Pros and Comms Season 3 Now Live! 

Reaching every country in the world in a lifetime is an impressive feat. To do it all in 10 years without flying and with a global pandemic in the way? Truly remarkable. That’s exactly what our guest Thor Pedersen has been up to. Echoing the spirit of historical explorers, blending old-world adventure with modern-day perseverance, Thor’s journey of discovery is a true act of resilience, people power and a reminder that the art of effective communication comes in many forms.  

The Comms Takeaways

Thor: But with people, you’re just winning and winning and winning, but there is the off chance that you will lose. And that was just a night where I lost.

Maaria: Welcome to Pros and Comms. In this podcast, I talk to people about their professional and personal stories, uncovering the different ways and common themes of resonating with an audience. After all, communication is essentially storytelling.
I’m Maaria Ginai, and today I’ll be talking to Thor Pedersen, a Danish explorer who’s epic nine-year journey had him visit every country in the world without using any air travel. Join us as we listen to his stories, the highs, the lows, and how the president of Tonga got involved.

Maaria: Thank you so much for coming on and talking to me today. So, we’re going to learn a bit about you, who you are and what you’ve learned about communication.
from looking at your website and all the stuff on the internet about you, I would sum you up as an intrepid Danish explorer who has visited every country in the world. is that accurate? Can you tell me about yourself, how you would describe yourself and what you’ve done in your life?

Thor: That’s a nice introduction for sure. I, that depends on which audience, but I might say I’m Thor from Denmark. I’m the first in history to reach every country in the world completely without flying. I might say to someone else, That I travelled as a goodwill ambassador of the Danish Red Cross. So, I promoted and raised funds for the world’s largest humanitarian organisation.
I might tell someone else that I have a lovely wife, I do speaking engagements. I, there are different stories. My background is within shipping and logistics, and I served in the military for a while.

Maaria: And we’re going to delve into some of those points in a bit.
So, tell me about your background. You said you’re in shipping, you’re in the military. Just tell me a bit about that side of it before you went on your big mission.

Thor: Yeah, sure. I was drafted to the Danish army. And Denmark, we have a system that when you’re about 17 years old you have to show up and they’ll see if you’re mentally fit and physically fit, then they’ll give you an orientation, this kind of stuff, and then you pick a number out of a tombola, a kind of thing.
And if the number is low. You have to do military service. And if the number is high you can choose, you can volunteer or you can just go home. And I picked a really low number and then being Denmark and all, they say, so what do you feel like, do you want to do the Navy or air force or army, and do you want to be close to home or far from home, this kind of stuff.
And yeah, so I, I picked my, the guards duty guarding the Queen at the time, then that led to international duty with the United Nations as a peacekeeper and I was deployed on a mission on the, at the Horn of Africa.
And after three years of soldiering, I found my way into shipping and logistics did four years in an office in Denmark answering emails and phone calls and, service sector. And then they started deploying me and sending me as an expat around the world. So,I worked a couple of years in Libya. I worked a year in Bangladesh. I worked in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, the Arctic circle, Greenland North America, various places around the world.

Maaria: Do you think that amount of traveling for work and stuff gave you the bug to travel a bit more and take up the challenge that you did?

Thor: I, yeah, so I think I had the travel bug ahead of that career.
I think that was earlier on, I was looking out towards the world. I was curious about temples and different people, food, and I wanted to see mountains and we had Denmark’s pretty flat. I wanted to see the world. So, I think that drove me. To United Nations, hoping that I would get sent somewhere really interesting.
And I certainly believe that taking up a career within shipping and logistics, that would be highly international. But in the beginning, it was just the paperwork that was international. It took a while before I got to see a bit more of the world.

Maaria: Okay, so tell me about then approaching this challenge.
You said you had the travel bug before you wanted to go and see lots of different places and lots of sites and things like that. So why was it that you wanted to do all that without flying?

Thor: If we take a step back, then I’ve always been intrigued by adventurers reading about the first to go to the Antarctic and the highest mountains and the deepest seas and following big rivers different places around the world and making their way deep inside jungles and so on.

