Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian Explorer in Search of Odin

Thor Heyerdahl – Norwegian biologist, geologist, archeologist and marine migration historian – is still best known as “Kon-Tiki Man” – the nickname which dates back to his first voyage expedition in 1947 when he crossed the Pacific in a primitive balsa-raft.

“People think I’m just an adventurer,” he [would] tell you. “They don’t realize that all my projects are related like pearls on a string — that they’re part of a single pattern.”

“This voyage on the “Kon Tiki” in 1947 was my first experience with a small vessel on the open ocean. From then on, I began organizing archeological excavations. My first was in 1952 to the Galapagos Islands. The next was to Easter Island in 1955-56. That was the first time I saw carvings of those large sickle-shaped ships. They were the same type as those in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.”

“I came to the conclusion that the Egyptians who built the pyramids left behind art and technology of an incredibly high level. They would not have continued to build boats made of reeds if they had considered such vessels to be primitive and ineffective. So, I decided that there must be something wrong with our scientific theories. All the literature that I had read at the university had said that boats made of balsam wood would absorb water and sink.”

“So I went on to prove that these scientific theories were wrong. The Kon Tiki raft kept afloat for 101 days until we arrived in Polynesia. In Egypt it was said at the Papyrus Institute that papyrus reed would absorb water and sink after two weeks. Again, I decided to trust the ancient pharaohs more than modern scientists who have never even seen a papyrus ship. That’s how I came to build my first reed boat. Together, with an international crew of seven people, we sailed for two months. The reed boat was still afloat.”

The geographer-zoologist turned expeditionist-archeologist is driven by an insatiable curiosity that has convinced him that many of the pieces in the chronology of prehistoric human life have yet to be discovered.

Heyerdahl is fond of saying that “man hoisted sail before he saddled a horse. He poled and paddled among rivers and navigated open seas before he traveled on wheels along roads.” Like a detective in search of missing clues, Heyerdahl believes the search for mankind’s first vehicles – water craft – will take him back to the source of civilization.

“I believe I’ve opened the locked door to the hidden evidence that the vessels of antiquity permitted unrestricted voyages in pre-European times and that there is a complex global root relationship between all those rapidly growing civilizations that suddenly grew up with evidence of advanced boat building some 5,000 years ago.”

Heyerdahl admits that a single reed of papyrus seems so fragile that you could hardly dare think about entrusting it with your life on a violent ocean. But when reeds are harvested in the appropriate season and tied together in bundles, he found they made a boat that was exceptionally seaworthy, virtually unsinkable and safer than any canoe or ship with a vulnerable hull. When breakers surge over a reed boat, all the water which showered onboard disappears the same instant through a thousand fissures.

Heyerdahl first became interested in marine migration after his first visit to the Marquesas Islands in Polynesia in 1937-38. Trained as a biologist at the University of Oslo, he had specialized in studying animal and plant diffusion to Oceania. He noticed that a number of the most important food plants cultivated in aboriginal Polynesia, as well as the Polynesia dog, appeared to have spread from South America prior to European arrival. That’s when he became suspicious of anthropological dogma which insisted that the Peruvian balsa raft could not have floated there in pre-Columbian times.

And that’s when he set out to prove that such migrations were possible. The quest would take him on four trans-oceanic voyages over a span of 29 years. The first was the balsa raft, “Kon-Tiki”, (1947) which sailed 4,300 miles from Lima to Polynesia. In 1969 he constructed a papyrus reed boat, the “Ra” which crossed the Atlantic via the Canary Current from Morocco, traveling 3,000 miles in eight weeks and arriving within 600 miles of Central America.

In 1971, Heyerdahl commissioned the Aymara Indians from Lake Titicaca (Bolivia) to construct a second version of the reed ship, “Ra II”. This one crossed the Atlantic “without loss or damage to a single papyrus stem” from Morocco to Barbados in 57 days (two months). For Heyerdahl Mexico should be perceived as only a few weeks away from Morocco-not centuries or millennia as had been thought previously.

