’s). In this subject Thor, the youngest pupil, was a slow learner, both at middle and high school. He was always the last to be chosen to play football. Sport didn’t interest him at all and he had no idea about the sports personalities of the day. His role models were Nansen and Amundsen, not the players on the town’s football team. He built himself up using the two rings in the garden and was a scout in the Eagle Patrol in 1925. The main high school grade achieved by the prospective zoology student was satisfactory, but very satisfactory in subjects such as geography, chemistry with physiology, biology, physics and mathematics. The renowned author of the future was graded as satisfactory in PE, history and Norwegian. The school was where the manor house’s baroque garden had been in the 16 and 1700s. From here, we go southwards under the railway bridge and stop at Karistranda Beach and harbour.
#8
Tollerodden - Looking towards His Hometown
We have arrived at an area very clearly connected with Thor Heyerdahl. There is a monument in his honour here at Tollerodden, which deserves some explanation. The monument was created by the sculptor Nico Widerberg using a material from Larvik that is internationally prized, larvikite. It is a true portrait of Heyerdahl’s head mounted on a column and standing on a base which looks like a raft or the waves. This rests on two horizontal logs. The surface is unpolished, has elements of roughly hewn structures and the entire monument is five metres high. It is a grand monument which the viewer associates with the fascinating life’s journey of the honorary citizen. The choice of materials and individual elements are clearly symbolic: It is the discoverer and fearless raft captain we meet here. He is standing upright and proud in both calm and stormy weather and is carried forward by the element which above all became the foundation for his worldwide renown – the sea. At each side of the square, raft-shaped base resting on two “balsa logs” you can see the names and contours of the well-known rafts which have been carved in here: Kon-Tiki, Ra I, Ra II and Tigris. The inscription on the column reads, “Thor Heyerdahl – 75 years – 6/10 1989”, the year in which the monument was unveiled on the occasion of Heyerdahl’s 75th birthday. The honorary citizen was present when it was unveiled. We will come back to the location, but there are two reasons why Heyerdahl is turning his back to the sea. One is the fact that his great journey is over and the other is that the seafarer, at the age of 75, is turning his gaze towards the town where he grew up and the slopes where the seeds of his dreams were sown. The other reason is one that Heyerdahl himself mentioned at the unveiling: The monument has the same form as the famous and mysterious sculptures on Easter Island, which are also facing inland towards the open plain where the people are. Easter Island can be considered the focal point in Heyerdahl’s scientific efforts, lying out in the Pacific Ocean, the only significant piece of dry land between Peru and Polynesia. This is where he went in 1955 to 56 in search of evidence of people having travelled there by rafts in the Pre-Incan period. This would eventually support his theory on migration, which he investigated further on the Kon Tiki voyage. He also returned there on several expeditions in 1986, ‘87 and ‘88 to find out how these colossal statues with red hats could have been raised. Now a little information about the artist: Nico Widerberg was born in Oslo in 1960 and is the son of the well-known artist Frans Widerberg. Nico Widerberg prefers working within the classical, figurative tradition and since his debut in 1984, has had countless individual exhibitions and been assigned to produce works both in Norway and abroad. He calls the Heyerdahl monument his most important work, but he also made the Heyerdahl bust on display at Bølgen and at Thor Heyerdahl High School at Torstrand behind Fram Sports Association’s arena.
