Archipelago

The Man Who Saw the World

Archipelago Audio Season 4 Episode 1

We're back after almost three years with a brand-new season about people living a life less ordinary — beginning with Danish adventurer Thor Pedersen, who shares his incredible story of visiting every country in the world without flying.

Thor recounts his experiences crossing oceans on cargo ships, navigating through war zones, and enduring the mental and physical challenges that came with this ambitious endeavor.

Despite numerous setbacks, including a two-year pandemic lockdown in Hong Kong, Thor persevered and achieved his goal. He reflects on the kindness of strangers, the cultural insights gained, and the personal growth that came from pushing his limits.

This episode is a testament to human determination and the extraordinary efforts people will make to defy what's considered impossible.

Notes

Learn more on Thor's official website

Buy his book "The Impossible Journey"

Thor Pedersen: There's no possible avenue where this is going to end well, this is going to end with a gun firing and a bullet flying through me. That's going to happen within seconds or minutes that it's, where it's not in a couple of hours. It's now.

James Clasper: Hello and welcome back to Archipelago, the podcast about arts, culture, and ideas in Denmark. I'm James Clasper and after almost three years away, we're back with a brand new season exploring something completely different. In season three, if you recall, we went deep exploring the quirkier corners of the Danish island of Amager.

This season, we're flipping the script, widening our horizon, while keeping the same spirit of curiosity and wonder. Over the next six episodes, we'll meet people who refuse to accept the world as it is. We'll visit places where imagination is on the curriculum. Where strangers become stories you can borrow and where a journey to the edge of space remains a collective dream. These are stories about the extraordinary lengths people will go to to change the world, which is why we're kicking things off with perhaps the most intrepid traveler you'll ever encounter.

Thor Pedersen: My name is Thor Pedersen. I'm 46 years old. I'm best known for reaching every single country in the world in an unbroken journey without flying.

James Clasper: That's right. Thor set himself what seemed like an impossible challenge to visit every single country in the world without ever stepping foot on an airplane. What started as a three to four year adventure became a nearly decade long odyssey that would test every limit of Thor's endurance, patience, and determination.

While the rest of us hop on planes to cross continents in hours, Thor spent weeks crossing oceans on cargo ships. Threading through war zones on buses and navigating bureaucratic nightmares that would break most people's resolve. Today we're diving into Thor's extraordinary story, the triumphs and breakdowns, the unexpected friendships and the two year COVID lockdown that left him stranded in Hong Kong, just nine countries short of his goal.

This is a story about what happens when you refuse to let the world tell you what's possible. This is Thor Pedersen and this is his saga.

James Clasper: I want to hear kind of in your words what you achieved over the course of, I guess, almost 10 years. So tell me in your own words what you did.

Thor Pedersen: I set out to become the first in history to reach every single country in the world in one unbroken journey, completely without flying. It would take me less than four years, and that at times it would be rough, but nothing I couldn't handle. And two years in, my batteries were flat. I had barely any motivation left within me. I was pretty close to halfway. And at the end of it all, it ended up taking nine years, nine months, and 16 days including a global pandemic.

James Clasper: Yeah.

Thor Pedersen: I think I achieved showing people where there's a will, there's a way, and demonstrating that if you have a goal in life and you stick to it and you fight hard enough, you can achieve it. I think I did a pretty good job out of promoting the world's largest humanitarian organization, the Red Cross, raising funds and awareness and meeting up with the organization globally, shining some light on each country around the world with a mindset, which was that every country I reach is the best country in the world, and it's up to me to prove it.

James Clasper: I feel like when I ask you, what are your favorite countries to visit? You're gonna tell me they're like children and that, you know, you can't possibly pick a favorite, just to be diplomatic. There's a lot to unpack. I mean, you know, whenever I mention your story to people, almost always the response is, why?

Thor Pedersen: Yeah.

James Clasper: Why, why? And I guess there's a few different answers, but like what's the origin story of your decision to do this? Like bring me kind of back to the very beginning. When, what were you doing with your life? How old were you and what exactly happened that led to this?

Thor Pedersen: I'd start off by saying the why question is excellent, because I still today ask myself, why, why did you put yourself through that? Why, what was the point? I was slightly delusional back in 2013 when I set out, but taking you back a little bit further, I was a kid that for the most part of my childhood, had nature nearby. Had a mother who was very, very good at telling stories and instilling imagination and adventure into my little childhood brain. And I would run into the forest and pretend that I was Robin Hood or Indiana Jones or whatnot. And I grew up realizing that those were childhood stories, but there were real adventurers out there.

And I read about the first to circumnavigate the globe, go on top of the highest mountain, north pole, south pole, deepest jungles, all that stuff. And I was really into that, thinking, you know, maybe one day I can be one of those and then I grew up and realized that's not the path of most people. And also every first, every great first had been done, had pretty much been done a hundred years before I was born. There wasn't anything left. I went into shipping and logistics and I did a 12-year career run within shipping and logistics with eight of those years working abroad pretty much. And I got to work in fantastic countries like Libya and Bangladesh and within the Arctic Circle and so on. So I got to taste a little bit of the adventurous, go to the not so trodden path. And then in 2013, my father sent me an email, and he sent me many emails over the years. So I don't think that he thought that there would be any special reaction to this one.

