The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Heyerdahl, Thor

Born Oct. 6, 1914, in Larvik. Norwegian scholar, traveler, and writer.

Heyerdahl studied zoology and geography at the University of Oslo from 1933 to 1938. During World War II he took part in the Norwegian resistance movement. He has studied the diffusion of culture and the possibility of transoceanic migration of peoples between the Old and the New World.

In 1947, with five companions, Heyerdahl sailed the raft Kon-Tiki across the Pacific Ocean from Peru to the Tuamotu Archipelago to prove the possibility that Polynesia was settled by American Indians. In 1953 he discovered the remains of pre-Inca settlements in the Galápagos Islands. His archaeological research on Easter Island, Rapa, and the Marquesas in 1955 and 1956 determined that the islands were first settled in the fourth century A.D. In 1969 and 1970, Heyerdahl organized expeditions on the sailboats Ra and Ra II from the western coast of Morocco to America, and in 1977 and 1978, on the reed boat Tigris from Al Qurnah in Iraq to the estuary of the Indus to Djibouti. His popular books combine scholarly research with entertaining narration.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Vpoiskakh raia. Moscow, 1964.
Puteshestviena “Kon-Tiki.” Moscow, 1956.
Aku-Aku: Taina ostrova Paskhi. Moscow, 1959.
Ekspeditsiia “Kon-Tiki”—“Ra.” Moscow, 1972.
Prikliucheniia odnoi teorii. Leningrad, 1969.

REFERENCES

Anokhin, G. I. “Tur Kheierdal.” In Skandinavskii sbornik, vol. 8. Tallinn, 1964.
Jacoli, A. Sen’or Kon-Tiki. Moscow, 1970. (Translated from Norwegian.)

G. I. ANOKHIN

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

The cast includes Pil Sverre Hagen as Thor Heyerdahl, Anders Bsmo Christiansen as Herman Watzinger, Gustaf Skarsgird as Bengt Danielsson, Odd Magnus Williamson as Erik Hesselberg, Tobias Santelmann as Knut Haugland, Jakob Oftebro as Torstein Rby and Agnes Kittelsen as Liv Heyerdahl.

An historic adventure across the Pacific..

"I promised Thor Heyerdahl before he died that we would make the film, and we've done it," said the producer.

Another score for Thor

En outre, les Norvegiens de differents musees d'Oslo et de Larvik, en collaboration avec l'association [beaucoup moins que]Les amis de Thor Heyrdahl [beaucoup plus grand que] offrent suffisamment d'elements pour garnir un pavillon Ra et Thor Heyerdahl.

Projet de Centre national de la mer

Thor Heyerdahl sailed from Peru to Polynesia in a balsa-wood raft attempting to prove that the Polynesians settled from the east.

Epic Adventures

Among the topics are the African Association, Antarctica, the voyage of the Beagle, Gertrude Bell, James Cook, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Charles Darwin, the Explorers Club, the Gobi Desert, Thor Heyerdahl, the International Geophysical Year, the Leakey family, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley, Alexander Mackenzie, maps and mapmaking, the history of oceanography, Powell Expeditions, Russian exploration, Society of Women Geographers, and manned and unmanned space exploration.

Scientific exploration and expeditions; from the age of discovery to the twenty-first century; 2v

We also saw the Fram museum, all about polar explorers, and Thor Heyerdahl's Kon Tiki museum.

GRAND AND NOBEL STYLE

The Plastiki - named after the 1947 Kon-Tiki raft sailed across the Pacific by explorer Thor Heyerdahl - is fully recyclable and gets its power from solar panels and windmills.

Boat of plastic bottles ends 4-month Pacific sail

A sampling of entries includes: Syd Barrett, Alistair Cooke, Lady Diana, Gerald Ford, Thor Heyerdahl, Norman Mailer, Rosa Parks, and Doctor Spock.

The Economist book of obituaries