Thor Heyerdahl crosses Pacific on a wooden raft

JAN 01 2023 · 12:00

Two years after World War II, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl set out to cross the largest ocean on a wooden raft called Kon-Tiki. A passionate archaeologist descended from Vikings, Thor wanted to convince the world of a theory he had developed over a decade: that the remote, Pacific islands of Polynesia were not settled by Asians, but by South Americans journeying from the east 1,400 years earlier. I had the exciting opportunity to visit Norway and meet Thor Heyerdahl Jr., an oceanographer