There was a link and I followed the link and I read about people who'd gone to every country in the world. And mind you, in 2013, there would've been maybe around 200 people that had gone to every country in the world. And it was the first time it dawned on me that you could do it. In 2013, I was 34, and I figured you can't go to every country in the world. I didn't even know that anyone had done it. My best assessment was that there are too many countries, it would take too much time and also the amount of money you would need to go to every country. But I read the article and learned that some very young people, people in their twenties had gone to every country in the world and in relatively few years even. And I got more and more curious and eventually I discovered that no one has succeeded in going to every country in an unbroken journey completely without flying.

James Clasper: That's a good reason for that.

Thor Pedersen: There is, there's a very good reason. But, you know, this is the world we live in. You know, you cannot be the first to go on top of Mount Everest anymore. But you know, the titles, it's like a waterfall. You have the tallest free-falling waterfall. You have the tallest. So here, this is my shot, not at becoming the first to reach every country, but doing it in an unbroken journey, completely without flying. Meaning that I would not return home until I reached the final country and that if I flew for any reason, then the project would be void. So I had to stay away from aircraft and my home country for the entire duration that it would take. And that is a really stupid idea.

James Clasper: We're gonna get into that. Anyone's kind of setting off on just a regular journey kind of plans it fairly meticulously in advance, you know, travel details and where you're gonna stay and how much it's gonna cost. And like how much of an idea of where you were gonna go did you already have, and how much of it was kind of just freewheeling, I'm gonna head south and, you know, see what happens.

Thor Pedersen: Yeah, this is a good question. It's a combination between having a solid plan and having almost no plan. So the solid plan element would be, I knew the order of the countries, because if you're not flying, then there are no easy fixes that you, I can't get this visa, so I'll just fly over here and visit a few countries and then come back at a later point. You have to deal with it wherever you are in the world. It's the traveling shoe salesman problem. You know, like you wanna optimize your route as much. You don't want to backtrack through a bunch of countries because it'll just take even longer before you come back home again. I worked on a plan to see how I could optimize a route without backtracking through too many countries. So I knew the order of the countries and I probably stuck to that, let's say 90%, which is pretty okay. Where that went wrong was definitely within the Pacific. I didn't understand how islands were connected in which islands traded with each other and where there was opportunity to get on ships, and then also the pandemic happened, which countries were closed. So I had to go to whichever country was open and who I could negotiate with. But then overall, when I crossed the border, then to some degree it was open to whoever I would meet or whatever would happen. At the same time, I was traveling as a goodwill ambassador of the Danish Red Cross. I was meeting with the Red Cross throughout pretty much every country. And I went to their headquarters, and that's often in the capital city. The capital city is also pretty often where you'll find main transport hubs and you'll find the embassies and consulates so often I would get to a country and then aim to get to the capital and then go from there to the next capital and the next capital. And then sometimes I would have time to, if there's a wedding or an invitation for something else, go and see that and do that. The further I got into it, it became very, very optimized. You know, I'm not doing anything more than what I have to to get to the next, to get to the next, to get home.

James Clasper: Hmm. And you know, logistically, what did you bring with you? I mean, I've seen photos. It looks like, you know, you traveled pretty light. I mean, what did you set off with?

Thor Pedersen: It's, you know, depending on who you speak to, there are people that cut their toothbrush in half to preserve weight and they laugh at me for the amount of stuff I brought. I mean, it's every country in the world, so it's every climate, it's hot. It's cold, it's wet, it's dry, it's all of it. So I needed to have clothes that would work for that. And the overall idea was that, you know, I could fix stuff along the way. Maybe I could replace some stuff, but I would have everything in my bag. I brought some stuff. I brought books, I brought running shoes. I brought a hammock, I brought a sleeping bag, a mosquito net. I brought some rope. I mean, always use rope for something. And I brought a few knives also thinking, you know, knives, cut an apple, cut a rope, cut some of all the rope. I brought, I brought a compass, seemed like, you know, you're going to every country in the world, you'll bring a compass. It ended up being the only item that I brought through every country in the world and never used for a thing. You know, you don't need a compass in a modern world looking at maps and navigating what's the shortest route and you're trying to work out, but you're doing that with various apps, Google Maps and this kind of stuff. You don't need direction as such with a compass. You don't need to know where North is most of the time.

James Clasper: No, that makes sense. But in my mind's eye, you weren't traveling with a smartphone, but of course, of course you were.

Thor Pedersen: Yeah. Yeah. So I left in 2013. Internet was at, just around 3G I think 3G had been introduced to the market, certainly some places, some places it was still 2G Internet. The newest iPhone in 2013 was an iPhone 5. You know, if I went today, my setup might have been a little bit different.

James Clasper: And when you went, I mean you were able to, as you say, navigate and send messages to say that, you know, you were okay, but you weren't streaming Game of Thrones in your downtime.

Thor Pedersen: No, no, I wasn't. But I left home with an iPad, and I was able to download a bunch of TED talks. I was sitting in trains throughout Europe and then later on in a lot of buses. And if I wasn't talking to the other passengers or looking out the window listening to music, this kind of stuff, I would be sitting there watching TED Talks on my iPad.

James Clasper: So you had, in terms of like rules, you had what? No planes.

Thor Pedersen: Yeah.

James Clasper: Obviously no returning to Denmark until the very end.

Thor Pedersen: Yeah.

James Clasper: And this one I liked. So you weren't gonna visit anywhere for less than 24 hours, so this wasn't, you know, some sort of like, oh, I've put my foot in Lesotho or Costa Rica and 'now that counts'. You are at least overnighting.

Thor Pedersen: Yeah.

James Clasper: How did that kind of rule play out then that no visit should be less than 24 hours.