In 1978, his fourth expedition was of ancient Sumerian design. The “Tigris”, a 60-foot reed vessel, began its journey at the convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and sailed 4,200 miles in 143 days (five months plus) out through the Arabian Gulf eventually arriving at Djibouti at the entrance of the Red Sea.

Despite the fact that Heyerdahl formally researches ancient history, he has always advocated a deep concern for contemporary problems. When his reed boats encountered oil slicks and chemical pollution spills in the ocean in the late 60s, Heyerdahl was the first to send a report to the United Nations and appeal to governments and international environmentalists. He has since testified on ocean pollution for governmental and scientific institutions in 23 countries, including the US Senate and the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

Heyerdahl is convinced that if more money were spent on the environment, there would be fewer wars:

“History and archaeology both show us that no progress in the quality or quantity of arms can secure peace. It can only lead us into ever more horrible and inhuman wars. Therefore, we should be spending more money on research related to environmental protection of our globally deteriorating planet than on arms to protect ourselves from each other. This is our only alternative; otherwise we will all sink together by undermining the delicate and highly complex environmental ecosystem, thus committing suicide by interfering with biological recycling and hastening climatic changes.”

. . .

“For a long time, I’ve been puzzled by the fact that three great civilizations surrounding the Arabian peninsula appeared in about 3,000 B.C. as ready-developed, organized dynasties at the same astonishingly high level and all three were remarkably alike. The definite impression is that related priest-kings at that time came from elsewhere with their respective entourages, and imposed their dynasties on areas formerly occupied by more primitive or, at least, culturally far less advanced, tribes.”

“But where could they have come from? Is there a “zero hour for civilized man”? I’ve been convinced for quite some time that the clues to this mystery, no doubt, lie in the prehistoric boat petroglyphs which are found on widely scattered continental shores and islands all over the world and even near dried-out waterways deep inside the Sahara Desert. Petroglyphs and rock paintings of watercraft represent the earliest known illustrations of human architecture and even predate pictures of dwellings or temples. I’ve seen such sketches from below the equator in Polynesia to above the Arctic Circle in Northern Norway. Everywhere they testify to the fact that boats were of extreme importance to early man as they provided security and transportation millennia before there were roads through the wilderness.”

“Our lack of knowledge about our own past is appalling. In the course of two million years of human activity, ice has come and gone, and land has emerged and submerged. Forest humus, desert sand, river silt and volcanic eruptions have hidden from view large portions of the former surface of the earth. The sea level has altered; 70% of our planet is now below water, and underwater archaeology has barely begun in coastal areas. We are accustomed to finding sunken ships with old amphora and other cargo beneath the sea, but speculation as to the discovery of other human vestiges on the bottom of the ocean still remains a subject for science fiction writers.”

“It may not be pure coincidence that the ship petroglyphs that the early Azeri depicted while navigating on the Caspian Sea and up the Russian rivers are identical to those of the ancestors of the Vikings along the fjords of Norway millennia later. In Scandinavia, there are two different types of boat petroglyphs, both well represented in Norway. One is similar to those at Gobustan and is drawn as a simple sickle-shaped line which forms the base of the ship with vertical lines on deck to illustrate crew or raised oars.”

“The other ship type probably represents a “skin boat” with a rather short and bulky hull and an interior framework of wood, appearing on the petroglyphs as if viewed from outside. Such a boat is mentioned in early Norwegian sagas written down by the Icelander, Snorre Sturlason, before his death in 1241, (Snorri, The Sagas of the Viking Kings of Norway. English translation: J. M. Stenersens Forlag, Oslo 1987). According to the saga, the Viking kings descended from Odin, an immigrant hierarch who came in a vessel called Skithblathnir (Skidbladner) which could be folded together like a cloth. Odin came from the land of the “Aser” (Æsír), and is, therefore, frequently referred to as “Asa-Odin”. The legendary land of the people known as Aser is given a very exact location in Snorre’s saga as east of the Caucasus mountains and the Black Sea.”

