The Vikings are coming!

What is the Midgard Expedition?

The Midgard Expedition crew lead by Bjorn Heyerdahl, a group of global citizens, are exploring globally models of intelligent sustainable human habitation and applying it to their own lives, careers and communities. This learning is shared as a global dialogue so that the lessons can be applied by any interested group or individual.

Inspired by the genius in efficiency, design, earth friendly materials and zero waste of viking longboats, and the courage of the intrepid Vikings who built and sailed them, our research vessel RV ‘Midgard Herron’ will travel the globe with a crew of diverse scientists, explorers and sustainability specialists, studying the three Integrating Institutions of the small pockets of real sustainable development to be found: the Science of Knowing, the Magic of Doing and the Mysticism of Being.

The Integral Doing, or application, is happening around the globe in partner academic institutions and the communities that surround them, in Climate Parks from Myanmar to Costa Rica, in sustainable human settlements, hospitalities and residential estates from the Free State in South Africa to Minnesota to medieval hamlets in Italy, in sustainable urban greening and renewal programmes from Dubai to Johannesburg, in desert and coastal recovery programmes from the gavel plains of the Sharjah desert to the islands of Mozambique.

Why a Viking Ship?

There’s simply nothing like it! It is the symbol of courage, adventure, craftsmanship, ingenuity, simplicity, symbiosis of man, craft and ocean . . . It stirs the soul like nothing else.

It is an eloquent metaphor for the dialogue on man’s appropriate place in the biosphere. It fulfills all of humankind needs and does no harm. Our need for exploration, learning, traveling, creating, working with nature and not against it. It is a zero waste vessel to take us home; home to the best we can be. Home to our real relationship with this planet. It is a vessel to make us become more rather than have more.

In this world of surfaces and shallowness the Viking vessels takes you deeper into reality. Real contact with, real timber, real living oceans, real people, that are immersed in the magic doing… not just taking.

What if all you did in this life was a Viking voyage of adventure and discovery? Would that be a wasted life? This is an expedition of much greater human depth and much more than the discovery of new places. This is a continuation of the Midgard Expedition.

The Intention of The Expedition

The intention of these expeditions was to explore and understand the biosphere and mankind’s place in it. It was, and is, a search for context. A search for intelligent life on earth. What I have been exploring is mans capacity, ancient and modern, to integrate his identity and ingenuity with the grander systems of life. Much of the ego that drives exploration and accomplishment of any kind, is ironically, oblivious to the context and intimate connections to the subtle life systems that are our extended being. This same ego drives the industrial and informational machine and its why so many great explorers where also great leaders of ethnic, political and economic houses.

A new leadership is now needed to drive the transcendence of our current trajectory to self destruction. Unless something drastic changes in the way humans think, identify and behave humanity will be extinct, along with most mammalian life forms, in the next 100 years.

This viking expedition is not some nostalgic, sentimental regression to indulge the same egos that got us into this madness in the first place. This is an expedition to explore the possibilities for transcendence and inclusion of all that we are: to honour the noble savage Viking that keeps us alive in this hazardous universe and biosphere as well as the Sage that we might become, in adult maturity, that ushers in wisdom, contextual wisdom, and understanding, of our appropriate place in the whole system of life.

This expedition is not just about crossing oceans and seas as our ancestors did and achieving or having more… its about becoming more. Its about growing up, waking up, cleaning up and showing up for what is demanded of global leadership right now. Its about being conditioned and groomed to become leaders – contemporary Vikings; relevant, contributing, influencing – living models of integral intelligence.

This expedition will trace old Viking pathways, honouring that spirit, courage and skill; it will highlight modern and ancient models of intelligent, integrated life on earth.

Watch story here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYbp1CmIafA&fbclid=IwAR01p9JjYYW4-6ro4s82pb6d3YuGRtkD0kGGFkXW66A23Uyrfev5YqVWdxw

And then Holly steals the show!!

Holly was (by special invitation only) chosen to join the Vikings, dressed in her Viking Flyper.

She did a photoshoot with the famous adventurers and scientists (Vikings) standing in as their mascot and symbol of peace and good luck at sea.

Holly was amazed to see one of the Vikings with the same logo as hers!

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