Thor Pedersen: For the most part, it's an easy rule to deal with because you're gonna spend much more than 24 hours across the border in most cases. Again, coming back to meeting with the Red Cross and going to embassies and just the basics of that kind of stuff would take more than 24 hours. 24 hours is an issue if it's a country where you're struggling to get a visa. And some other traveler might just have gone up to the border and talk to the guards and said, listen, this is what I'm doing. I need to stand there, for as long as it takes me to do a GPS plot, and then I'll give you $20 and then I'll walk away again. You know? So I wasn't doing that kind of stuff. And then of course you have countries where it's less safe to travel within for various reasons. Countries with armed conflict. And then, you know, 24 hours can be a long time sometimes.

James Clasper: How did you fund the trip? I assume you kind of went in with funds and thought, as you said, it would take a number of years and it took much longer. So, you know, how did you fund it initially? And then as the trip itself, you know, became much longer, how did you end up figuring out how to kind of stay on the road?

Thor Pedersen: Yeah, I set out with sponsorship, so being 34 years old when I set out, I figured I'm not gonna spend four years of my life doing this and then coming back home, 38 years old with debt and I spoke to some friends that helped me build the project and get the website and everything ready. And the consensus was, you know, someone would want to sponsor this, so it should be possible. And it kind of fell into my lap. A company called Ross Energy came in and supported me, and the budget was just a mere 20 US dollars per day on average. It wasn't a huge payout for them. But then again, over the course of several years, it becomes money. Then two years into the project, more or less two years, they pulled the financial sponsorship and not because they felt I wasn't doing a good job, but because oil prices were low and they were being affected by the low oil prices, they were sensitive to that. I understood, and then suddenly I didn't have the income that was propelling the project forward, but I did still have some money in my bank account. So I spent that until there was nothing left, then I borrowed some money and spent all of that and borrowed some more money and spent most of that and then started a crowdfunding campaign. And my following online was never huge, but it had grown a little bit. So, and you know, maybe one or 2% were willing to make some donations and support me so that was enough to find the $20 a day, more or less. And then I got stuck during the pandemic in Hong Kong. And after some time immigration pushed me to find a solution or else they would have to deport me. So I got a job and changed my status to a work visa and worked at the Danish Seamen's Church, which had been shut down more or less. And I became the junior assistant to the reverend. But there was no reverend that was, that was just me.

James Clasper: And no senior assistant.

Thor Pedersen: No, yeah, there was nobody, there was just me and a board, and a church board. So that was pretty good. You know, I was servicing container ships. That was basically what I was doing. That was the bulk of what I was doing, making sure that when ships, they came into Hong Kong, if they were with a Danish flag and they had any requests, if they wanted anything shaving cream or an IKEA flower or a PlayStation five or whatever, I would go out and procure it and then bring it to the ship because during the pandemic, they were isolated on the ships, couldn't go anywhere. I did that and that money over the course of a year paid back the debt I had, the loans that I had. At the end of the project, Ross Energy came back they said, okay, now we're strong again. We'd like to fund your budget. So the short answer is it was sponsorship, it was self-funded and it was on donations.

James Clasper: Yeah.

Thor Pedersen: When I left home, I had a certain amount of money in my bank account. And when I came back home nearly 10 years later, pretty much the same money on my bank account.

James Clasper: But I mean, there are worse places to be holed up for two years than Hong Kong. But $20 a day doesn't get you far. So I'm glad for your sake that you found a job there.

Thor Pedersen: Hong Kong is amazing. And when people ask me if there's anywhere I want to go back to, if I could have a free ticket and go somewhere, where would I go? I always say Hong Kong and it's, Hong Kong is fantastic, but it's also because I spent two years in Hong Kong, so I feel very connected to Hong Kong. I know Hong Kong really well. But yeah, I spent two years in Hong Kong and never paid for rent. You know, the food isn't too expensive in Hong Kong and public transportation is also all right. And Hong Kong, a lot of it is walkable.

James Clasper: But when you were there, I mean, you know, it must have been, I mean, for so many people, of course it was, perplexing, frightening, and so uncertain when the pandemic hit, I mean, you were, you know, literally alone and miles from home, but not just that you had to plan and you're pretty far through it, right? I mean, how far through your journey were you, how close to the end were you, when suddenly, you know, everything came to a halt?