“From there, according to the same saga, Odin, owner of the foldable boat migrated with all his people northwestwardly through Russia, Saxland, and Denmark into Sweden where he died and lay buried in a huge funerary mound at Sigtuna. Asa-Odin’s saga with his boat and his itinerary has been considered by Nordic historians as a myth concocted in medieval times, although they consider the Nordic people as Caucasians. But, perhaps, Odin’s boat may indicate that the land of the Aser really lay by the Caspian Sea east of the Caucasus. In fact, in the 5th century B.C., the Greek historian, Herodotus, described such marvelous foldable boats used precisely in the area referred to in Asa-Odin’s saga as the home of th Aser, namely the land of the present day Azeri and Armenians.”

“In this area, Herodotus wrote, traveling merchants used boats built with a framework of wood and canes covered with skin, and of such great size that they carried one or more donkeys in addition to crew and cargo. They navigated down river to Babylonia where they sold their merchandise and the framework (wood), then they folded the skins and loaded them on the donkeys for their return upstream in preparation for the next voyage.”

“I’m personally convinced that Snorre recorded oral history rather than a concocted myth, and I think it’s time to look for the land that my Scandinavian ancestors came from and not merely where they subsequently went on their Viking raids and explorations. They certainly did not come out from under the glaciers when the ice-age ended so they must have immigrated from the south. Since their physical type is referred to as Caucasian and their very own descendant preserved an itinerary from south of the Caucasus and north of Turkey, I suspect that the present Azeri people and the Aser of the Norse sagas have common roots and that my ancestry originated there.”

“The unwritten history of both the Scandinavians and the Azeri doubtlessly began with ships and navigation. Both had access to waterways which permitted them to explore and travel far and wide. The Azeri could easily have sailed across their inland sea to the great centers of civilization in antiquity and up the river Volga which was navigable past present-day Moscow to its sources which are suspiciously close to the sources of the river Dvina which empties into the Baltic Sea at Riga, where the first Christian Norwegian Viking king, Olav Trygvason, was born.”

“This would mean that Azerbaijan and not northern Europe was the dispersion center of the Caucasian people buried in northwestern China some 4,000 years ago and now discovered by Chinese archaeologists who theorize that they came from northern Europe because they were tall, blond, blue-eyed and with Caucasian features. According to modern scholars in Azerbaijan, there used to be a strong blond and fair-skinned element in the aboriginal Azeri population, as illustrated by the stone-age hunters at the Gobustan Museum. Subsequent invasions by Romans and Arabs have somewhat modified the original Azeri type.”

“Many clues are still invisible about the human history prior to the sudden cultural bloom in Egypt, Sumer and the Indus valley some five millennia ago. But with advanced technology, some day the answers may be found under the sand and sea. The challenge for scholars is to look deeper into foreign relations in the region of present-day Azerbaijan to determine what those prehistoric roots and linkages were.”

Heyerdahl never stopped asking if there is a “zero hour for civilized man”. His pursuit has taken him all over the globe searching for man’s earliest settlements and for links of migration from region to region and continent to continent. Heyerdahl is convinced that the vessels of antiquity permitted unrestricted voyages in pre-European times, and that there is a complex global relationship between many of the rapidly growing civilizations that suddenly appeared 5,000 years ago which had an advanced knowledge of boat building. He believes that Azerbaijan may well be one of the very first centers of migration.

Heyerdahl first began forming this hypothesis after visiting Gobustan, an ancient cave dwelling found 30 miles west of Baku, which is famous for its rock carvings. The sketches of sickle-shaped boats carved into these rocks closely resemble rock carvings found in his own native Norway.

. . .

“We learn of the line of royal families in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. But we didn’t take these stories about our beginnings seriously because they were so ancient. We thought it was just imagination, just mythology. The actual years for the lineage of historic kings began around the year 800 AD. So we learned all the kings in the 1,000 years that followed and did not interest ourselves in earlier names.”