And then growing up, slowly realising that all of these great achievements were most of them before I was born that there isn’t much left to be honest in terms of exploration of the planet. And I, you could argue differently, I’m sure but to do something and be the first.
It’s hard to find something. We have satellites whizzing above us, taking photos and videos of everything. I don’t think there’s an island we don’t know about. What I stumbled upon this in early 2013. That back then about 200 people had been to every country in the world, but no one had managed to pull it off completely without flying.
I saw it as my chance to do something that was historical and write my name into books and into history. But also, to find a great adventure and go out and see the planet that we live on and meet tons and tons of people.

Maaria: And look up to or admire and really like inspired you to start this. Who would you say is up there?

Thor: Shackleton is one of my favourites. And this entire expedition to Antarctica. I love the book endurance by Alfred Lansing. So that’s a great inspiration for me. Another 1 from Antarctica is the race to reach the South Pole, which was between the British and the Norwegians. And I think I’m probably more inspired by the British. Expedition which went severely wrong, but there is, there’s this 1 member of the team. I can’t remember his full name. It’s Titus Oats or something like this. it was really miserable, and they were sick, and they were hungry and cold and probably all going to die.
But he was. Probably the one who was worst off and in a really gentleman fashion one night when the wind was howling and it was really miserable, he got up and said, gentlemen, I think I’ll go for a walk, and he just stepped out into the snow and the ice. And he walked and he sacrificed himself for the rest of the team, hoping that they would be able to survive with his food rations and so on.
There’s a traveller from. Morocco, who probably is the one that I idolize the most. He lived 700 years ago and our English name for him is Ibn Battuta, but his name is it’s really long. But he was recognised as the most travelled person on earth for a good 500 years. He was supposed to do his Hajj to Mecca, and he ended up spending four years of his life doing that and liked it so much that he travelled out again and didn’t come back until after 25 years or so, and he travelled the world extensively,

Maaria: That was quite the pilgrimage,

Thor:Yes.

Maaria: Quite the pilgrimage for him. You decided to. You do this, you’re inspired by all of these people that you’ve read about in the history books. You thought, I want a piece of that. I want my name in history. I’m gonna do this all around the world without flying.
How did you logistically approach this? How did you figure out I’m going to be able to fund it and travel? And what was that process like?

Thor: I was okay about it because it developed itself. I didn’t think that I was going to do it. I didn’t think I was going to embark on a year long journey.
I was 34 years old just met a wonderful woman. My career was going well and all of my peers, all my friends, they had their first born and their homes and a cat and a piano and whatever, And I thought I was going to follow suit. I thought that was where I was at, that if I had been 10 years younger, then maybe it would be an option.
But when you’re 34, you can’t go out and spend several years on something and then come back and hope. To get a job or continue a career. So, I didn’t think I was going to do it. I was just toying around with the idea. So I bought a map and a blue pen and a red pen, and I sat down with my sister and tried to work out what would be an ideal route if you didn’t want to backtrack through too many countries, which would be time consuming, obviously, what would be good logistics and in a flightless journey through every country.
And then what would be a good budget? Because obviously a cup of tea in Uganda is not the same as in Switzerland, So what’s a good budget? And the internet was definitely around in 2013, so lots of blogging and you could read what other travellers were doing, what kind of budgets they had.
And there is $5 budgets, $10 budgets, $20 budgets and above, and I landed on $20 per day U. S. dollars per day, which was to cover 4 elements, transportation, accommodation, meals and visas. So those are the absolute necessities of such a project. Anything else is a nice to have,
And then what would a project name be? What kind of stuff would you pack? How much time would you spend in each country around the world? There are about 200 countries, depending on how you count plus minus. And if you spend 7 days in every country in the world, then it’s 4 years of your life.
And if you spend a month in every country, then it’s 16 years of your life. So, you have to be a bit cautious with time management. And if you spend, let’s say, 4 years. And it’s 20 a day, then that’s a substantial amount of money. It’s not in the big picture. If you can live off that kind of money for four years, then you’re doing really well.
But if you’re raising it for a project, it’s where’s that going to come from? So, all of these things, I was just toying with the idea. And as the months went by, I realised that. Yeah, I was probably going to do it, and I had an almost fully planned project as well.

Maaria: I think doing all that planning was either gonna deter you off it or from the sounds of your mindset, you were like it’s just going to spur me on then.
It’s going to help me get out that door.

Thor: I was very firm on the idea that I couldn’t do it because I was too old. Not old in, in an old person sense, but old in a, where do you want to be in your life? If you want to start a family, then you can’t really when you’re 34, you can.
So, I thought, okay, this is, it’s not going to be me. I should have done this kind of stuff when I was younger. And then eventually I realised that someday I’m going to be 44. And I’ll look back and say, I should have done it when I was 34. And I just so happened to be 34. So that was a big push out the door.