Thor Pedersen: I was down to the last nine countries. It was a difficult project to be in. It was good looking forward and dreaming about coming to countries that I've never been to with Japan or getting back home. And it was also good looking back, thinking about people I've met and food I've had, and scenery and good experiences but being in it was rough. And two years in, I reached my level where I was ready to go home, and I had a really tough time, and I've had that feeling ever since two years in. I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home. Enough is enough. This is ridiculous. I'm not achieving anything here. Nobody wants me to do this. I am hurting myself in so many ways. I want to go home. Enough is enough. But also thinking it's gonna get better. You know, I just need to get around the corner and things will lighten up and it'll get easier and there will be progress. So it was up and down you can say. Then down to the last nine countries, then a pandemic that was, I don't know if I can describe how hard that was on the mind. So everyone or most people I guess around the world, they sat with this insecurity, uncertainty. What's going to happen next? You know, is this going to be a two-month thing or is it gonna be a two-year thing or a 20 year thing and is it gonna kill us all or are we gonna be fine or what's happening. Pretty early on I thought, okay, this is gonna be a four-month kind of thing. I listened to some people, everyone thought they knew. So I listened to some people that were very convincing. Were like, okay, four months and then I'll be able to get on ships and continue. And I went, okay, that's fine. Then I'll rebuild myself. I'll eat well, sleep well, I'll get some exercise done, and then I'll be ready for the last final push. Nine countries, let's get out there. But you get to five months and six months and seven months and eight months. Then you get to nine and 10, and then Hong Kong immigration starts saying, you know, we can't keep extending your visa, there must be airplanes to Denmark. I'd be like, yeah, I'm sure there are airplanes to Denmark, but if I get on one of them, everything I've worked for in the past seven to eight years is over. And they didn't care, obviously. So then you get worried about getting deported. But I was also worried about coming home too late to start a family with my wife, who wasn't my wife when I left home, but became my wife during the journey and is my wife today. I was worried that we had crossed a line somewhere where that wasn't gonna happen anymore. I was also just tired of missing out, losing friendships, not being there for people in good and bad times. And the overall idea that maybe I'm wasting my life, maybe I'm spending so much time and energy and resources on something that will it ever be worth the price that I'm paying, you know, across the finish line. Is it ever going to be worth everything I put into it? And then you're sitting in Hong Kong during a pandemic, and then suddenly you have vaccines and then you go, okay, now everything's gonna be fine. And the next thing is you have anti-vaxxers and go like, oh no, it's not going to be fine. And then you have new vaccines and then you have a new variant and the vaccines do not do this, and things start to look bright and then everything shut down again. And you start wondering, what's the exit date on this? Now it's been more than a year now it's been more than a year and a half. Am I going to wait for 10 years if that's what it takes? The sunk cost fallacy? You know, I'm in Hong Kong and going like, oh, I spent so much time than I should spend more time. But I had a lot of deep conversations with myself in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was great you know. Hong Kong's amazing. Hong Kong's beautiful. It's full of nature and good food lots of Danish people living there as well, that I connected deeply with. And we had a hiking group and would meet up and eat and drink and talk and have good times and so many good memories from Hong Kong. And it wasn't like being on an ice floe in an Arctic. I had a bed, I had food, I had safety and security. It was like a mental prison.

James Clasper: I've read a line of yours, you said it started off as a country project and ended as a people project. Tell me more about that.

Thor Pedersen: Yeah, the switch came in the early days. I'd say I probably hadn't been away from home for much more than a couple of weeks. The ambition was to become the first to reach every country in the world completely without flying. People. Culture. That was secondary. I didn't even really care. I got the Red Cross on board and I went like, that's good. That's good for a number of things. So, I didn't know much about the Red Cross. I didn't care much about the Red Cross. But then of course you start meeting with the Red Cross and you learn more and more and you start to care and you get really involved. And the same went for going through countries. So I'd go to countries that I thought less of for whatever reason, probably media. I think that's where it starts with most things. When we think people live in caves or that they're 20 years behind us or 60 years behind us, it starts with social media conversations, conventional media, then going and seeing that in many cases, my own country, Denmark was behind in certain ways or culturally behind going like, oh, well, we have culture in Denmark, but they have 2000 years of really strong culture. Walking down a street in a city and just marveling at the architecture and going, like, I wish we built more like this in the world. The hospitality. So this is, I often say this, you know, if there was the Olympics for hospitality, then Denmark, which I think hospitality is reasonable in Denmark, we were not savages, but we would be on the bench. Around the world, levels that people go to, to accommodate a visitor, a stranger, a guest, it's embarrassing to certain cultures around the world. It's unbelievable what you'll see. And then quickly, I realized that a rock is a rock, a mountain's a mountain of forest to forest. A city is a city, but it is really people that give countries value. You know, it's what the people are like, what they, their ambitions are where they came from, where they're going. That's truly what a country is. It's not so much the raw material and that kind of stuff. So I went from being extraordinarily ambitious where the overall goal was I need to be the first to tick off all the countries without flying to say, I need to be a guy who is promoting these countries, through the people and the food and the scenery, and show people what the world is really like a contrast to conventional media.

James Clasper: Yeah. That's really nice. You also said that you found great kindness in countries that are generally in the media for something negative.

Thor Pedersen: Hmm. Yeah. That's right.

James Clasper: Yeah. Tell me more about that and what are, you know, maybe what are some examples of places where your preconceptions were, you know, completely shattered or challenged.

Thor Pedersen: In my case, the first time I went to a country that I only knew from the evening news for armed conflict, I wasn't thinking that I would. I was thinking it's an in and out, you know, I might get killed, I might get in harm's way, who knows? And then it turns out that when you go to countries where, which are dominantly viewed in the world as being horrible countries, backward countries, countries with armed conflict, war. And these are the countries where I received some of the most heartwarming hospitality. And what I experienced was locals being really busy, inviting me to taste this food. You know, you know our country from bombs that are raining down, but taste this food or, come to a wedding or come to this celebration or, in Afghanistan. I came from Iran and crossed east into Afghanistan to Herat. And this older, this elderly fellow, he invited me to, we were in a car and we went to a market and he says, do you like grapes? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I like grapes. I'll get you some grapes from the market. Which type do you want? I go, like, and he says, well, I'm just asking because we have more than 20 types here in Afghanistan. And I go, surprise me everything is good. But then he wanted to bring me to, there was a small village kind of area and we got out of the vehicle and we walked these narrow passages between all of these homes. And then eventually we got to a courtyard and there was an old tree and it was visibly, this is an old, old tree. And he pointed at the tree and he said, that tree is almost a thousand years old. And all you know about our country is from the past 40 years of conflict. Our country used to be Buddhist a long time ago. You know, there's so much history that tree has experienced and seen more than anyone on this planet. Imagine what that tree has observed throughout almost a thousand years, but you know our country for war.