“But I remember from my childhood that the mythology started with the god named Odin. From Odin it took 31 generations to reach the first historic king. The record of Odin says that he came to Northern Europe from the land of Aser. I started reading these pages again and saw that this was not mythology at all, but actual history and geography.”

“Snorre, who recorded these stories, started by describing Europe, Asia and Africa, all with their correct names, Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Sea with their old Norse names, the Black Sea with the names we use today again, and the river Don with its old Greek name, Tanais.”

“Snorre said that the homeland of the Asers was east of the Black Sea. He said this was the land that chief Odin had, a big country. He gave the exact description: it was east of the Black Sea, south of a large mountain range on the border between Europe and Asia, and extended southward towards the land of the Turks. This had nothing to do with mythology, it was on this planet, on Earth.”

“Then came the most significant point. Snorre says: ‘At that time when Odin lived, the Romans were conquering far and wide in the region. When Odin learned that they were coming towards the land of Asers, he decided that it was best for him to take his priests, chiefs and some of his people and move to the Northern part of Europe.'”

“The Romans are human beings, they are from this planet, they are not mythical figures. Then I remember that when I came to Gobustan, I had seen a stone slab with Roman inscriptions. I contacted the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan. I was taken to the place, and I got the exact wording of the inscription.”

“There’s a very logical way of figuring out when this was written. It had to be written after the year 84 AD and before the year 97 AD. If this inscription matched Snorre’s record, it would mean that Odin left for Scandinavia during the second half of the 1st century AD. Then I counted the members of the generations of kings, every king up to the grandfather of the king that united Norway into one kingdom, because such information is available – around 830 AD.”

“In anthropology we reckon 25 years per generation for ruling kings. In modern times, a generation may extend up to 30 years, but on average the length of a generation in early reigns is 25 years. When you multiply 31 generations by 25 years, you come exactly back to the second half of the 1st century AD. So there is proof that these inscriptions carved by the Romans in stone coincide with the written history written almost 1,800 years ago in Iceland.”

“We all know that the Northern people are called Caucasian. Here is where history, archeology, geography and physical anthropology come together.”

“The more I research the topic, the more evidence I find that this part of the planet has played a much more significant role than anybody ever suspected. I am working on a book at present together with a colleague, and we are halfway through it describing our observations.”

“In the meantime we have contacts with the Academies of Sciences in 11 nations. We do not want to leave anything out. The most surprising discovery was when we contacted Communist China. They had discovered blond-haired mummies in the Karim Desert deep inside China, so perfectly preserved in the cold climate and salty earth that you could see the color of the skin and hair. The Chinese archeologists were surprised because these mummies were not Mongoloids at all; they suspected instead that they were Vikings.”

“But it didn’t make sense to me that Vikings should be deep inside the deserts of China. When the Chinese archeologists conducted radio-carbon dating, they determined that the mummies were of Nordic type dating from 1,800 to 1,500 years BC. But the Viking period started around 800 AD. It then became obvious that these mummies were not Vikings who had come to China. Here was a missing link. And again the Caucasus enters into the picture as a mutual migratory center.”

“But this is not the end of the story. These mummies were dressed in cloth that had been woven, and the colors and the woven pattern were of a very specific type. The Chinese themselves studied the mummies and then invited American experts to study the clothing who determined that the weave and coloring were typical of the Celts of Ireland. But this made no sense at all. Then we contacted Ireland to get their sagas, and their written saga says that their ancestors were Scythians. So, again, their roots come back here to the Caucasus.”

“This is only the beginning, because this is as far as we have obtained documentation from the Academies of Sciences with which we are in contact. I will not go into detail further, but I have also found archeological evidence that is so striking that there can no longer be any doubt.”

“My conclusion is that Azerbaijan has been a very important center, sending people in many directions and attracting people from many directions. You have had metals that made the Romans want to come here. But you have been very central in the evolution of civilization, and more than anything, this is proven by the petroglyphs in Gobustan.”

. . .

“The most important thing we can learn from the past is that no earlier civilization has survived. And the larger the pyramids and temples and statues they build in honor of their god or themselves, the harder has been the fall. Most of them have been so completely eradicated that it has taken archaeologists to bring them to light again. Neither the Sun God nor the creative power behind the Big Bang smiles upon the huge buildings or powerful armies of mankind. They smile at civilizations who respect their own creation and who show appreciation for it.”

“Where people have constructed great buildings, they have also fought the greatest wars. When the archeologist excavates to the bottom of the ruins for an extinct civilization, more often than not, he will find the remnants of an even older one beneath it. And we would be wise to note that the most advanced culture is rarely the one on the top layer.”

. . .

“Where is God? I feel that God is behind every flower and every tree in the woods. He is behind every mountain rock and every foam-crested wave in the sea. God is omnipresent. I am willing to reach my hands in the air and admit that I have a limited number of senses and that they are insufficient for me to grasp the whole truth. Therefore, I refrain from having a fixed picture of God and what He might be. It can be a magnetic field. It can be a law. It can be anything.”

. . .

Since his first visit to the Caucasus early in the 1960s, Thor Heyerdahl had stored in his memory the similarities he found between the petroglyphs in Gobustan near Baku and the petroglyphs in Scandinavia, especially those in Alta, Norway. Even though this similarity belonged to pre-history and could not be neatly transferred to later history at the beginning of the Viking era, Thor nevertheless suspected that there might be other cultural connective links between the Caucasus and Scandinavia.

That was the reason for his visit to the region in the Autumn of 2000. He was on the trail of Odin (Wotan), the Germanic and Nordic god of the mythologies of the early sagas. According to Snorre, the Icelandic author of the Nordic Sagas, who wrote in the 13th century, Odin was supposed to have migrated from the region of the Caucasus or the area just east of the Black Sea near the turn of the first century AD. Thor wanted to test the veracity of Snorre and, consequently, organized the Joint Archaeological Excavation in Azov, Russia in 2001.

I met Thor in Moscow on April 21, 2001. He had already contacted Dr. Sergey Lukiashko of the Institute of Archaeology at the State University of Rostov-on-Don. Thor had been planning an excavation at this site because of the peculiar phonology of the place – name Azov. Snorre speaks of a place called Ashov (read As-hov) – the sacrificial site of the As tribe. This phonological coincidence led Thor to start his investigations in Azov, Russia.

I had met Heyerdahl earlier in Azerbaijan in the summer of 2002 while excavating the Kish church [See Storfjell’s article, “The Kish Church – Digging Up History” in AI 8.4, Winter 2000]. Heyerdahl appointed me chief archaeologist for the Scandinavian team, which was composed of two other Norwegian archeologists and two Swedish archeologists. For a period of six weeks, we carried out the excavation with our Russian colleagues.

The results of the first season brought to light more than 35,000 individual pieces of material cultural remains, which have now all been numbered and registered. Most of these items would excite only archeologists and offer little occasion for joy to the uninitiated. I am primarily referring to broken ceramic vessels whose many fragments filled several buckets each day. But it is these unglamorous fragments that yield their secrets about the dates of their creation and help us to assign dates to the various layers of soil that are being excavated.

Among the more significant finds were several fibulae – circular ring-pins used to fasten garments – which can be dated to the 1st-2nd centuries AD. They showed a clear affinity with fibulae from the Baltic region and would not have been out of place had they been discovered there. The same can be said about a sword found in a burial from the same period. After just one season of excavation, we can demonstrate a certain level of cultural connectivity between the steppe region of the Black Sea with the Baltic. It is very likely the great rivers of Russia were the conveyors of these cultural links, something that puts us right back into an environment that Thor Heyerdahl was very much at home with – water.

The first season – Summer 2001 – in this extensive project took place in Azov, Russia. The total scope of the project envisions several more seasons of excavation in and around Azov. Then the investigation will move to the Caucasus, where the As and Van peoples once lived. This is all recorded in the Norse Sagas, but about 2,000 years before Snorre in Iceland wrote about these people groups, the Van were referred as a geographical term in Assyrian contemporary records in the 13th century BC. The As are identified in contemporary Assyrian records from as early as the 7th century BC. This evidence warrants continued research in the Caucasus, not just to test the statements of Snorre, but to help us understand more about a region that has figured so prominently as a cultural bridge, early in human history.

