Ruthie's Table 4Erling Kagge is one of the world's great explorers - a man whose life embraces solitude. That is, when he‘s not being attacked by a polar bear… thankfully, he lived to tell the tale. He is the first person to reach, by foot, the North Pole, South Pole, and Mount Everest. Erling and my life might be dissimilar, but we share a love for the unknown. For him, it might be a new horizon. For me, a discovery of a little-known Sicilian recipe. Today, we're here on our own adventure, not on the top of a mountain or in the icy North Pole, but safe and warm in the River Cafe.
Ruthie's Table 4, made in partnership with Moncler.
You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Arling Caaga is one of the world's great explorers, a man whose life embraces solitude. He is the first person to reach by foot the North Pole, South Pole, and Mount Everest. His new book, The North Pole, The History of an Obsession, is published this week, a compelling read, taking us into his world of adventure, hidden dreams, adversity and silence. Arling in My life might be dissimilar, but we share a love for the unknown. For him, it might be a new horizon for me, a discovery of a little known Sicilian recipe. To day, we're here on our own adventure, not on the top of a mountain or in the icy North Pole, but safe and warm in the river.
Cafe ha so Everest, South Pole, The North Pole.
Can you remember the times when you actually thought you might die?
I never felt I might die, But if my mother had seen me, she would certainly believe I was close to dying quite a few times when you fall into the water. But also, like we were attacked by a polar bear.
Stop there, tell us. Many people start a sence like that, what happened? Story?
We were close to the north pole. Suddenly heard my partner but shouted hoy, which I never heard him showed before. So I looked up and then saw polar bear at twenty meters distance. How big was the bear probably if you got after maybe two hundred and fifty kilos and this far north, as we said as a joke afterwards, is nothing to eat but polar explorers. So we knew we knew it was going to charge. But when the polar bears saw that we had seen seen it, it stopped and we were able to dig into over sledges and get a handgun each among forty four each. So I got the gun and it was this short barrel because we want to say, wait, so only two inches barrel, so you can't hit the bear at twenty meters distance. You had to wait until this close. But then my partner berg, Yeah, he had this idea that he really wanted to be published in National Geographic Magazine, which was the biggest thing at the time. This was over Bible. We kind of read like every Thursday.
I was an American who received it. Do you get it every month?
Actually get that yellow exactly every third is or something that had something on an expedition, which we always read like it was like the New Testament. So he got this idea, this is my chance. So he dropped the gun, got the camera. He didn't have a film camera. This was the time he had a film camera. And then he got me posing between him and the bear. So it took some photos and soon after the bear turned towards us start to dig its four feet into the snow, lowered its neck, so you knew of those gone to charge and it can run up to sixty kilimelan over, so it's so it's and it's twenty meters, so it's it's let's say it was forty k over, so it's really close up. Were both hired and hit it in the chest, so it's and it's like, you know, neither of us are you know, any desire to kill an animal, and definitely not a polar bear. But when it's a matter about who's having who for dinner, the choice for simple even Gandey said you should kill an animal, want to kill you.
We're here with Sean Renowan, who is director of The River Cafe, the executive chef of the River Cafe, a great friend of mine and has also wanted to talk to you when I told you you were coming about food. What we do as chefs, what you do is and explore what is the food? If I was coming Sean and I were coming to Norway and you were cooking something to represent your kind of history in your life, what would you give us?
I would in terms of meat, I would give you sever reindeer, a low reindeer. And what reasonal low reindeer is because reindeer lives a happy life from born until its suddenly is dead, which I find very comfortable that that the animal hasn't suffered because of meat. So and also it's super tasty.
Is it like venison? Is it sweet?
No, it's it's I think it's richer in taste, of course depends on what part of the of the reindeer, and it's tasted a little bit wilderness. It tastes like, you know, a little bit like being above the tree line, you know, well cooked or you know, it's it's really outstanding meal. And of course in Norway we have so much seafood. Now it's cold season and I had some cold a few days ago and it's just believe amazing. And it's if you have a good piece which I will get is almost ful proof.