James Clasper: Then it's fair to say that this journey challenged your worldview.

Thor Pedersen: Yeah, it absolutely did. I came back home and had a look at the world map again in a different light and realized that I had not been to a single country where I had not met someone who was kind and thoughtful and helpful and funny. And, you know, all, every country, no matter which country I would point at, I go like, well, there was someone who was supportive in one way or the other. But it dawned on me that as long as we're dealing with people, we're dealing with a reversed lottery. So the idea is that with a normal lottery, you buy a ticket and you know you're going to lose your chances of winning or almost zero. But as long as you're dealing with people, it's reversed. So you're winning and you're winning, and you're winning and you're winning, and it's possible to lose. But in reality, the odds are absolutely in our favor.

James Clasper: You mentioned a couple of times a wedding that you got invited to, maybe more than one, tell me about that.

Thor Pedersen: The first wedding was in Sierra Leone in West Africa. And I was traveling through West Africa during the height of the Ebola outbreak, which was terrifying. This was dominating headlines. This was in the news every day, 24/7. Ebola, Ebola, Ebola, Ebola, people dying, mysterious disease. We don't know what's going on. We don't know how many are gonna die. If you get it, you're doomed. All this stuff. I crossed the border into Guinea. First, there were three countries. It was Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, that had the outbreak. And about 20 million people living there. I remember almost holding my breath, crossing the border, going like, if I get this stuff, and pretty quickly I crossed the border and saw life was pretty normal and taxis moving and children playing and businesses open and going like, oh, okay, maybe it's not here. And start talking to people. Of course, I did a lot of research ahead of going. I wasn't as blank as I'm giving the impression right now. But basically, I was still nervous going in and quickly eased and realized, okay, so it's very localized and the media's making it look like it's everywhere. Then I went to Sierra Leone after some time in Guinea and in Sierra Leone, within an hour I met some people that said, 'There's a wedding, you want to go?' Yeah, let's go to a wedding. Basically, is it safe that we're this many people together? Yeah, you're fine. So we went to this wedding up on a hill, and it became, instead of being a story of Ebola and death and fear, it became a story of love and food and dancing and people, people being people. So that was really, really great.

James Clasper: Let's shift gears a little bit. Tell me, you know, how you got around, because okay, it's very easy to say no planes, but then you're trying to get from, you know, Europe to North America. You gotta get across the Atlantic Ocean somehow. Obviously you went by ship, but was it just one or several or, I mean, how do you do it?

Thor Pedersen: I, for the most part, went with public transportation. And the overall idea was that we live in a world that's full of people. People, they need to get around. There must be public transportation. I might not know what public transportation is in certain parts of the world, but I'll work it out when I get there. It ended up being a lot of buses, mini-buses, a lot of shared taxis, shared motorcycles, even trains, a bunch of ferries, and then a total of 40 container ships. I probably went with around 20 different forms of transportation when you line them up. But what I just mentioned would be the bulk of all of it. And I went across the Atlantic Ocean westbound on seven different ships in reality. So these were shrimp trawlers and fishing boats and ships and whatnot. And I came back, eastbound on one container ship and then got into Africa.

James Clasper: So yeah, run me through the journey going west. So you're on seven different vessels. So it is kind of like hitchhiking across the sea.

Thor Pedersen: Well, my project was a total of 203 countries. United Nations is 193. So I went out and found an additional 10 countries. Here's the deal. If you're not coming home until you've reached every country in the world, you don't want to come home and then have someone say, oh, you, but you didn't go to like, you want to be very inclusive in terms of scenario. I included the Faroe Islands. I included Greenland as well, Kosovo and a number of other places. Within the North Atlantic, I was able to get on a vessel from Scrabster in the northern part of Scotland. Not many people know Scrabster, and that one brought me to the Faroe Islands. And then from the Faroe Islands, I was able to make a connection to Iceland. And then that was the east coast of Iceland. And then the truck brought me to the west coast of Iceland in Reykjavik. And after a lot of time I found a vessel that could bring me up to the southern part of Greenland. And then after some time, another vessel could bring me further up the west coast in Greenland. After a really long time, I found a vessel that could bring me back to Iceland. Then after not too much time, actually, I managed to get on board a container ship from Iceland to Canada. So that was my connection in the winter time going across the Atlantic Ocean. And coming back to something I said earlier, I was delusional in 2013. I thought I was doing the greatest thing that people have ever heard about that. Now I'm sitting out, this is something that involves every country and, of course people will get behind me. It would almost be like Forrest Gump with 70 people running behind me. You know, just support, support.

James Clasper: They were, They were just all online.

Thor Pedersen: Yeah. True. So, and then, I thought big brands would reach out and go like, yeah, you should represent us, and here's some shoes, here's a hat, and here's this and that. And I thought that shipping companies would be lining up going like, no, come on my ship. No, come on my ship.

James Clasper: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Thor Pedersen: I thought it would be a lot easier. You know, it was an uphill battle. A lot of it. And the reality was that you ask 10 or 20, one says maybe, and everyone else says, no. And that's just your everyday life or everything. I couldn't imagine that there would be a country that wouldn't let me in. I thought I was a blessing to these countries, you know, they would just open the gates and go, yeah, come into our country.

James Clasper: It's our turn. It's our turn to welcome you. Yeah.

Thor Pedersen: The king. Meet the president, meet

James Clasper: Yeah. Yeah.

Thor Pedersen: No, the bubble burst fairly early in the project, and I realized how alone I was and that the massive support I was hoping for in key places was not coming.

James Clasper: Was that just arriving in England?

