“We wanted to get to know Thor a little better.” Not a line one hears often, even in the inflated-ego world that is the Toronto International Film Festival. “Because he’s probably the most professional PR man Norway has ever seen.”
Not the Norse god, then, but Thor Heyerdahl, the scientist-adventurer who in 1947 set out to prove that the mid-Pacific Polynesian islands had been colonized 1,500 years earlier by Peruvians who drifted 8,000 westward on balsa-wood rafts. His method, simple and possibly suicidal: Construct a balsa-wood raft, place it off the coast of Peru, climb aboard — and wait.
Not the Norse god, then, but Thor Heyerdahl, the scientist-adventurer who in 1947 set out to prove that the mid-Pacific Polynesian islands had been colonized 1,500 years earlier by Peruvians who drifted 8,000 westward on balsa-wood rafts. His method, simple and possibly suicidal: Construct a balsa-wood raft, place it off the coast of Peru, climb aboard — and wait.