How do you cook it?
The most important thing with cod is that which people kind of forget or do not do not know, is that you need to first of all, of course, get a great piece, but then you need to salt it heavily and leave it for at least twenty minutes, and then rinse it with cold water because that makes the fabric of the meat you call the meat and fabric or the much more like almost like lobster meat, so it doesn't fall apart in a way, like you know, and also the tastes get a little bit richer. And then afterwards you salt it and pepper it, and I usually then put it in the oven on maybe two and twenty degrees for twenty five minutes, maybe a plus minus depending on the size of the piece, with some herbs, and maybe I make some mash the root vegetables, but definitely have a great salad and some good wine.
Okay, let's go.
I love having people visiting and make food, because that's one of the great pressures you can have is to share great food that you're really pretty heart into and some good wines.
Yeah, what was it like? Growing up in Oslo. Will you talk to your family what was food like in your house?
You know, I grew up in Olslow in the born in sixty three and in the typical middle class family, and middle class family at that time in Norway was very different from middle class families today because post oil fortune and mid class in Norways is different. So we had like typical was you start the week Mondays Tuesdays with something called fish balls like and then whale steaks whale.
Really, let's take this slowly, fish.
Like you made this kind of instead of meat balls like fish balls like very popular Norway. Kind of simple, not super healthy. I'm totally okay food. And at that time fish is quite often cold, and whale was very popular Norway.
In the six.
You know, if you have the best part of the whale, it's delicious, but whale is huge, and of course we had we didn't have the best part. And then it's quite rough, raw, rough taste a little bit like seal. But that maybe doesn't say it's so much either.
I've never been to the fish well steal.
Yeah, it's rough, but that's you know, it's a common course in Norway at the time. And then and the rest of the week. You know, it's the quality increased. And then typically on Saturdays we had stimps or a good piece of meat, and the same on Sundays and always pudding.
What would you have pudding?
You know, this kind of chocolate thing or like the strawberry thing, kind of quite simple but still cutting.
Everything that's important to your family.
Yes, and it became more and more important. My father was a jazz critic, and not to have something extra to do, he became a restaurant critic, so he took me to the restaurant quite often when he meta critics. So yeah, it became more and more important.
And did you play a lot of jazz.
Just all the time. My father said that pop music, TV and cars are diseases in society and we should only listen to jazz, blues and gospel music because it was a just critic. We've got to we've got to meet all this, you know, just musicians. He left his jail. They all came to Norway, like you know, because in Norway's they were superstars, you know. They came to our house and every alcohol was very expensive and away at the time, so we my father's sailed over sailed boat to Germany every summer, and we bought dicker and took it back home to Norway, and then we had a big parties in the house. People got drunk and they were playing and jamming into the night. I don't unfortunately.
And what about school? Tell me about going to school every day?
School was not good to me.
You were dyslexic. Yeah, my husband is dyslexic, exactly, but in those days they didn't actually well in his days he was older than you.
They just called it being stupid exactly.
I think, you know, it's the good thing having those disadvantages is that you learn all of the teacher tries to help you. You learn not to trust authorities. I had to find my own way to learn the same as everyone else in class, so the teacher really couldn't help me. And also you learn that life is brutal at the early age. And I think you know, the sooner you learn it, the better it this in your life.
You have children.
I have three daughters.
You want them to know that life is brutal.
Actually, actually I want them to know life is brutal. And they know life is brutal, but of course they have to learn it their own way.
When did you first become in love with a pole?
