United Nations Radio

The Arctic region, around the North Pole, has some of the most extreme weather conditions on Earth.

It is home to 4 million people spread over 8 countries, including dozens of indigenous groups. But climate change is impacting the Arctic profoundly. Lars Monsen, a Norwegian adventurer, is one of the few people who have explored this region on foot. Speaking to Ratomir Petrovic in Oslo, he shares his remarkable career and the insight it has given him into climate change.

Monsen: I've spent some 4,000 nights in a sleeping bag, often north of the Arctic circle, very cold climate. I think I have a drive within me that I really can't explain. It's the outdoors, it's the mountains, the hunting the fishing - the freedom of it all. It can be really a challenge sometimes, but the reward is so much bigger than just living in a civilized city.

RP: Four thousand nights is something like 12, 13 years. You're 45 now. So, when have you started?

Monsen: Well, I started as a kid. I had a father who took me out and allowed me to sleep alone in the forest when I was nine years old. Since that night, I've just wanted more and more. And the trips have become longer and longer. My longest expeditions have been across Canada took almost 3 years. I walked on foot across Alaska. That took ten months. I walked on foot along the Norwegian borderline to what was then the Soviet Union, Finland and Sweden. That took one year.

RP: And how is the feeling? How is it to be completely on your own and there is nothing around and just white and silence?

Monsen: I'm convinced that most people, not everyone, but most people would really enjoy trying some of this life, you know, just be out there and to dare listening to the silence. It can be deafening. It can be like thunder in your ears even though you don't hear anything, you know, because you are alone, it gets dark, and then it's all the small things that gives you pleasure in daily life, you know, putting up a camp fire, finding a nice spot to sleep during the night and having your own little shelter - if it's a tent or it's a tarp, it protects you from the pouring rain or the snow and the blizzard storms, or whatever. It's just really something that feels right for the human soul. It's contact with nature.

RP: I'm sure that this requires humongous amount of preparation.

Monsen: If you prepare for something like crossing Alaska on foot, or even harder - crossing Canada - you really have to be mentally prepared. How hard do you want this? You know, you've got to ask yourself that question. You can die out there. It's no game. You have to be really conscious about the dangers, too. But then again, nine out of ten days are not that hard, you know. Most people can do lots of this, but then when it gets tough, that's when you have to rise to the challenge.

RP: The thing that we're really facing more and more is global warming and climate change. So you being up there, can you see it? Can you see the difference?

Monsen: Yes, I can, because I talk to the Indians and the Inuit people, the First Nation people and Saami people about this and I ask especially the old people. And what they say is the winters are just as cold as before, but they're shorter in both ends. And, you know, the river banks, they erode faster.

RP: What can we do about it?

Monsen: I don't know. To preserve wild areas in nature. For instance, where they are trying to drill for oil, I would really hope that they wouldn't do that, because that's one of the really few areas that are huge with wilderness, untouched wilderness. You know, northern Canada is just, you know, it's hard to grasp the distances. It's really a big country. And it's going to be there. I am optimistic, always am. Just try to live after my motto: "Anything is possible."

PRES: Nordic Explorer Lars Monsen speaking to Ratomir Petrovic in Norway.

(duration: 4'10")