Thor Pedersen: It was most places, you know, most. I think most people would look at me and go like, okay, you're doing something crazy. You would be fun to sit next to at a wedding. But like, why would I go and follow you on social media? Or why would I go out of my way to help and support you? Like, why would I do that?

James Clasper: You know, you talked about being on the shipping vessels of the North Atlantic in winter, but there must've been moments when you're on a vessel of some kind where it was, you know, 31 degrees, and you just thought, wow, this is the life. I mean, there must have been moments where you're like, this isn't deluded. This is it.

Thor Pedersen: No. So there were key moments throughout the entire project. There's so much good to look back at. I've developed as a person. I can barely remember who I was when I set out compared to who I am today. It was so full of so many things, be it culture or language or food, flora, fauna, you know, pushing my own limits, learning who I am, what I want in life and what I'm capable of and what I'm not. And all this, and then all the amazing stuff you mentioned having a great moment in the Pacific, and this pretty much never happens. We had mirror-like conditions. So we're out in the Pacific Ocean, no land to be seen in any direction. And the water goes into this beautiful blue color and it's like a mirror. And you have the container ship pushing through this. It's really gorgeous. And then suddenly we see a rainbow in front of the vessel and we're heading straight towards the rainbow. And I was up on the bridge looking at the officers going, have you seen this before? He's like, no, this does not happen. So, yeah. Okay. I thought so. Now that you, sometimes you are somewhere in the ocean, you get to see whales jumping

James Clasper: Hmm.

Thor Pedersen: The water and it's magical every time. I've never, seen a lot of whales. I've never felt like, yeah, I've seen enough. Oh, and there's solitude and you get a deeper understanding about the size of this planet. When you're out in the Pacific and you're doing a certain speed for days, you know, several days going and you see nothing. You see no airplanes in the sky. You see no other vessels. You see no land. You're just going, and in every direction to the horizon, you have the ocean, and then you have this dome of the sky across and you go like, are you crazy? This is a big planet. The next time someone tells me, no, it's a small world, you know? No, no, no. It's huge and we're really small being on it.

James Clasper: Was it ever boring though? Were there moments when you were just like, oh my God, we have been at sea for days and I haven't seen, you know, anything besides the sky and the water?

Thor Pedersen: No,

James Clasper: No.

Thor Pedersen: Never boring. The container ships in particular were a blessing. So once I was cleared to come on board and all the paperwork was done and everyone was happy, we're moving and we're moving towards my next destination. And usually if they do invite me on board the ships, it's not to earn money, you know, whatever pocket change I can give them, it's nothing in the economy of a ship. So it's a political decision within the company. Are they going to help me or not? So I'm saving money. I have my own cabin, I have somewhere a door I can close and I can just be myself and read a book or watch a movie or sleep or do whatever I want. I can go and I can talk to the crew, you know? So it depends on the crew. Some people are solitary, kind of, they don't want to talk to anyone, and some people are hungry for conversation. So I get three things out of being on a ship. I get transportation, I get accommodation, and I get my meals. It's just, it was like a break from the project. Every time I was on land, I have wifi, there's social media, there's Red Cross, there's a visa, there are all these considerations. There's a blog I have to write, there's a speaking engagement. There might be an interview. Sometimes there are interviews along the way as well. There's constantly stuff going on and it's never-ending, but on these ships, you know, I couldn't speed up the ship. We're going with the speed we're going, and if the captain says we'll be there in eight days, then I was like, this is eight days of I cannot do anything else than be on this ship.

James Clasper: You've talked about the sort of psychological toll it took and how that was the most challenging part, but was it also physically challenging? And if so, you know how.

Thor Pedersen: It was. I was carrying this ridiculously heavy backpack. Some would say I'm traveling light, you know, maybe not so much. And I would often swing it over my left back and my left shoulder. And doing that over the course of a decade, you know, I feel it in my shoulder today. I went through who knows how many different bacteria and viruses and whatnot. And some of it I was immune to and some of it less so. I had cerebral malaria when I was in Ghana, and that took a toll on me back then. The stress in Central Africa with not being able to get anything done, being in a foreign environment and you know, a lot of love and support from local people, families that do not have any real power, and having zero support from where it mattered, you know, with government officials and people in uniforms, this kind of stuff, not having the finances to continue and not having global support. And doubting my overall decision, that took a huge toll on me physically as well. And I was working so hard from early morning to late night, and then just again and again and again. So I wasn't eating well. I wasn't sleeping well. I started getting migraines, something I've never had before in my entire life. I basically dropped on the ground on one occasion, thinking that I was relapsing to some malaria and went to a clinic and the clinic said, no, you're working yourself too hard. You need to eat well, you need to get sleep, you need to work less. I'm not sure today that I feel anything physically from those days. It's mentally today. You know, that's something like that. I don't know if I'll ever really recover from what I did. It has some long strings into today.

James Clasper: Tell me how you kept going then. I mean, you've talked about there being moments when you almost gave up, and from a, you know, logistical, psychological and physical perspective, what kept you going?