#9
Tollerodden – Discussions about the Location
The debate about a location for the Heyerdahl monument became heated at times before this area east of Krabbedammen was chosen in 1989. There are still people today who think the seafarer has been given a somewhat humble position. The debate surrounding the Heyerdahl monument never reached the levels that Picasso and Carl Nesjar’s Sylvette sculpture did. The sculpture was meant to be placed on the highest mound here at Tollerodden, at Gryteberget, west of the pool here known as Krabbedammen. It was going to be set up in time for the town’s 300-year jubilee in 1971, but the project was abandoned at the time due to strong local opposition just as it faced when the idea was re-launched in 1996. Heyerdahl did find his place in spite of this sculpture also creating a few waves. Some people thought that Heyerdahl’s head was stylised to such an extent that it was unrecognisable, but the debate was mostly about the location. Larvik Borough Council took the decision to place the monument on Ballastberget Hill in June 1987. That is the mound at the southernmost point of Tollerodden. Here, the town’s great adventurer and discoverer could look towards the horizon and the monument would depict his need for exploration and adventure as well as being a visible marker from the sea. There were two alternatives: Bøkkerfjellet in the centre of town and the area around the Maritime Museum came up as suggestions, as well as Flåfjellet on the western side of Tollerodden. From there, Heyerdahl would have been visible from half the town. The only location missing from the debate was the one which the artist, Nice Widerberg, thought was best and he got his way, although that didn’t end the discussions. The year after the monument was unveiled, in October 1990, a local body carried out an informal survey in the town and the result was a slim majority who thought that the monument should remain in its present location. The argument was that Tollerodden is an important environment for marine culture and that Heyerdahl belonged here. Another of Larvik’s honorary citizens, the composer Arne Nordheim, had this reaction to the choice of location: “The first thing to strike me when I looked at the monument was that it should be turned around so that Heyerdahl is looking out over the fjord.” After further consideration, Nordheim saw the significance of the artist’s well thought out composition: It was inspired by the statues on Easter Island and Heyerdahl’s journey home from his expeditions, being drawn towards his hometown. The discussions continued, however, and Østlands-Posten again raised the question in 1997 and argued for moving the monument to a more central location. Heyerdahl made the following comment on the location: “If the monument had stood up in Steinane, where I used to look out over the fjord from my bedroom as a boy, then it should have been facing the sea. But not down at Tollerodden. It would have had it’s back to people on their way down through the park.” The monument remains in the location preferred by the artist. After this stop, we continue up through the park, past the shipbuilder Colin Archer’s house. He built the polar ship Fram – known internationally through the journeys undertaken by Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen. We go further down and past the red brick building which today houses the town’s maritime museum and over to Storgata and Munken, a cultural centre.
#10
Graduating from School and Departure
We are standing by Munken, the town’s cultural centre for the last hundred years, since 1921. The magnificent building is today known as Munken Playhouse and houses Larvik’s Children and Youth Theatre, but also played a role in Heyerdahl’s time as a young man. The last time he lived in Larvik on a permanent basis was the spring of 1933. He turned 18 the previous autumn and was preparing to graduate from school. Unlike most young people of his day, owning a car and getting a driving licence was not this nature enthusiast’s goal. In fact, he never did own a driver’s licence. He didn’t spend his free time on driving lessons when he should have been preparing for exams. However, he put his heart into the graduate’s review. It played to a full house here in Munken on the 9th of March 1933 and the title was, “Even in Times Like These”. It was made up of two acts and 26 different numbers. The orchestra gave themselves the name “Funny Fellows” and the review made several references to local people and events, including, “Gyldenløve’s Water Reservoir”. Heyerdahl had a link to this place. It was about the Herrgård Pond, which was filled in the following year. Heyerdahl was an enthusiastic participant on the stage, together with his friend Arnold. Arnold danced to “The Dying Swan” and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Should we believe Mossen Thaulow, a member of the audience, it was a hilarious show. Thor, who had learned to dance with Arnold at Miss Dødelein’s school of dance, danced in the ballet number, “Jumping Pigs”. He also played the balloonist Piccard in the number entitled “Piccard’s Last Flight from Mother Earth.” Jean Felix (1884-1963) was a Swiss/American chemist who was known in the beginning of the 1930’s for his experiments with hot air balloons. He reached a height of 17 kilometres up in the stratosphere on a flight from Detroit. Heyerdahl didn’t achieve such heights with his balloon in Munken. A beer barrel and an elevator-like contraption were meant to send him all the way up to St. Peter. Jacoby was in costume for the occasion with wings and a key to the pearly gates. “The first act took place down on earth. I played the absent-minded Piccard and was supposed to get into the basket in an elegant manner. We never had a dress rehearsal for that number, but everything was well prepared, so we expected it to go according to plan. But it didn’t”, ‘Thor Piccard’ told Østlands-Posten in an interview when he was crowned as honorary graduate in Larvik on the 17th of May 2000. “When I was supposed to dive through the hole we had made in the basket, it spun around and the result was me banging my head on the side of the barrel. I did indeed see stars, but not in the sky,” he ensured the newspaper. The Pacific Ocean with its thousands of islands would later become Thor’s heaven. Ironically, while the “balloonist” is swatting for his exams, a film is being shown at Munken which must have triggered his vision of paradise. The manager of the cinema screened the film “One Way Passage” with Kay Francis and William Powell in the main roles on Wednesday the 24th of May 1933. It was a very entertaining film with scenes of the sea, the sun and romance, according to the review. It is more than likely that the wide-eyed student from Steingata sat in the dark in the cinema and saw himself paddling at the water’s edge on white sandy beaches and listening to the palms waving in the breeze. He met his Kay a short time later at a pre-graduation party at the Kronprinsen restaurant in Stavern and three years later, Thor and his chosen partner, Liv Coucheron of Brevik, say goodbye to Thor Senior at Larvik Railway Station and head for Oslo and on to Fatuhiva in the Pacific Ocean. We are not going that far today. We continue on to our next stop, Festiviteten.
