Erling Kagge »Mein Nordpol«

In the organizer's words:

October 27, 2025 / 7.30 pm / Literature Café

Erling Kagge "My North Pole"

Erling received a globe from his parents for his seventh birthday. He turned it, turned it and looked at countries and seas until his gaze got stuck on the top point. That was the North Pole in the middle of a blue-grey area. Was it possible to travel there? And who traveled there?

He read adventure books, accompanied Thor Heyerdal on his expeditions, skied with Fridtjof Nansen. He studied the stories of the first successful polar travelers and the reports of the uncounted who did not return from their expeditions.

Eventually he became an adventurer himself. On May 4, 1990, he and Børge Ousland reached the place he longed for as a child. After 59 days of pulling their sledges through the cold, ice and snow. While he was obsessed with the idea of being able to prove it to everyone during the preparations, his attitude changed at the finish. Wasn't it more about the journey there? About the special relationship with the navel of the world, about the ice that is rapidly melting as climate change progresses? "The story of the North Pole is the story of our relationship with nature," says Erling Kagge. His biography of the North Pole is a highly personal, philosophical, climate-political, instructive - and above all exciting - approach to this one incomparable place (translated from the Norwegian by Ebba D. Drolshagen, Insel Verlag 2025).

Erling Kagge, born in 1963, is a publisher, author, lawyer, art collector, mountaineer and father of three daughters. He lives in Oslo. The Norwegian adventurer was the first person in history to reach the 'three poles' - the South and North Poles and Mount Everest. In 2017, he published the SPIEGEL bestseller "Stille. A guide". His guide for aspiring art collectors, "Great Art for Little Money", was published in 2019.

Admission: 10,- / 7,- EUR

Event organized by Literaturhaus Leipzig e.V. and NORLA

Price information:

Disabled persons and their accompanying person (only if entered in the disabled pass), unemployed persons, pupils and students (up to 35) as well as holders of the Leipzig Pass or an honorary pass are entitled to a discount).