After the North Pole: A Story of Survival, Mythmaking, and Melting Ice

"After the North Pole is a thrilling, insightful, and magical journey with something to interest readers of all stripes." — Shelf Awareness

From acclaimed Norwegian explorer, philosopher, and writer Erling Kagge comes the astounding story of his record-setting 58-day journey on skis to the North Pole, laced with profound meditations on nature, other daredevils, and the history of our obsession with the Pole.

“The numbers are uncertain, but in the twentieth century, it is estimated that around a thousand men tried to reach the North Pole... of those, 751 have died doing so.” — Erling Kagge

The North Pole is the ultimate Otherland in a world mapped and traversed. It is the center of our planet’s rotation. Its sub-zero temperatures and strange year of one sunset and one sunrise make it an eerie, utterly disorienting place that challenges human endurance and understanding. Kagge and his friend Børge Ousland became the first people to ever reach the pole without any support from man or machine, skiing for 58 days from a drop-off point on the ice edge of Canada’s northernmost island.

Erling, whose books often top 'best of' lists, probes:

• the physical challenges and psychological motivations for embarking on such an epic expedition
• the extensive history of the territory’s exploration—marked as it was by scandal, murder, shipwreck, shifting ice, and roaming polar bears
• its place in legend and art
• and the thrilling adventures he experienced during the trek. It is yet another example of what bestselling author Robert Macfarlane has called “Kagge’s extraordinary life in wild places.”

As majestic, mesmerizing, and monumental as the terrain it captures, After the North Pole is for anyone who has gazed out at the horizon—and wondered what happens if you keep going.

After the North Pole is illustrated with 12-14 photographs.

Translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson.

“It's impossible to read Erling Kagge and not fall in love with the North Pole. His enthusiasm is infectious, and his adventures are epic.” — Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction