Join world record-holding Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge for the story of humanity’s epic, multi-millennia fascination with the North Pole.

Throughout recorded human time, few places on Earth have inspired as much fascination as the North Pole. This is an otherworldly place where the sun rises and stays aloft for six whole months before setting, plunging the expanse of ice and water into darkness for half a year.

Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge ventured to the Pole in the spring of 1990 and became the first person ever to reach the pole without dogs, depots or motorised aids. (He is also the first person in history ever to reach the “three poles” of North, South, and the summit of Everest).

Now he returns to How To Academy to tell the story of the North Pole as never told before.

From Herodotus who first wondered what the northernmost point of our planet might be like, to the intrepid early cartographers who mapped the world, and the legendary expeditions led by Fridtjof Nansen and Robert Peary, who were in the grip of a dangerous obsession to get to the North Pole first. What emerges is a new history of the world, spanning thousands of years, as seen from the ‘silver-shining vacantness’ of the North Pole.

Blending memories from his own 1990 trip with this epic history, this live conversation with Erling is for anyone who has gazed out at the horizon, and wondered what happens if you just keep walking.

Praise for Erling Kagge’s The North Pole:

‘Erling Kagge’s decades-long obsession with the North Pole has produced an extraordinary book that defies genre: an elegant travel account, a learned history and a psychological thriller wrapped in one’ Anne Applebaum

‘Erling Kagge is a deeply thoughtful writer who has a strong and very individual style. The North Pole proves to be the perfect subject for him’ Michael Palin

‘A beautiful book which is as much about our inner world as our outer one, a book that helps us find the vast calm empty spaces within us and returns us to a feeling of being at home in the world’ Alain de Botton

Tickets to this event are at a £15 discount for members to How To +, and members can also watch the livestream for free.