Maaria: Yeah, so was that realisation helped by anyone else, like you said, you got your sister involved and you’re planning it together and were you sharing these thoughts with her, and she was like, no, don’t be silly. You can do it. Was it like a self-realisation of looking back and going, look, in 10 years, I’m going to be regretting that I didn’t do this.

Thor: That was a self-realisation that, I had something here that I was that was invested in and that I was passionate about. And that I would have a hard time if 10 or 20 years down the line, I would be reading about some woman or some man who did it. And I think. That could have been me. That should have been me. Eventually I brought some friends on board and there were four of us and we’ve worked out like how to get sponsorship. And what to put on the website and graphic design and all of this stuff. So, I had a little bit of help in the beginning to, to set off.
And then I had brunch with a good friend. This is actually the turning point for me where we had brunch. And I told her, no, one’s gone to every country completely without flying. I’ve been looking into it. I think this can be done in four years, three and a half, four years, maybe. And on this kind of budget.
And she looked at me and she said, you have to do it. You have to do it. We can definitely find the money. I’ll help you structure it. And that’s when I formed this project group. So that was the tipping point.

Maaria: Brilliant. It’s always good to have people in your corner as well.

Thor: Yeah.

Maaria: Just to be like, you can do it.
Your, like, cheerleaders. So, you had this planning, and you were getting people to help you. was it a self-funded thing? You got a sponsorship, I presume, or. Like collaborators how did that work?

Thor: It was initially sponsored. So, there was a company that went in and said, this is so crazy. We have to be a part of it.
And then they were backing it financially. Unfortunately, a few years down the line, oil prices were quite low in the world. And the company was feeling this. So, they have to save where they could, and they could certainly save with a bearded guy with a hat who was trying to make his way through the world without flying.
So, they cut the sponsorship at which point it was self-funded. It was just whatever I had on my bank account for a while. And then I got to a point where there was nothing left on my bank account, but I had a little bit of a following going online. And I put it out there and said, listen, if I do a crowdfunding campaign or are you there for me?
And most people didn’t respond but some were very passionate about it and said, yeah, for sure. For sure. We’ll keep you going. And I was able to raise a little bit. And then that kept going. I did some speaking engagements, and I did some, I wrote a few articles now and again, which helped fund the fund it all.
And then eventually the sponsors from the beginning came back on board again years later. So, it became this mix between being self-funded, sponsored, and donations.

Maaria: Fabulous. It’s always great when you get people again who are behind you who are like really passionate about what you’re doing as with anything any sort of fundraising there’ll always be people there and then you’re like try and engage them and then they’re like no, we’re fine for now, but there will be some who are in your corner.

Thor: Even if one percent if one percent is backing you let’s say you have a thousand followers, then that would be ten of them, right?
So that’s a good start. And if you grow your following, you still have one percent. It starts to look like something.

Maaria: Absolutely. So, what was the exact date? And you will probably remember this, you stepped out of your door and started your mission.
Thor: Yeah, it started on the 10th of October 2013 at 10, 10 AM.
So, it would be 10, 10, 10, 10.

Maaria: Very precise.

Thor: Yep.

Maaria: Ah was that planned? Or was it?

Thor: Yes, that was planned.

Maaria: That’s too much for coincidence for it to be off the fly. You started traveling and you said, okay, this is probably going to take about four years. Ended up taking slightly longer because of various bits and pieces and the global pandemic that happened.
But pre pandemic, what was that journey like? Where did you go and where were your favourite places to go?