#11
Festiviteten – Dancing and Debates
We are standing outside Storgata 44, at Festiviteten. The building was built in two stages, beginning in 1792 and the festival building itself in 1873. The building housed one of the country’s best preserved historic concert and theatre halls and is one of the finest buildings in Larvik. Its interior has interested historians thanks to its romantic renditions of gothic and renaissance features. The brick building was designed by the famous architect Paul Due. The building will house the cultural café to be called “Ellings Café”. It is named after a character in novels written by the town’s fifth and most recent honorary citizen, the author Ingvar Ambjørnsen from Prinsegata. In Thor Heyerdahl’s day, the building housed Miss Dødelein’s school of dance. The five year-old from Steingata was sent there to learn the dance steps he would need in polite society, fitted out with patent shoes and a sailor suit, although dancing wasn’t Heyerdahl’s forté. He was rather awkward and had to sneak out into the corridor to draw the patterns for the waltz and tango on a piece of paper before going back in and tripping over his own feet as well as other people’s. It was love that drew him to the classes rather than dancing. He endured Miss Dødelein’s strict teaching methods thanks to a much younger lady. Thor called her Miss Lyserød (from the stories) and she was to be his first love. He said he gave her the nickname because, “She was a little lady of just the right age and was always in pink, so she was always Lyserød in my dreams. I had no interest at all in dancing, but thanks to Lyserød, my parents were able to keep me at the dance school for three whole seasons.” The Festiviteten would also be part of the explorer’s life in later years. In 1998, the borough council decided to pull part of the symbolic building down to make way for a new cultural centre with its own Heyerdahl centre. The discussions about this project continued for many years in Larvik without Heyerdahl being involved. He was living in Güimar in Tenerife at that time. In 2000, however, the honorary citizen gave a New Year speech which was broadcasted to his hometown as part of a large public event on New Year’s Eve. In the speech, he specifically encouraged the young people of the day to preserve historic buildings and to leave natural areas untouched. The National Trust of Norway in Larvik took his encouragement seriously and sent a letter to Heyerdahl asking him to support the campaign to save the building. His support came in the form of a letter which was printed in the organisation’s magazine and created interest in the media. “I do not like to get mixed up in any kind of political debate in by hometown, but I must say that I think it is wrong to pull this lovely old building down”, Heyerdahl continues: “I will feel embarrassed to have my name linked to a new building on the same site as the old Festiviteten. It had great significance for the cultural life of the town I grew up in.” As you can see, the building was not pulled down. The cultural centre that was to be built there was later erected down at Sanden and is the town’s largest cultural hall today, Bølgen. It is hard to say whether Heyerdahl’s contribution to the debate played a role in the preservation of the building, but the polite and educated seafarer’s words were unusually direct and showed that he had strong opinions about the environment, as well as cultural history and heritage. The majestic building behind the Festiviteten is our next stop.
