Anyone for a long walk?

Press, 9 May 1985, Page 13

Anyone for a long walk?

From

ROSS BROWN

in Oslo

A Welshman is putting out a call for New Zealanders. Not to receive an oval-shaped ball from him, but to walk 2581 kilometres — or part of the distance.

Ernest Davies is organising this mammoth trek in Norway for the Nansen International Centre, which he founded in 1969. A schoolmaster from the Wellsh hills, he first brought people to Norway to teach them survival techniques in the mountains.

Later, he gave deprived Britons "a health break” at his centre, and then helped refugees and immigrant children. And the noble name of Nansen? Fridtjof Nansen is one of Norway’s great men — scientist, polar explorer, and diplomat. In 1921, he became High Commissioner for refugees. He subsequently created the Nansen passport, defining the position of refugees, and was called on to deal with the vaster problems of people uprooted by war. In 1922, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, while the Nansen International Office for Regugees won the prize in 1936.

“His son Odd, himself imprisoned during Norway’s occupation in the Second world War, gave me permission to use ‘Nansen’ for the centre,” Davies says. “Eigil Nansen, Fridtjof’s grandson, is, now chairman of the board.”

The centre, a farm estate, lies in a remote inland area of deep forests and lakes still frozen in late April. The few roads are flanked with signs warning that a heavy elk is likely to appear dangerously at any time. Davies, a slender man with tousled grey hair, admitted cheerfully that it got a bit cold last winter. Down to minus 30c in fact. Yet he was out on many lone crosscountry ski-runs of 20 km. Soon the centre will open Lovhaugen Farm in the endless woods by the Swedish frontier, 200 km from Oslo. Eight unemployed Norwegian and six ’foreign youths will be trained in forestry, farming, and animal husbandry.

“Walk Norway,” however, will start on June 23 (Midsummer’s Eve) from Europe’s northernmost point, North Cape. It will progress to Lindesnes in the south, taking three months.

“This is International Youth Year, with themes of participation, development, and peace,” Davies says. "We will make a point of meeting the public in villages and towns en route.”

Not just that. “Trees of Friendship” will be planted and the money from their sale given to reafforestation in an ecological problem area in Nepal. “The centre will co-operate with 'Save the Children’ in a society development project in the Arung Khola area of east Palpa, Nepal.

Any Kiwi wanting to experience Norway the hard way can contact Nansen International Centre, Krattebol, 2120 Sagstua, Norway.