Thor: Oh, my favourite places anywhere new, was a favourite place. I’d been to 50 countries throughout my life. And then I reset and said, now we’re going to all of them.
I wanted to see what I hadn’t seen before. So, I started in Europe and did Western Europe more or less, and then spiralled North around the Nordic countries, Scandinavia, and then went over the North Atlantic West.
Eventually I visited Faroe Islands and Greenland and Iceland and made my way to Canada and Canada, US, Mexico, and then down through Central America. And then into South America for the first time in my life. So, all of those countries were new to me and that was really exciting and interesting, but it was also tiresome.
You have to imagine that, if you’re traveling for leisure you go for a couple of weeks or maybe a month, if it’s a gap year, maybe three months or six months and most people at the end of six months, they’re good and ready to go home. They’ve met a lot of people.
They’ve seen a lot of things. They’re tired of living out of a bag. They want to go home and reflect on things and really recharge and then maybe go out at a later point. You do not meet a lot of people who are out there for a year. It’s even more rare to meet people who’s been out there for two years.
It’s almost like coming across a unicorn and it’s because it becomes work. It’s just sitting in buses and trains alone is very repetitive. Although you see wonderful things looking out the window and you have great experiences and you meet so, so many people and have fantastic conversations.
Yeah. It is repetitive in its own way, but with a project like this, if you say, I’m not coming home until I’ve been to every country and I’m not flying at any point then you have this long list in front of you. And in the beginning, you’re in Europe, you’re traveling by train, you’re ticking countries off for 1 day after the other.
Then it slows down and eventually you see you, you got to 50 or 60 countries, and you still have. 140 to go, which is a lot, and it becomes hard. What was just amazing and fantastic turns into work. So, it’s gradually, it goes from one or 2 percent work to 99 percent work.
And yeah, so I finished South America and the Caribbean and came back to Europe and got into Africa from Spain into Morocco. Did Western Africa and Central Africa and came to about my halfway point in terms of countries. And that was two years in, and I just couldn’t, I was done for I was, I had cerebral malaria.
I lost the financial backing. My long-distance relationship was very shaky. I was held at gunpoint. The three of the ships I travelled on board were at the bottom of the sea. The level of corruption and chaos and the workload in getting the necessary paperwork could be it visas or.
Permits, and a lack of understanding of what I was trying to accomplish. I was just done for, that got me to the halfway point and then I was ready to go home.

Maaria: So, then what happened? Did you?

Thor: Uh, yeah, this is a good question.
It’s still a little bit of a mystery to me. The overall project ended up taking nearly 10 years, so 9 years, 9 months and a bit. Come late July this year, 2024. It will be a full year since I returned home. So, I’m still reflecting over a great deal of things, and I have answers for most things I feel, but I still do not know why I didn’t quit.
I should have quit a million times. I really don’t know what was the real source of continuing and that’s a bit of a mystery to not only to me, but to a lot of people. And I’m still exploring that. But yeah, so it didn’t get much easier after that. And there was still this tiredness within the project of there’s this list and you have to get up and you have to do something.
If you don’t do, if you do nothing, then it doesn’t continue. And then you’ll just sit there and not reach the final countries. You have to do something. You have to. Get the tickets. You have to find out which borders to cross and how to keep everything moving. And then when I was down to the last nine countries, a global pandemic broke out and I got stuck for two years.

Maaria: Where were you stuck during the pandemic?

Thor: I was stuck in Hong Kong, which there’s a great irony about, I find. Because I, Hong Kong wasn’t on the list of countries to visit, so I’d been to China, and I counted Hong Kong part of greater China. So, I had no need to go to Macau or to Hong Kong within this project.
And I wasn’t adding territories. I just wanted to get home. But I was trying to navigate between different island nations within the Pacific and the shipping company I was collaborating with said, we do not have a direct connection to your next country, which was Palau. But what they did have was a ship that could take me up to Hong Kong, and then I could do four days of transit and then get on another ship to Palau.
And I went, fine, let’s go to Hong Kong. I don’t mind Hong Kong’s a great place. Yeah. And I got stuck in Hong Kong for two years.

Maaria: Look, we’re laughing about it now, but it’s fascinating to hear how early on relatively early on compared to your whole journey, it got really tough for you and there’s still, there’s something innately, which.
Made you go on and do this and then you obviously experienced all those like being held at gunpoint is. Yeah.

Thor: It happened several times but the one time where I thought this is it. I’m dying I have seconds or minutes left Was in the middle of the night on a dirt road in a jungle, very close to the border with Congo.
I was in the very South of Cameroon, and I love those countries, and I have so many good memories from those countries. I actually look back at the world and I look back at people and in terms of people, I feel that as long as we’re dealing with people, it’s like playing a reverse lottery. Where you’re winning constantly, it’s so hard to lose.
Or in a conventional lottery, you buy a ticket, you hope to win, you’re going to lose. But with people, you’re just winning and winning and winning. But there is the off chance that you will lose. And that was just a night where I lost.