At age 86, Thor was one of the most energetic persons at Azov. Each day last summer, he would visit every excavation site – five in total – scattered throughout the city. We Scandinavians were excavating in a strawberry garden with the kind permission of the owner, who decided to forego the berries in favor of ancient history. At meal times during our discussions, the ideas began to emerge about how we would carry on Thor’s archaeological work. Half a year later, those ideas of a research center became a reality.

In the meantime, after the excavation, work shifted to analysis of the finds and the task of writing up the reports of the fieldwork. Thor continued working on the manuscript of what was to become his last book. “Jakten på Odin” (In Search of Odin) was published in Norway a few months later, in November 2001. (The English version apeared ca. November 2002.) A couple of days after Thor returned to his home in Tenerife in the Canary Islands, following the book launch in Oslo, Norway, I visited him in connection with writing up reports on Azov. But it seems he had other matters to discuss.

He had been offered funding for the second season of excavation in Azov, and in that connection he wanted to establish a research center. He honored me by asking me to set up the center and then to direct it; it would be located in England for a variety of practical reasons.

By the middle of February 2002, the Thor Heyerdahl Research Centre had become a reality. It was organized and registered at Companies House in England, and Thor Heyerdahl was the first Chairman of the Board. Now his widow, Jacqueline Beer Heyerdahl, holds that position and is eager to oversee the continuation of Thor’s work in Azov, the greater Caucasus and beyond.

Beyond that, there is a new project that Thor was planning in Samoa in the Pacific. He had been made aware of the existence of a pyramidal structure that is thought to be the largest of its kind in the Pacific. In February 2002, he visited the site with Jacqueline and started making arrangements for an excavation to begin in Autumn 2002.

He had wanted Samoa to be his last project. It was in the Pacific that he had started his long and illustrious career, and it was there that he wanted to close the last chapter of his professional endeavors.

But April 18, 2002 conspired against him. Thor Heyerdahl, perhaps the best-known Norwegian of the second half of the 20th century, died peacefully in his sleep at his family home in Colla Micheri in Italy, where he had gone to spend the Easter holidays with the closest members of his family around him.

Excerpts (all) from Azer.com

(1) Thor Heyerdahl in Azerbaijan: KON-TIKI Man by Betty Blair (AI 3:1, Spring 1995)

(2) The Azerbaijan Connection: Challenging Mainstream Theories of Migration by Heyerdahl (AI 3:1, Spring 1995)

(3) Azerbaijan’s Primal Music Norwegians Find ‘The Land We Come From’ by Steinar Opheim (AI 5.4, Winter 1997)

(4) Thor Heyerdahl in Baku (AI 7:3, Autumn 1999)

(5) Scandinavian Ancestry: Tracing Roots to Azerbaijan – Thor Heyerdahl (AI 8.2, Summer 2000)

(6) Quote: Earlier Civilizations – More Advanced – Thor Heyerdahl (AI 8.3, Autumn 2000)

(7) The Kish Church – Digging Up History – An Interview with J. Bjornar Storfjel (AI 8.4, Winter 2000)

(8) Adventurer’s Death Touches Russia’s Soul – Constantine Pleshakov (AI 10.2, Summer 2002)

(9) First Encounters in the Soviet Union – Thor Heyerdahl (AI 10.2, Summer 2002)

(10) Thor Heyerdahl’s Final Projects – Bjornar Storfjell (AI 10.2, Summer 2002)

(11) Voices of the Ancients: Rare Caucasus Albanian Text – Dr. Zaza Alexidze (AI 10.2, Summer 2002)

(12) Heyerdahl Burns “Tigris” Reed Ship to Protest War – Letter to UN – Bjornar Storfjell, Blair – (AI 11.1Winter 2003)