Thor Pedersen: We're coming close to two years since I returned home, and this is still something that I'm reflecting on. I should have given up a gazillion times throughout that project and in the parallel universe, I'm sure I did. I do not know why I pushed so hard. I do not know. Even when I was not motivated by anything, I was still pushing forward. Sometimes I speculate if it's something that's really deep inside that I was able to activate and it kept me going. I speculate, is that something everybody has? Something we all can activate when it's called for, or if that's something that's unique to me. And in part, you know, the soft answer would be that probably not, that it was really important to become the first to reach every country without flying. I think that lost a lot of its flare over the years, certainly still giving every country in the world a fair chance to shine under the sun. There are certain countries that are in greater need of it than others. And then also there was a sort of promise to a lot of people that I've met, people who had housed me, given me accommodation and meals and helped me with translations and connections, and they were doing that because I said I was going to cross the finish line. So I still wanted to be there for those people. Especially the people who would send me messages, people I had never met, but who would be sending me messages going, it's incredibly important what you're doing to me. I have these issues I'm fighting. I can relate to your struggle. Keep fighting. You will cross that finish line someday. Then you go like, how am I going to quit? How am I going to quit now? Like what kind of signal would I be sending to all of these people? But I really don't know why I didn't give up.

James Clasper: And tell me how it was to return to Denmark. So, you know, what was it like initially and then, you know, how have you reflected on how your relation to the country and your sort of identity as a Dane, how has that changed?

Thor Pedersen: I've been questioning what really connects me to my own country, what my own country is, what my role is within my own country. We're just 6 million people, which is huge to everyone in the Pacific, but 6 million really isn't a lot. And we have old traditions. We have a pretty old history where we have a proud nation, but I don't feel all that connected to. I probably spent more than half my life outside of Denmark at this point. I don't know what makes Denmark my home compared to any other place in the world. But I do know that my home is basically next to my wife, that my wife is my anchor. And if she wants to go and live in Greenland for a couple of years, then I'm up for it. Let's go to Greenland for a couple of years. So wherever she is, that's my home. When I came back to Denmark in 2023, one of the first things I started doing was I went to a lot of museums. I went to the National Museum. I went to the City Museum. I went to a ton of museums trying to learn about my country and understand my country on a different level and connect with my country. It's a little bit difficult for sure.

James Clasper: You mentioned your wife. She was your girlfriend when you set off. How often did you get to see her? Did she come out and join you in kind of different points?

Thor Pedersen: She did. She would come out to see me 27 times during the entire project. And that would amount to 27 different countries as well. If you talk about the IKEA test in relation to a couple, then imagine being in Sudan or in Jamaica or in East Timor. We have a lot of great memories together. She would very rarely cross a border with me because it would make it so much more expensive for her not to fly in and out of the same airport. It sounds bad, but she was a delay to my homecoming because 27 visits and a visit would be, you know, a week, two weeks. So she's been out to see me for more than a year in total. And whenever she came, I wasn't moving forward. Right. So I was spending time with her. What would typically happen would be that we would do touristy things. So then we were going to the cinema, we were going to a sushi restaurant, going to a waterfall. This kind of stuff. And one thing that you may be able to relate to is that I might not see her again for another three or four, or five or six months. And long-distance relationships are hard. People who say it's not work are kidding themselves. It is work. And if I sent her home and she was not happy, then that would fester in my mind, you know, that would stick with me going like, ah, she's thousands of kilometers away. I won't see her for a long time. There's only so much you can do in web calls and this kind of stuff. So it was really my job to make sure that she was in the best mood possible, that she had the time of her life. Every time she came out and then went home happy and reassured that she was in a long-distance relationship with the right guy.

James Clasper: Tell me about your relation to money now. I mean, living on $20 a day for a decade, you know, has it changed your relationship to money?

Thor Pedersen: You very quickly learn the difference between what you need and what you want. What you want and what you need is definitely not the same.

James Clasper: Do you travel differently now then?

Thor Pedersen: What this project did to me was it made me reconsider, do we need to fly? So obviously I'm in Europe. If I'm invited to Japan, I'm not going to spend six months going overland. I'll fly to Japan, but I was invited to go to Geneva in Switzerland. I had a look at the map and I went like, oh, I wonder, you know, usually you'd fly, but I wonder how much would the cost be in terms of time and inconvenience if I went overland and I opted for some train tickets. And the overall idea was that if you go to the airport, then the flight might be two hours or whatever. But really what you should consider is what time you leave home to be at the airport, security check-in, all this kind of stuff, take off and blah, blah, blah. And then at the other end also all the time. So I'm doing a lot of that, considering do I need to fly or not? Do I have the time to go with a bus or a train?

James Clasper: And you've talked about, in the year or two since you got back, you know, having speaking engagements and so forth. You've also written a book.

Thor Pedersen: The Impossible Journey. Yeah. The book is out since April 24 in the UK. The book is not your classical travel book. It's not the go to this waterfall or go to these three restaurants and this kind of stuff. It's a story about personal development. It's what in the author's world is a hero's journey. So there's a call to go out into the world and then you develop going through a ton of stuff before you come back home. There's a love story in this one. There are a lot of thoughts on who I am and what I did and what the world is.

James Clasper: And now that you've literally been everywhere, what's next?