Maaria: That is so extreme. And as you said, when you’re talking to people it’s It can be fantastic. It opens you up to new experiences and new cultures. how did you communicate and adapt to all the cultures that you were experiencing?
Because obviously you went through countries like pretty quickly. So, did, was there a noticeable shift in the way people communicated from one country to another? Or was it like a geographical region maybe as you went like further down to South America, you started seeing different cultural influences and the way people communicate?

Thor: Yeah, my, my country average was about 12 days per country before the pandemic. Yeah, it’s relatively short. I’m not living there for years.
English is a great language to communicate. A lot of people speak English or understand a little bit of English. The United States of America for good or worse is a superpower and their culture does spread. And that’s music and movies and sitcoms. I speak Danish coming from Denmark.
That’s really not a helpful language at all in the world. If we need this international language, we need to speak English to make ourselves understood. I speak. A reasonable amount of German. I can have a good conversation in German, and I thought that was going to be absolutely useless, but I was surprised that German was very useful.
Germany is a powerhouse of a country within Europe, and a lot of people dream about moving to Germany or coming to work in Germany for a while and to enhance their chances. They learn German. And so you’ll have people in India, Pakistan, China, you’ll have people around the world who speak German when you least expect it, and you’ll be in a train or in a bus or on the street and end up speaking German to someone, which is just odd.
And then Germany used to have colonies some African colonies. if you speak to the older generations, they still know German and in some countries like Namibia, they still have German newspapers and so on.
Then yeah, so I, I speak a bit of Spanish and I speak a bit of French and as I went through Latin America, I was certainly expanding on my spoken Spanish. And some of these countries, it’s just easier to understand. most. Of South America, at least it’s Spanish speaking countries, but you go to Chile, they speak it so fast that it’s really hard to understand what the heck is going on.

Maaria: And did you find places where you had no knowledge of the language, but you were just able to communicate and obviously with the internet and things that probably helped as well in terms of communicating.
But whether, did you find that there was just, you were able to communicate nonverbally with people to a certain extent?

Thor: Yeah, definitely. You can cover your basics almost nonverbally You can flap your arms around a bit if you want to indicate you want chicken and that kind of stuff.
But also, everything within context. So, if you like the word bus is bus in a lot of languages. So, you can just say bus terminal or bus and try to indicate that you want to go somewhere. And then people will point you like, they’ll usually get it. Then they’ll point you to a bus terminal. Then once you get to the bus terminal, if you just know the city name, where you want to go, the place name.
So, it’s everything in context. If you walk into a bakery and you say a city name, they’ll be lost. But at a bus terminal, they’ll know that, okay, you’re looking for a bus that can take you there. So, you can make your way through the world in that way.
In Central Asia, I was stuck because in the same way that for Denmark and many countries around the world, the international language is English in Central Asia. They will have their local languages like Turkmen or Kazakh, and then the international language will be Russian. And that makes sense to them because if they speak Russian, then they can speak to 200, 300 million people, 400 million people.
So that’s all they need. And all the neighbouring countries speak Russian, and everyone speaks Russian. But if you do not speak Russian and you do not speak the local languages in Central Asia, then the conversation can be hard.

Maaria: Then you have to get your dictionary out.
let’s go back to the journey and pandemic time. You found yourself in Hong Kong. How long were you in Hong Kong for before you were able to continue your journey?

Thor: Yeah, pretty close to two years. It was, I think I was a week shy of two years, which is almost a shame, right?
I was able to leave Hong Kong to get on a ship that could take me to Palau, which was always the intention to do that from Hong Kong. And then I, oh, it’s such a long story, but the short version is I was on the ship for quite some time.
When I got to Palau, there was an outbreak of COVID 19 the first that they had in Palau, that was three days before our ship arrived. So, they were panicking, and they weren’t willing to let me off the ship. even though I was completely clean, I was super vaccinated.
I’d been on the ship for weeks before arriving. There was no way that I would be bringing the virus to them. They decided to hotel quarantine me for my entire stay in Palau. I got to see a little bit of Palau and then got on a ship, which took me back to Hong Kong.
And that was another three weeks, not calling any ports, just three weeks on board the ship with the seafarers. So, in, in essence, quarantined, and then I had to do. I think it was two weeks of hotel quarantine in Hong Kong before they would let me into the city. And then probably another month before I was able to connect with a ship and go to Australia and then be on my way again.
So yeah, two years in Hong Kong and then another two months to reach the next country.

