The Kon-Tiki Expedition

Let’s go back in time some 60 years. World War II had just ended and many countries were busily rebuilding their ruined economies. Family life was slowly coming back to normal after many years of privations during the war.

In many countries people were beginning to take an interest in far away lands but mass tourism had not yet been developed. Most people did not yet have the financial means to travel abroad. This was also long before the advent of television so people had to rely on travel books to satisfy their curiosity about foreign nations .

In the 1940s and 50s numerous travel books were written by intrepid travellers, business men and missionaries and they all had a large following in the Western world. One of the more famous books from this era was Thor Heyerdahl’s account of the 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition. The book was published in more than 60 different languages and it was a huge success with millions of copies sold.

Ethnographer, marine biologist and world traveller Thor Heyerdahl passed away in 2002 after a very long and distinguished career. He was born in 1914 in Norway, a country which has been very active in the exploration and research of the Polar regions. Heyerdahl put forward a number of theories about migrations in the Pacific area. He believed he had discovered considerable similarities between the peoples of South America and those of the islands of the Pacific. Thus he believed that the islands had been populated by people corning from the American continent.

This was of course quite a revolutionary theory as most researchers believe that the islands were populated by people who came from South East Asia.

Heyerdahl wanted to prove his theory by sailing on a raft from Peru to the South Pacific islands. Using the prevailing currents he expected to reach his target without too many problems.

He had seen how Peruvian Indians used balsa rafts and this was a technique that he wanted to use. Most other ethnographers considered such rafts to be completely useless for travels on the high seas.

On April 28, 1947 the raft left the port of Callao in Peru. It was named Kon-Tiki after an Inca god. Apart from Heyerdahl four Norwegians and a Swede made up the crew. After several months at sea the raft finally went aground on the atoll of Raroia in the Tuamotu Group (French Polynesia) on August 7, 1947. A French Polynesian stamp was issued in 1962 to mark the 25th anniversary of the expedition. It depicts the route from Callao to Raroia and then on to Tahiti.

Heyerdahl made a documentary film about the Kon-Tiki Expedition for which he was awarded an Oscar in 1951.

Commemorative covers had been prepared for the journey. The cachet depicts the Kon-Tiki, the raft and its route from Callao to Tahiti. At Papeete three postage due labels making up the rate of eight francs were affixed and then postmarked August 26, 1947. The cover is of course a philatelic concoction as there is no address for delivery. Still it is a very nice souvenir of this very famous voyage.

In 2007, French Polynesia celebrated the expedition’s 60th anniversary by releasing a 300-franc stamp. They didn’t go to too much trouble in producing the design which very closely resembles the cachet used on the Kon-Tiki Expedition cover 60 years earlier.

The Swedish crew member was Bengt Danielsson (1921-1997), an ethnographer and author of numerous books. After coming to the enchanted Polynesian islands he decided to make Raroia his home. He married a French woman and wrote extensively about his new home country.

For many years he served as Sweden’s consul in Papeete but in 1978 the French ordered him to relinquish his post due to his opposition to the French nuclear tests in French Polynesia. Danielsson’s young daughter had died of cancer and he was convinced that the nuclear tests were to be blamed for her death.

Thor Heyerdahl went on researching the early civilizations of Easter Island and the Maldives. He also made further voyages wanting to prove different migrationary theories. In later years he wrote several books about pollution and overpopulation. But he is probably best remembered for his many daring expeditions.

A few years ago I spent some time in Oslo, the capital of Norway. I of course used this opportunity to visit the Kon-Tiki Museum at Bygdøy. The raft was taken to Norway and is now the museum’s prime exhibit. It’s hard to understand why six men would want to venture out on the sometimes rather unfriendly Pacific Ocean on such a fragile vessel. At first Heyerdahl’s scientific colleagues were far from convinced that people had really migrated from America to the Pacific area. However, Heyerdahl also carried out archaeological research on the Galapagos Islands and on Easter Island and he discovered numerous artefacts very similar to those known from South American cultures. The issue is still undecided but it seems fairly convincing that at least the Galapagos and Easter Island were visited by people from South America at some point in history.