Early Love of Nature
Heyerdahl was born into an upper-class family in the coastal village of Larvik, Norway, in 1914. His father, Thor, was president of a brewery and a mineral water plant, and his mother, Alison Lyng Heyerdahl, was chairman of the Larvik Museum. His mother, an ardent atheist, studied zoology, folk art, and primitive cultures, and influenced her son greatly. His father was an avid outdoorsman. By age seven, young Thor had started his own zoological museum, filled with specimens of sea shells, butterflies, bats, lemmings, and hedgehogs. It was housed in an old outhouse at his father's brewery.
Heyerdahl and his parents spent summer holidays at a log cabin in the wilderness, where Thor made friends with a hermit and learned much about nature. He also made many winter camping trips by sled and ski to remote locations with his schoolmates. According to his school friend Arnold Jacoby, in his book Senor Kon-Tiki, "Thor was convinced that modern man had ... an over-loaded brain and reduced powers of observation. Primitive man, on the other hand, was an extrovert and alert, with keen instincts and all his senses alive.... Civilization might be compared with a house full of people who had never been outside the building." Throughout his early life, Heyerdahl was determined to go "outside the building" and live in a more primitive setting.