Maaria: Wow. So, you got to know those hotels pretty well.

Thor: Yeah. My nose is twice the size today because of all the swipes and this kind of stuff. it wasn’t Hong Kong.
Wasn’t my only delay throughout the pandemic. I think a lot of people assume, okay, so the pandemic two years in Hong Kong and then you are beyond it. But reality was that. The Pacific and all these small island nations were the last countries to open their borders. So, at the point when I left Hong Kong, New Zealand was still closed.
Even New Zealanders couldn’t return to their homeland. And a number of small island nations in the Pacific were still closed. And I have to negotiate. With the governments and plead to gain access to come and visit their countries. And I had to negotiate with shipping companies that under no circumstances were willing to take a passenger because what if the virus came on board the ship and what if they get quarantined and lost millions?
So, there was a lot of delay following, me leaving Hong Kong.

Maaria: how did you approach, governments and trying to get them to let you into your country. What were your like methods of persuasion?
Or was it just a lot of please let me in?

Thor: It was a bit of both. And it really depends on the country. Yeah. I reached out to Australia, and I was told that I couldn’t come in, that our authorities wouldn’t agree to it. Me arriving on board a container ship and during the pandemic wasn’t called over.
Countries were just slowly starting to open up. And then you go through the bureaucracy of reaching the right people at one government office.
Then some of the smaller island nations within the Pacific, they just go, we’re not, where are you from? Denmark? Never heard of it. We’re not letting you into our country go away. And then you network, who do you know?
And sometimes if your social media is big enough, you can leverage that and your social media might well be bigger than that of most people in a small island nation in the Pacific, like even the president or the foreign ministry and this kind of stuff. So, they might be impressed by. 5, 000 followers online for 10, 000 followers online or something like this.
That might be the entire country, so you can use that sometimes? my phone is just full of contacts and some of these people Are on a relatively high level so someone will know someone I got into Tonga because I had a friend who was able to communicate with the government in Samoa I went to Samoa and had a great time there and there was so nice And then they decided on a government level from Samoa to reach out to the government in Tonga and say we think you should let this guy in and everyone said no the Defence said no the health ministry said no to so and so said no but then eventually it bumped all the way up to the President and not in some long email with fancy writing, like in one sentence, I just said, let him in.
I was able to go to Tonga.

Maaria: Wow. What a claim to say just that like, yeah, the president of Tonga. Tonga has just personally allowed my entry into the country, guys.

Thor: Yeah, I need to find that email. I should frame that email.

Maaria: Take it to your next speaking thing just bring it on with you. So, you talked about social media and how that helped you with Logistics and getting into places.
How else did your social media following and being on social media help you with your journey, either mentally giving you more strength to carry on, or with, as you said, crowdfunding and that sort of thing, what aspects of social media can you pick out that really helped you complete your challenge?

Thor: Social media in a big way was companionship. Because it was a very lonely journey, and anywhere I went, people, they wouldn’t fully understand what I had undergone to get to that country or that city. It was a tremendously long journey. I covered a distance akin to going once from Earth to the Moon.
And then you can only imagine the ups and downs throughout such a journey. So, there was a loneliness within the journey,
I think it’s a loneliness that comes out of feeling misunderstood and having social media. Some people have followed me for almost from the beginning of the journey. they have had some ideas about what the troubles have been and the ups and downs and everything.
And it just feels very comforting to share something and then and see some of these names the core followers, respond as I keep on keeping on, don’t give up that you’re doing well, or take a break, or I’ve just donated 5 to you go and get a cup of coffee or, oh, or whatnot. So, it’s been nice to have social media in that sense.
Social media has opened doors for sure. Not so much in the beginning. You have 200 followers or 500 followers, it doesn’t open a lot of doors. When you start to have 10, 000 followers, 20, 000 followers, the sheer network between those people Can reach levels you would not be able to imagine like that. It’s unbelievable but also, it’s an eye opener.
but generally, it’s like a currency.
The more followers you have, the more you can do in life, it will open doors for you for sure. Its social media is a strange creature like that. So, there was the network within it. There was the comfort of companionship. It was a tool. It’s like a microphone. So, the more people that follow the louder the microphone is.
I had some ideas about the world. I saw the world through my own eyes, and I wanted to share some of these stories and call out things that I didn’t feel were well represented. That’s it. Or just show people something that I feel that might not necessarily be well known across the world or something that’s in a sense good compared to maybe you go to Afghanistan and you show something good and people are surprised because they haven’t heard anything good from Afghanistan for the longest of times.
Yeah, I think it was valuable having social media and as it grew my messages would reach more people and. And there was some, there was more a sense of accomplishment in in sharing the message with a larger audience.