With the first time I became aware of the North Pole, I was seven years old. My parents gave me this globe, this globeust for my birthday present, and this was in nineteen seventy. So at that time, the globes were small, a bit bluish, dark blue where the oceans were deep, it was dark brown where the mountains were high. And at the top of the globe it was a little flat metal plate to kind of hold the globe together. And then I was wondering what's below that metal and of course that was a North Pole. And then, as you know, then I was wondering about it, and then slowly through my life I got more and more interested and eventually obsessed about walking to the North Pole. So I was in love with the North Pole for many years. And of course, as soon as I got to the pole, I understood my real obsession had been about walking towards the poll and not getting to the pole. The arrival is like you know, it's the hunt is always more fascinating than actually the killing.
Tell us the early days of walking.
I remember the first time I understood that I could walk in any direction I wanted. I walked home from kindergarten norway safe you walked back and forth to the kindergarten by yourself, And I was walking towards over home. Then suddenly understood I could just turn ninety degrees and walk straight into the forest. That was a beautiful feeling.
And then.
And then I was dreaming, and I was dreaming about sailing the oceans, which I eventually did through my twenties. And then this idea about, like you know, really fulfilling my dream about walking to the North Pole kept on popping up in my head, and eventually, in nineteen ninety Berga Aslan and myself we did it, and they prepared for.
More than ski.
He was a guy I had never met before. He had the same dream, obsessed by getting to the North Pole, and obsessed by getting to the North Pole in the most difficult way, not using ski doos or dogs or air supply, but just walking, dragging over sledges all the way to the North Pole. The first thurday nights we shared sleeping bag. And then eventually, like you know, off doing such an expedition, he either become friends or the opposite. Unfortunately, we became very close friends.
You had a great question. Oh no, I was.
We were just asking how you know when you get to the North Pole, is it like a sign.
Welcome to Because when you get to the pole, the ice, you're standing in the ice. The ice is moving all the time, so after a few hours you're a little bit off the North Pole, depending on the drift. But the thing at the North Pole which is interesting is that the sun has the same angle above the horizon for twenty four hours, so the needly goes up and down, and then of course and of course the compass needle is pointing to ourselves. The wind comes from the south, it blowing towards the south. It's one day and one night every year. The sun rises once and it sets once during a year, so it's but then again it's it's just ice. It's just a mathematical point there.
You have to lose yourself to get the place.
That's the interesting thing, because when they get to the northfoll it's not there. There, it's nothing. It's just ice, gray white, and maybe the horizon is blue. That's it, and it's moving. It's it's it's nothing there.
Perhaps we should actually talk about you and iron chine. We're going to the north pole.
Were going.
Okay, we can slow, you can slaughter halfway and.
The north So we're there, and I would like to know what is my food daylight? What will I be eating? What's the longest time you've gone on a trip? Would it be for a month? Would it be seas too much?
Like sixty six to five days?
Sixty five?
Bring all the food you need, we do the whole time.
Okay, So what are the disciplines around that? How much it will wait to carry, how much space it will take, and how much nutrition will it give you?
Yes? Balance it's you eat around one kilow every day with dried food and they mix it with water. It's all dry old dryeder say weight because what is it for breakfast? You have a o oat meal?
You have to use a lot of water.
Then, Yeah, from melting ice and snow. Oh so you don't bring in the water. So that's a good noise, that's a goodness. So don't worry about that.
Take any you just take the snow and just let it.
Yeah, you need to find all old ice because fresh fresh ice contains lots of salt. So you can tell by the color of the eyes if it contains salt or not. And then how do you melt it? You melt it by having little primasies that what they call it little heater, which is made in a way so all the heat from the flame goes to the pot. So even when it's minus fourteen fifty degrees, we're not heating the tent. It gets a little bit warmer because of the body heat, but it's we don't heat the tent.
Why don't you want to eat?
