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Thor Heyerdahl was one of the 20th-century’s great adventurers and explorers. He was born in the small whaling port of Larvik in Norway in 1914. He was an only child. His family was fairly wealthy. His father owned some shops in Larvik.  His father took him out hunting and his mother taught him about nature. As a young boy, Heyerdahl collected rocks, shells, plants and insects for his own personal museum.

From an early age, Heyerdahl knew he wanted to explore the Pacific. So he read books about animals, plants, ocean currents, the islands and peoples of the Pacific. He studied zoology at Oslo University where he met his wife, Liv Coucheron-Torp. The couple decided to study how people live in remote places far from human help. Thor and Liv married on Christmas Eve in 1936. The following day, they set sail for Fatu Hiva (pronounced fatu iva), an island without people far out in the Pacific.  For a year the couple lived in harmony with nature. Heyerdahl wrote about their experiences in his first book Fatu Hiva.  However, visitors to the island brought a disease that made both Thor and Liv very ill. So they returned to Oslo to get well.

Heyerdahl’s studies at Fatu Hiva convinced him that people migrated in boats across the Pacific from the Americas. Following the wind patterns and ocean currents, Heyerdahl believed that the original settlers of the Pacific Islands came from the east and not the west. This idea challenged the basic view of history at the time. Heyerdahl realised he needed to sail across the Pacific in a raft to prove such a voyage was possible. In 1947, Heyerdahl and his crew cut down balsa wood trees in the jungles of Peru using traditional tools only. They used ropes made of grass to lash a raft together. They called the raft ‘Kon-Tiki’, after the sun god of the ancient Incas of Peru. On 29 April 1947, Heyerdahl and his crew set sail and entered the history books!