#12
Romberggata School – “A Rare Being”
We are standing outside Romberggata School. The building was completed in 1886 and still stands as a proud feature of the town. The school was a primary school with seven grades until the end of the 1960’s. After that, it became a secondary school with nine grades. In addition to Thor Heyerdahl, two other well known figures went to school here – Arne Nordheim and Ingvar Ambjørnsen. Ambjørnsen called the school Kaigata School in his popular novel from Larvik, “Hvite niggere” (1986). “Romberggata School is rather like a rare being”, remembers Thor Heyerdahl in a nostalgic greeting after hearing that the building would no longer be a school in 1983. It was, “behind the solid façade holding so much knowledge”, as he wrote, that his school career began in the autumn of 1921. Thor’s mother enabled him to skip first grade and go straight into the second when the battery-operated school bell called him in to his first lesson in one of the school’s 18 classrooms. The class had 25 pupils, all boys. One of them was Samuel Sachnowitz, who was two years older than Thor. His life ended in Auschwitz during the war in the winter of 1943. The only member of the family to survive was his youngest brother Herman (1922-78), whose story was written by Arnold Jacoby in the book “Det angår også deg.” The seven year-old from Steingata skipped into the solid building heavy with authority. As well as being the youngest, the smallest and lacking in physical courage, he had problems with his eyesight. He was short sighted due to weak muscles and should really have worn glasses, but refused to do so in fear of being called, “specky four eyes”. He compensated for his lack of vision by pressing a finger lightly against the corner of his eye. It didn’t increase the youngster’s confidence when a few years later, in autumn 1926, he had to go into hospital to have his appendix removed and overheard a hurtful remark from a matriarchal nurse while he was under anaesthetic: “He is very handsome, but talks like a child”. This remark left an impression on him for a long time. The appendix was kept and is now part of the collection at the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo. Thor was quiet during lessons and he withdrew to a corner during playtimes and watched his classmates playing. Playtime was strongly segregated according to gender. The boys were at the south side of the playground, also called the sunny side, while the girls ended up on the shady side to the north, on the hill behind the school. The areas were separated by a huge wooden fence with a gate, which fascinated many young boys from Langestrand, Lia and the centre of town which formed the school’s catchment area. The school building itself was divided into girl’s and boy’s areas, while the teachers kept to their own staff rooms – the male teachers in the cellar and female teachers on the first floor. Separation according to gender was underlined by the handrails between the floors. There were uncomfortable bumps on the boy’s side, but these were absent on the girl’s side. Presumably educated young ladies did not slide down the bannisters and the bumps discouraged the boys from trying. The physical barrier in the playground remained in place until 1947, while mixed classes were not brought in until closer to 1960 at Romberggata School. The fact that the class’s youngest blond pupil’s mother had very clear ideas about what a teacher should be and about appropriate knowledge probably didn’t endear Heyerdahl to the teachers. She had strict requirements for the teachers and didn’t shy away from complaining to the inspector about teachers she thought to be “total idiots” and the teaching staff soon marked her out as a dangerous woman. There were 16 teachers when Heyerdahl left the school, seven women and nine men. From Romberggata, we continue our tour down to Storgata again and over the railway, past the town’s former customs house and the cultural centre Bølgen and over to Threschow Fritzøe’s industrial complex on Stavernsveien.
#13
The Silo - Writing on the Wall
We are nearly at the end of our Heyerdahl tour and will make a short stop outside this majestic building. Today it houses a gym, but during the industrial period after the Second World War the building was a silo and an important part of the Treschow company’s wood manufacturing industry. The words you can see on the wall are one of Heyerdahls best known quotes and form part of Larvik Poetry Park. Heyerdahl repeated the quote on multiple occasions and in different forms and it can be interpreted in different ways, although not to mean that being self-absorbed is something positive. It is based on the realisation the young adventurer made after his expedition to Fatuhiva in 1937: It’s no longer any good turning the clock back and looking for paradise in nature, you will only find paradise within yourself. The installation using plexiglass was the ninth quote to be added as part of this unique poetry project, which is still ongoing. 60 such installations decorate the town today. It was the visual artist Louis Jacoby’s idea to create a poetry park. He was inspired by a quote on a wall in the village of Colla Micheri, which is located close to Larvik’s twin town, Andora on the Ligurian coast outside Genova in Italy. Thor Heyerdahl moved there in 1958 and the village – which he helped restore – was his heaven on earth. It was here he died on the 18th of April 2002. The idea behind the park is that poetry and literary quotes would become a feature in public spaces and give the inhabitants a new dimension of experience. It was meant as a small voice in the townscape, encouraging reflection and promoting well-being. Businesses in Larvik and the local borough came together to work on this project in 2006. The borough council made the decision to go ahead with the Poetry Park as a project led by the borough council on the 10th of May 2006. The Poetry Park has always had a committee with two representatives from local business and two from the borough administration as well as the person who initiated the idea. From the start, the vision has been that: Everyone who lives in or visits Larvik will be vitalised through the Poetry Park. Larvik Poetry Park also has a friendship association, established in 2010. While we are talking about Heyerdahl and quotes, there are several related to the seafarer on display in the town. On the Revestien walkway along the pier out to the east of the fjord, the following quote is engraved onto a large block of larvikite: Borders? I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people. Thor Heyerdahl School of Further Education, which we will come back to, has the following motto which, if not a direct quote of the seafarer himself is certainly in line with his own world and vision: We are stronger together. We make each other better. We are on the same raft. Just over the road here, by the town’s lifegiving force, the Farriselva River, is our final stopping spot, the cultural centre Bølgen. The tour goes through the building and out to the space in front.