Thor Pedersen: Well the thing about going to every country in the world is that you certainly haven't been everywhere. You discover that you haven't been everywhere. You go to massive countries and you are a thin red line moving through these massive countries. And at best case, if you're in a bus or a train, you're looking out the window, you're seeing a couple of kilometers, right? And the country might be thousands of kilometers, so you only get to see so much and there's always more to come back to. A nice thing about going through every country in the world is certainly in relation to the people that you meet. And I now probably know people in 170 countries around the world. So going back to countries is amazing. I get to see things within these countries that I didn't see before. I get to meet up with people that have hosted me or that I made friends with years ago. I've launched a project which I call Project Seven Seven Three. And that's because you have Most Travel People and you have Nomad Mania, these are websites where they keep an eye on people and how much they travel and who has been to every country in the world and verifies if you've just clicked that you've been to every country or you have actually been. Then once you reach every country in the world, then you can see everyone's equal. You know, I've reached every country, you've reached every country, they've reached every country. So here we are. So how do you determine who's the Most Traveled Person? What MTP and what Nomad Mania have done is they've divided the world into a lot of regions. So instead of having about 200 countries, you have about 1500 regions. Then you can see where you are at, how many regions have you visited? So going to the US I think it's divided by the states. Each state is a region, but then some of the states are so large that there are several regions within the state, even. I found out that the most traveled person from my own country reached 773 before passing away. So it's not a case of me approaching 773 and then someone taking off and going to more regions. That's a static number. So I'm trying to reach, no. So he reached 772. So my number is 773. If I can get to that, then I would be the most traveled Danish person. But there are other Danish people that are onto that. So now they've also started traveling and they might have stuffed it for me.

James Clasper: It's fiercely competitive. Looking back, I guess you would say yes to this. Was it worth it?

Thor Pedersen: I have to say yes. But I have to say yes from the perspective that I'm not getting any of it back. Right. But I have to make it worthwhile. I can sometimes wonder, especially now, it's coming close to two years and it's been more on my mind lately than it has been at any point, did I make a mistake? Should I not have done what I did? Are things going in the direction I want them to go now? Or would I have had such an easier life if I had an office job and two more children or whatnot? But, you know, it opens doors for me that would otherwise have been closed. And since coming home, I've had extraordinary experiences standing on a stage in front of a large audience and I'm a brand ambassador of PACAF in Hong Kong, by the way. And I'm also a brand ambassador of Salomon, which is based out of France. And, you know, all of this stuff, the interviews, the speaking engagements, the getting invited to go to, I'm going to ASPAJA soon and have been invited to do so. All of that stuff wouldn't have existed if I hadn't done what I had done. So it does come with benefits as well.

James Clasper: Would you do it again?

Thor Pedersen: No, no, I would definitely not do it again, and I wouldn't do it again for a number of reasons. One is that it was far more time-consuming. It demanded so many more resources than what I knew I was going to do when I set out right. I had no idea it was going to take almost a decade. You know, I thought if it goes long, maybe it's five years instead of four, but it's a crazy long time. Then my life was at risk several times. Why would I do that to myself? Why would I put my life at risk several times? Then my mental health, there are good days, there are bad days, but some things trigger me. Some things haunt me from the past. There's some trauma as well. You know, why would I do that to myself? But if I had not gone through everything I did, then I wouldn't be the person that I am today and I wouldn't have the knowledge that I have today. And I do not want to be without the knowledge that I have today. So what I can wonder is, was the price too high? But I have already paid, so there's no point in wondering too much about that.

James Clasper: Yeah. So were there moments when you felt that your life was in danger anywhere along the way?

Thor Pedersen: Yeah, absolutely. The, oh, the book opens on the most harrowing moment, I suppose, was in Central Africa. I was hanging on a thin thread, trying to make things work. I made a bad decision, got into a taxi that brought me during the night through a jungle toward the border.

James Clasper: I

Thor Pedersen: Really, really hungry and really tired. Hadn't slept for a long time. And I was in a part of the world where people disappear, where life is not valued as much as it is where we come from. And around 3:00 in the morning, there are three shadows on the road. It was a dirt road in the jungle and we slowed down and we can see that they're wearing uniforms and they're armed to their teeth and they're drunk out of their mind. They pull us out of the vehicle, command us out of the vehicle, and we're standing there on the dirt road, have the humidity and you can hear crickets and that kind of stuff. And then you have these guys and you can smell booze and sweat off them. And one of these guys, you could just see hate flare out of his eyes from the moment that I got out of the vehicle and he saw I wasn't a local person and I was carrying the weight of colonialism on my shoulders that night. And I was at gunpoint. They had their finger on the trigger. And this was by far the most dangerous situation I've been in the entire way. I was confident that I was dying within seconds or minutes. There's no possible avenue where this is going to end well, this is going to end with a gun firing and a bullet flying through me. That's going to happen within seconds or minutes, not in a couple of hours. It's now. I'm dead. I'm a dead man, still breathing. That's what I thought. And it went on for a good long time. And here I am talking to you today, so I was wrong. But I knew in my mind I was going to die.

James Clasper: Why didn't you, how did the situation resolve itself? How did you resolve it?

Thor Pedersen: Gotta buy the book.

James Clasper: There you go. Cliffhanger.

Thor Pedersen: Yes.

James Clasper: There you go. Pick up the book, support the Red Cross and, yeah, follow you on social media to see where you go, where you speak, and what you do next.

Thor Pedersen: Absolutely, yes, do that.

James Clasper: Thor Pedersen, it's been a pleasure having you on Archipelago.

Thor Pedersen: Well, it's been my pleasure. Thank you very much, James.

James Clasper: You've been listening to Archipelago, produced and hosted by me, James Clasper, for Archipelago Audio. You'll find links to Thor's website and his book in the show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone who might love hearing about incredible journeys. Leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe so you don't miss the rest of this season's stories about finding the extraordinary in unexpected places. Next time on Archipelago, we'll visit the world's only volunteer-run space program where a team of dreamers in Copenhagen is building a rocket in their spare time, determined to prove that space travel doesn't have to be the exclusive domain of superpowers or billionaires.

Speaker: Our project is running with an extremely low budget. We have around 10% of the budget that NASA has for coffee. And that means you have to think differently.

James Clasper: That's next time on Archipelago. I hope you'll join me.


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