Because you want to say weight. So you have like two des liters of fuel per day, and then you have to really save everything because you've got the drag everything you need for more than two months. And then you're not having enough fuel to heat the tent, so you're freezing so much to actually you know you sometimes you start crying because you're freezing so much. But anyway, so this this old milk, but also we mix it with formula milk, dried formula milk, because that's what gives the most energy. Program and then eat the same for larnch throughout the day. Maybe some chocolate or definitely some chocolate, but with extra calories, especially made chocolate. The extra calories just as ack like a snack having brakes and maybe chocolate, like you have to get used to the taste, I really because it's so much fat in it, so it doesn't really taste well at home. But you know, the thing is this food is none of this food tastes really good when you start eating it. But then as it days and weeks pass by and you get more and more tired and more and more hungry, it tastes better and better and better, and eventually it tastes as good as a food that we recoffee. Absolutely, that's the whole thing that expeditions. You need to be really well prepared. It's like this Nowigian explorer Amundson road that victory awaits the one who has everything in order. People calls it good luck, while defeat always follows bad preparations, people calls it bad luck. It's brutal and true. Are you hungry all these hungry? Yeah?
Always?
So we are still meeting twice a year, but me and we're eating the food we're dreaming about while walking towards the pol Oh that's nice.
So then that's all the through the day, and.
Then then we have dinner, which is dried meat and either some pasta or some mushed potatoes to get some volume. And again lots of fat. And that's when.
You say lots of fats. What would that be like?
Quite a few spoonfuls every evening. And then because we're starving, one had to split the portions and the other one had to choose. So then you make sure that we get you know, equal portions.
I have to take like implements to cook like a regular billy can or would you take special lightweight kit that you can use to cook and.
Supert Everything is light, Everything is light. That's the thing you need to keep everything of. The slogan is think had travel light and leave the fairs behind.
You your fears.
Yeah, that's sort kind of recipe for getting to the North Pole.
Imagine estate bottled olive oil chosen and bottled for the River Cafe, arriving at your door every month. Our subscription is available for six or twelve months, with each oil chosen personally by our head chefs and varying with each delivery. It's a perfect way to bring some River Cafe flavor into your home or to show someone you really care for them with the gift. Visit our website shop the Rivercafe dot co uk to place your order.
Now, I was.
Going to ask you if you ever on a trip were aware that it might be your birthday, it might be Christmas, it might be a Norwegian holiday.
Do you celebrate in any way?
Yes. When I walked to the South Paul alone, I had Christmas and New Year's by myself. I was alone for fifty days and nights.
And fifty were alone for fifty days and.
No radio and no telephone contact, so in total solitude. So then I was still remembering Christmas Eve, which is a big day in Norway. I ate a little bit extra, had a piece of cake with me. When you're alone for such a long time, you kind of stop thinking in the sense that the past and the future don't matter so much. And of course that's a kind of a noise too, because thinking and think about the past or the future, but very much in the present. You kind of stop thinking, which is a beautiful feeling. But then on Christmas Eve, I sat there eating this cake, I felt like, at least like, you know, then I was thinking about people back home and that they were thinking about me. Because also when you're alone for such a long time you don't really believe people, then you kind of you kind of get a feeling that you're also kind of forgotten.
And was ther pleasure that you had when you were okay?
The pleasure is I think the pleasures on an expedition are there original sources to gratefulness in the sense that you get rest when you're tired, you get warm after having been cold, you get full after having been hungry, and that kind of that's what gratefulness is about. And I think gratefulness is one of the most undervalued things in life. And as I say, Norway, where most people should be super duper grateful all day hard and one is grateful, so you know you should almost learn in that school to be grateful. But anyway, on an expedition, you really feel gratefulness for those three reasons and the same reasons why humans very grateful one hundred thousand years ago.
When you walk to the North Pole, when you walk to climb Everest, when you what is the difference between walking to it and walking towards home?
Is there a different at It's.
Most accidents are happening on the way down from the mountain, because then you are more self confident you're happy with yourself, you kind of reach your goal, at least that's what you believe. Then suddenly you do take a wrong step or forget being careful, and then you may have an excellence.
We've talked about getting there and preparing to leave, but what about returning and what kind of process is that to return from being fifty days on your own, eating porridge with fat, walking and feeling cold, feeling hungry, feeling tired, coming back to an embracing life of friendship and people.
And it's especially coming home after having not speaking with en one for fifty days. It's really strange. And eventually, after a few weeks, I didn't really miss speaking to anyone either. I'm a very social person, but I kind of liked it. I like the rhythm, I like the routee. I like you know, it's you're getting a part on agu. It's like your body doesn't stop by your skin or your thing, your tips, but kind of extended into the eyes on the horizon, and you have a dialogue with the nature. You send some ideas out to get all the thoughts back again without words, and Sunday you're back home. After a few days, you're washing machine breaks down or whatever you need, you need to have help. But after a few weeks you get you know, you get into the rhythm of daily life in olslow and I like that too.
When you're back in that world, do you dream of the world of walking on your own?
I don't dream about it, but I keep on going back to nature. I think that's maybe the biggest mistake humans are doing today, that we are we have separated over cells from nature, that we think we are above nature, we don't need nature, we have conquerent nature. And I think that's one of the sources for many of the problems we have in the world today, that we don't relate to nature, not understanding or accepting that we are part of nature.
We've talked about being solitary.
We've talked about going far away from a community, from family, from friends. We've talked about thinking about them when you're away. We thought about leaving them. We've talked about coming back. Can you tell us the effect of your obsession on people you love or people you want to love, people you want to be with.
How is that affected You're exploring?
It is difficult because when you have this desire, you leave so many things behind you, your family, your kids, wives and girlfriends in order and a kind of expression. All expression that every girl loves an explorer, and the recent girl loves an explorer is because it's so much fun. It's so much going on, so much curiosity, so much wonder, so many things are happening, so many adventures, et cetera. But eventually the girl that understand that this is not going to stop. All these men they went out, they had wives, girlfriends, fiances, kids, and quite often they ever came home and nobody knew what had happened.
How many people died? Going to were you under the few survivors or no?
It's traditionally until nineteen hundred, let's say, you know, the numbers are not hard, not easily figure out, but I said, around one thousand people child and seven hundred and fifty one died, So it was The North Pole has been the most difficult place to reach on Earth, and also where people had sacrificed the most, I would think, and also the longest period because people tried for four hundred years. And what's interesting is that no one knows who got to the pole. The North Pole remains mysterious, and that's also one of the reasons I want to write the book from prehistoric times, when people sitting in the northern Hemisphere looking into the skies ten thousand years ago, one hundred thousand years ago, everything was going around and routed all the stars, the Earth was moving in circles. Just one fixed point in the whole world, and that was the north star to Polaris. And then people start to wonder, why is that this one fixed point and what's below it on Earth? And understood this probably midnight Sun. And then they started to have this idea that it was original life was at a north pole. And as late as eighteen eighty four the dean at Boston University brought a full book to prove that Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden had been at a north pole. That was a common idea, belief until the eighteen eighties.
When did you go to Cambridge to study philosophy?
In nineteen ninety five, I already had a law degree. But in ninety five, I or ninety four I kind of felt going on expeditions had become a routine like any other routine. You get a goal, you get sponsorships, you do the expedition, you do talks, you do maybe a writ a book and then another expedition. So I want to break free from it. And I was also fed up kind of talking about it. Fortunately they let me in on Cambridge like a besitting scholar. It was true privilege to be there and really dig deep into moral philosophy.
Do you have a philosopher that has had an impact on you?
Yes, quite a few. It is Spinulza and also this Norwegian philosopher RNNs who also an expert on Spinulsa. I knew it, but he kind of also explained to me that kind of importance in life, that you need physical pain, you need psychological pain to have a great life. I think it's important every day to make life more difficult and the best things in life are difficult to achieve.