Maaria: what you said about social media bringing stories which people might not hear like from Afghanistan, where they might have had like a negative connotation for whatever reason.
I think that’s one particularly powerful aspect of social media. You were able to do your last countries and then you’re able to finally come home. What was it like to finally be able to come back? And when you first took your first step back into Denmark, what was that like?

Thor: Oh, that was a good day. The last country was the Maldives, and I reached the Maldives in May last year. So, it’s just been a year since I reached the last country and I could have gone to the airport and I could have flown home, but I decided to go home over land and sea.
For several reasons. One reason was I wanted to close the circle. I felt it was true to the project to do it in such a way. But it was certainly also because I knew I was in trouble mentally that I’ve been on this. I’ve been in this monster of a project for such a long time and with all of these routines that have been, that have become embedded in who I was.
And then that would just suddenly end. And if that ended from one day to the next, I wasn’t sure about how it would take that, but also the overall transition in coming home. How was I going to handle that? So, I felt that a slow return home was really good. And the last ship I was on was a voyage that took 33 days, which brought me from Malaysia south of India, the Indian ocean and into the red sea and through the Suez and across the Mediterranean and around Europe past Spain and Portugal and over the Biscay and through the English channel, and then finally into the North sea.
Which was home and then up and North around Denmark and into Arhus, which is our second largest city in Denmark. So, who would have thought there was a connection between Malaysia and Denmark?
There was a welcome party. There was more than a hundred people, maybe even 150 people with small Danish flags, and there was a marching band playing a jazz band playing when the saints come marching home, and the sun was shining for 14 or 15 minutes before it started raining. So that was good as well.

Maaria: Oh, you’ve managed just to get a little bit of a little bit of sun before, before the weather came. Was it easy to acclimatise back? Was that particularly troubling or was it because you took, extra time on your way back to try and wind down from the challenge?
Were you able to? We’ll get back into Danish life.

Thor: No that’s a process and it’s still an ongoing process. I think I’ve been blessed with a lot of attention when I came home because I’ve done a great deal of interviews. I’ve been invited to do speaking engagements. I’ve been on a speaking tour and at the end of my speaking engagements, I do Q& A and let the audience ask me questions and It’s almost like therapy, right?
The more questions you’re asked, the more you need think about things and find out where do you stand before hopefully providing an answer, or maybe not even providing an answer. I see all of it as, as bringing me closer to home and giving me more clarity.
My wonderful wife was there to receive me at the port when I came back home and she’s my anchor and she’s been incredibly supportive and helpful because I wasn’t coping well when I came back home, there were there were certain things that would not have been, If I was on my own, so she was taking care of basically everything shopping and cooking meals and everything practical.
She was just really taking good care of me as I was doing tons and tons of interviews and replying to emails and whatnot. And then it found its level and I’d say it’s still pretty busy. On my part there, we’re working on a documentary. We’re about to start writing a book. Just signed a contract with a publisher and then still on a speaking tour.
So, I’m balancing all of that. There are easy days. There are not so easy days. I feel that there are more good days than bad days at this point. I felt physically ill for about a month where I went through seven, eight, nine different things, an eye infection or this or that and all sorts of stuff.
I think it was stress levels coming down and then the body reacting to it but in the big picture, I returned home after successfully navigating a route through every country in the world without flying.
And I came home with all the teeth in my mouth with a sight on both eyes and hearing and with 10 fingers and 10 toes. I came home in one piece physically, but the mental aspect is, it’s a completely different thing.
And then most days I don’t feel that I’m in the process. I feel like, yeah, this is just what life is now. This is here I am. But on other days it’s not easy. And my father, for one, doesn’t think I’ll ever be able to make the journey home. Not really. I think we, we recognise this in military personnel.
If we send soldiers on a mission somewhere for six months and they come back home. We understand it takes them time to return back home, weeks or months or years or some of these soldiers never really come home and I’m probably in the, this guy might never really come home category.

Maaria: How do you feel about that?

Thor: I have a wonderful, supportive, and loving wife, and that is key to me.
That is my anchor, and I feel at home wherever she is, and I am so blessed having that. Everything else, do I feel at home in Denmark? Do I feel that everything is working out the way I want it to? Do I feel that, that what I’m getting now matches the input of the past 10 years. I don’t know there I’m certainly blessed with a lot of things.
I’m fairly well off in, in a lot of aspects. So yeah. Am I going to be complaining about certain things for the rest of my life? Definitely. Am I going to be feeling a little bit out of place for the rest of my life? Certainly. Yeah. Am I going to be waking up screaming in the middle of the night?
No, I don’t think so. I’ll I’m going to be okay.

Maaria: is there anything else that you’ve got coming next? Are you going to be traveling anytime soon?
Or are you strictly just staying put and. Getting back into Danish society. What are your plans?

Thor: I travel a lot. I enjoy traveling. Now I go wherever I want, whenever I want. I stay as long as I want. I do what I want.
there isn’t a stupid list that I’m following. There are, I do not have all of these chores that I have to do when I’m in a country. It’s I’m in a position of freedom compared to the past 10 years where I was. A prisoner of my own ambition. So, travel now is. Much better than the past 10 years, although so much good came out of the past 10 years, I’m leaving in two days. for Egypt. I’m going with a friend. We’re going to meet another friend. I have in Egypt, and we’ll hang out for a little bit. Then I’m coming back home.
And then I’ve been invited on a quiz show in Germany, but yeah, so they’re going to film that and then they’re going to release that at some point, and then I’ll share that with the world.
Then my wife and I were looking at going on a motorcycle journey through a great deal of Germany for sure. And then maybe also a bit of France before coming back up to Denmark again. And then the rest of the year we’ll be writing the book and doing speaking engagements.

Maaria: So that segues nicely into my last few questions. And the first one is about communication. So, what do you think are the most important things for effective communication?

Thor: I think clarity is very important. Back in my military days I was a signal man, which meant I had this big radio on my back, and I was communicating between different battalions and so on.
And one thing they knocked into our head from early days was I’ll have to have this in Danish, let me see. So, it’s think, press, speak, and that’s how the radio works, right? When you press the button, everyone can hear what you’re saying, but think before you press that button, because you don’t want a lot of people listening to you, working out what it is you want to say, and you’re on and all of this.
So, have some clarity about what is it you want to say? How do you want to say it? I think that’s really important for communication. Listening is equally important. If you’re not listening, you’re not communicating and then it’s, a monologue and where are you going with that?
So, it has to be a dialogue and in order to have a proper dialogue, you have to listen to what the other person is saying. Even when you don’t agree, you might. You don’t have to change your opinion.
So, I think, okay, clarity in what you want to say and listening. I think those two are key to good communication.

Maaria: I would agree.
Thank you so much. We’ve gone so much over time, and I could talk to you for literally another few hours, but I’m going to let you go. It’s been amazing hearing about your journey and the trials and tribulations and the lessons you’ve learned.
And I will try and look out for that German game show.

Thor: Yeah. Look out for the documentary, which will be out next year and the book as well. It’s going to blow you away.

Maaria: Do you have a title for either of those yet?

Thor: The working title is the impossible journey.

Maaria: Amazing. I’m sure people will be going to Look that up and they can follow your social media and your website as well.
So, the last thing I’m going to ask you is Give me one thing that you would like to leave listeners with.

Thor: I, I touched upon this earlier in our conversation. It’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about after I came home, and it is this the lottery of people that it is a reversed lottery.
As long as you’re dealing with people, you can parachute me into any country. around the world, and I know I’m going to be fine because I’ll be surrounded by people and the odds are so much in my favour.

Maaria: I could have sat for hours hearing more of Thor’s stories and what he’s learned from such an epic journey. It was interesting to hear about the power of an online community, having people in your corner and helping you out when things get rough. An often-overlooked side of social media is just how connected you can be and how invaluable those connections are, whether you’re navigating a new country or building an audience for a new company.
The power of listening and being open was a common theme throughout our conversation. And it’s true, you can’t communicate well if you’re not willing to listen. For life sciences, this is important when trying to share your own messages. Listen to what your audience is telling you and utilise that feedback to adapt your offering.
You can find more information about this episode on the Mowbi website. Find the link in the show notes below.
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