#14
Bølgen – Heyerdahl by Land and Sea
We are now at the final point of our Heyerdahl tour, the town’s largest cultural hall, Bølgen or the Wave. Perhaps it is strange for us to stop here as Heyerdahl himself was never here. The building, designed by the architect Nils Torp, was opened on the 10th of October 2009. We chose this stop for a reason though, partly to remind ourselves that Thor Heyerdahl has had an influence on much more in Larvik than we are able to include in this tour and partly because he gained international renown after dancing on the waves in a manner of speaking. The Thor Heyerdahl Institute was founded in 2000. The institute is a non-profit organisation with support from Larvik Borough and Vestfold County Council. It has been granted direct funding through the Norwegian State budget and was formally located in a building belonging to the borough council in Feyersgate. Today, the institute operates from Sandefjord and is led by Beate Bjørge and works with regional, national and international interdisciplinary projects promoting and developing Heyerdahls ideas. Amongst other things, the institute has arranged Thor Heyerdahl International Day, first held in Larvik in 2005, has established a fund in his name and contributed to the establishment of a professorship in cooperation with the University of Life Sciences in Ås. Other influences to be found in the town are: A street in the area called Tagvedt is named after Thor Heyerdahl and his portrait was painted on the wall of a building in the town centre, which now has been pulled down, but is to be rebuilt. Quality Hotel Grand Farris has its own Thor Heyerdahl suite and the library in Larvik also had its own Heyerdahl section until it burnt down and moved temporarily into a building in the town centre. Fortunately, his books were recovered, along with a section of the Heyerdahl archives. Heyerdahl has been one of the citizens of the world on UNESCO’s cultural heritage list since 2011, along with the archives. The memorial that was perhaps closest to the honorary citizen’s heart was the town’s school of further education which was named after him. The town’s school moved to a brand new building in Torstrand in the summer of 2009. The former Larvik Sixth Form College had already been sailing under the seafarer’s name and ideals for 14 years and a bust of Heyerdahl was unveiled in 1995 when the name of the college was changed to the Thor Heyerdahl School of Further Education. Heyerdahl was present when the bust made by Nico Widerberg was unveiled. Inside Bølgen there is another bust of the town’s first honorary citizen – Thor Heyerdahl was made an honorary citizen on the 300-year anniversary of the founding of the town in 1971. On the mezzanine floor, you can just see him on a plinth through the windows together with the three other honorary citizens; Arne Nordheim, Carl Nesjar and Antonio Bibalo. Unfortunately, the borough council were unable to find the money to have a bust made of the town’s fifth honorary citizen, Ingvar Ambjørnsen. If we turn around and look out towards the horizon which drew the adventure-seeking young boy from Steingata out on what would be a spectacular around the world adventure, we can see two huge cranes and a sculpture outermost on Revhakan at the end of the Revestien walkway. It represents the hull of the balsa rafts RA I and RA II, used by Heyerdahl for his Atlantic crossing in 1969-70. At Bommestad, by the slip road into Larvik, there is a stylised representation of the Kon-Tiki raft. These two sculptures were raised after a competition in 2009, are linked by their theme and remind visitors to Larvik, by land and sea, of two of Thor Heyerdahl’s most well-known expeditions.