The River Cafe, when you said lunch is now running from Monday to Thursday. Reserve a booking at www. Rivercafe dot co or give us a call. Can I go back to one thing, which is about food? When you were growing up and you've had this obsession in walking, and did you find food an interesting discovery? I went to Norway probably in nineteen ninety or very very early on I think when Rose and I were doing a TV series and we went to where we flew from Oslo the north to see where they make the salt cod because that's you know, salt cod is one of the great industries because of religion. So people who live in Brazil or lived far away and had to have fish Catholics on a Friday. They depended on salt cod travel and.
It was the most important thing Norway exported for several hundred years. So it may kind of the west coast of Norway, you know, people get really rich. And also the Northern Park because of the black export.
Has the fishing change.
With climate, everything kind of changes. Yeah, so it's it's the further north to get like the northern part of Norway and small wine. Everything is changes because the temperature is increasing like around small but three times more than the rest of the world. Are they still whales there are whales. Yeah. Fortunately, you know they're protected such a whales.
Yeah, they can't fish well meat anymore.
Now you know, they can do it for scientific purposes and then some you know, yeah, so it's yeah, so you can still get whale beats.
I was thinking about when you're training to do the walk. Do you need to like put on waste? So you have to eat to put on weight, and because you must be training to do you have to train to walk, you get like starving, but have to eat really carefully or are you're allowed to just go madly.
Like you have to. It's a good question because you have to gain weight at the same time as exercising a lot, and then you also have to train your body to absorb everything you eat. More like so you need on an expedition, you need to get as many calories program as possible, and then you need to eat fat. And if you eat lots of fat, your body won't absorb it. So what we did is the time before we left, I had porridge in the morning, lots of extra fat. Yeah, so I had a bucket with this fat in my kitchen and I'll add it in every meal for a long time, for like, you know, a half year or something, and then again twelve fourteen kilos and then yeah, fourteen killers.
See, when you're out in the North Pole, you must be going how many calories do you need a day there?
You need probably need maybe ten thousands of day whatever. But that's too much to eat. So we eat around six thousand calories a day. But then you all the fat is just you know, draining off you. So eventually you get rid of the fat and then also lots of muscle mass. So it's it's it's not super healthy.
So when you're training, you're eating, you're bunking up. And is there any enjoyment in eating when you're trying to add tablespoons of fat to everything you eat?
No, you know, and eat a lot of chocolate, et cetera, and it's it's, of course, as everyone knows, when you eat chocolate, the first bite is the best and then you keep on eating. Yeah, but you know, it's it's a part of the game.
When I talk to a footballer now, as I did with someone called Ian Right or Garry then, and they talk about how the concept of what you eat now when you're an athlete has changed so much in totally even thirty years four years, they used to eat a huge meal before a game. You know, they didn't think about any idea that food would have an effect on your performance, whereas now the science of performance and food is so sophisticated. If someone was going on or you were going on a trip, would you still have powers with all that fat change.
I think you know, we in the nineties we kind of reinvented what you could eat on an expedition. People said to us, it's not possible to eat so much calories program as we did, but by training over bodies to do it, we were able to. And of course what we were eating are very different from what top athletes are eating. So I think you know, the way you know the food we had is still relevant today. It is. But of course, like in the nineties footballers in England they were after the games, they were stopping and buying fish and chips and hamburgers. Favorable after the game all the players was absolutely ridiculous by today's standard.
And if you were, as I was saying, experience pain, experience hunger, loneliness, and you think that you do need comfort, is there a food that you reach for.
When you are on the expedition and if you're hungry, just want as much as possible, and you want fat. So this polar bear was shot. We cooked parts of it when it got to the pole. Tasted like cold oil, like an oil to get from cold so that tastes doesn't taste good Bye. Civilized standards, but we kind of you just loved it.
What would be your top meal that you'd be like, Oh my god, I'd do anything to just eat that right now.
Lots of meat and fat. Yeah, I loved it as a kid. And then I think about those happy moments, and I think that's also why I love a great pasta today.
Thank you very much, thank you
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair
