Erling Kagge (born January 15, 1963) is a

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

explorer Exploration refers to the historical practice of discovering remote lands. It is studied by geographers and historians. Two major eras of exploration occurred in human history: one of convergence, and one of divergence. The first, covering most ...

, publisher, author, lawyer,

art collector A private collection is a privately owned collection of works (usually artworks) or valuable items. In a museum or art gallery context, the term signifies that a certain work is not owned by that institution, but is on loan from an individual ...

, entrepreneur and politician.

Three Poles Challenge

Erling Kagge is the first person to reach the North Pole, South Pole and the summit of Mount Everest on foot. In 1990, Erling Kagge and

Børge Ousland Børge Ousland (born 31 May 1962) is a Norwegian polar explorer. He was the first person to cross Antarctica solo. He started his career as a Norwegian Navy Special Forces Officer with Marinejegerkommandoen, and he also spent several years wor ...

became the first people ever to reach the

North Pole The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distingu ...

unsupported. The expedition started from Ellesmere Island on March 8, 1990, and reached the North Pole 58 days later on May 4, 1990. They traveled approximately 800 kilometers on

skis A ski is a narrow strip of semi-rigid material worn underfoot to glide over snow. Substantially longer than wide and characteristically employed in pairs, skis are attached to ski boots with ski bindings, with either a free, lockable, or partial ...

, pulling their supplies on sledges. In 1992 and 1993, Kagge completed the first unsupported and solo expedition to the

South Pole The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole, Terrestrial South Pole or 90th Parallel South, is one of the two points where Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on Earth and lies antipod ...

, covering the 814-mile (1,310 km) route in 50 days. Kagge had no radio contact to the outside world for the duration of this expedition, which was featured on the cover of the international edition of ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

'' magazine on March 1, 1993. In 1994, Kagge summited

Mount Everest Mount Everest (; Tibetic languages, Tibetan: ''Chomolungma'' ; ) is List of highest mountains on Earth, Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border ru ...

, thus becoming the first person to complete the "

Three Poles Challenge The Three Poles is an adventurer’s challenge to reach the North Pole, the South Pole, and the summit of Mount Everest. The first person to reach all three locations was Edmund Hillary. He reached the top of Everest in May 1953, summited the Sout ...

" on foot.

Career

For two years, Kagge worked as a lawyer for industrial giant

Norsk Hydro Norsk Hydro ASA (often referred to as just ''Hydro'') is a Norwegian aluminium and renewable energy company, headquartered in Oslo. It is one of the largest aluminium companies worldwide. It has operations in some 50 countries around the world a ...

. Kagge has also sailed across the Atlantic twice, around

Cape Horn Cape Horn ( es, Cabo de Hornos, ) is the southernmost headland of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago of southern Chile, and is located on the small Hornos Island. Although not the most southerly point of South America (which are the Diego Ramí ...

and to the Antarctic Peninsula. After his record-breaking feat of reaching the "three poles", Kagge attended

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...

to study philosophy for three terms. In 1996, he founded the eponymous

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population ...

-based

publishing house Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...

, Kagge Forlag. In 2000 Kagge Forlag acquired one of Norway's oldest publishing companies, J.M. Stenersens Forlag. Kagge and Stenersens publish approximately 100 new titles annually. It is

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

's biggest publisher of nonfiction. Kagge has written eight books on exploration, philosophy and art collecting, which have been translated into 39 languages. He has written for the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...

'', ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' and ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

''.

Walking

Kagge is a keen walker and continues to do expeditions, although with a lower profile than in the 1990s. In 2010 he and urban historian and photographer Steve Duncan descended into the sewers, subways and water tunnels of New York – walking for five days from

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

, via

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, to the shore of the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

. Kagge also does shorter walks: In 2012 he walked the entire length of Los Angeles'

Sunset Boulevard Sunset Boulevard is a boulevard in the central and western part of Los Angeles, California, that stretches from the Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades east to Figueroa Street in Downtown Los Angeles. It is a major thoroughfare in ...

over three days with Petter Skavlan and Peder Lund. In December 2019 Kagge, Skavlan and Lund walked the entire length of New York's

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

– from Sleepy Hollow to the tip of Manhattan - in 24 hours.

Published works

Kagge's five most recent books are ''Manhattan Underground'', ''A Poor Collectors Guide to Buying Great Art'', ''Silence in the Age of Noise'', ''Walking – One Step at a Time'' and ''Philosophy for Polar Explorers''. Kagge's book ''Silence: In the Age of Noise'' was broadcast as

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

's ''

Book of the Week ''Book of the Week'' is a BBC Radio 4 series that is broadcast daily on week days. Each week, extracts from the selected book, usually a non-fiction work, are read over five episodes; each fifteen-minute episode is broadcast in the morning (9:45a ...

'' in January 2019. ''

'' named it one of the top ten books on

silence Silence is the absence of ambient audible sound, the emission of sounds of such low intensity that they do not draw attention to themselves, or the state of having ceased to produce sounds; this latter sense can be extended to apply to the c ...

. On Point, NPR, put ''Silence'' on their list for Best Books of 2017 and American Booksellers Association nominated it as Book of the Year, 2018. ''

'' has described Erling Kagge as "a fascinating man. He's a philosophical adventurer or perhaps an adventurous philosopher", and ''

'' identified Kagge as "something of a Renaissance man". Kagge has been on the cover of '' L'Uomo Vogue''.

Personal life

Kagge has three daughters: Nor, Ingrid and Solveig. Kagge is a leading collector of international

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic co ...

. Four European museums have dedicated shows to his collection in recent years: Astrup Fearnley Museum for Modern Art in Oslo, Fondacion van Gogh Arles, Sala Santander in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

and Museion in Bolzano. The pioneering explorer supports the

Premier League The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Fo ...

club Arsenal, stating 'Over the years I've sailed the oceans, skied to the Poles, climbed the mountains and written books, but Arsenal have never been out of my thoughts'.

Bibliography

* Kagge, Erling (1990). ''Nordpolen: Det siste kappløpet''. J.W. Cappelens forlag. . * Kagge, Erling (1993). ''Alene til Sydpolen''. Cappelen. . * Kagge, Erling (1994). ''Pole to Pole & Beyond''. N. W. Damm & Son. . * Kagge, Erling (2007). ''Philosophy for Polar Explorers: What They Don't Teach You in School''. Pushkin Press. . * Kagge, Erling (2015). ''A Poor Collector's Guide to Buying Great Art''. Kagge Forlag * Kagge, Erling (2015). ''Manhattan Underground''. World Editions. * Kagge, Erling (2017). ''Silence: In the Age of Noise''. Pantheon. . * Kagge, Erling (2019). ''Walking: One Step At a Time''. Knopf Doubleday . * Kagge, Erling (2019). ''Philosophy for Polar Explorers: An Adventurer´s Guide to Surviving Winter''. Viking. .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kagge, Erling 1963 births Living people Explorers from Oslo Explorers of Antarctica Summiters of Mount Everest Norwegian mountain climbers