Non-Tiki

Or
She Turned Me Into a Knut
Knut Haugland, the last surviving member of the Kon-Tiki crew and a former member of the Norwegian resistance during World War II, has died at the age of 92. After fighting the Nazis in the battle of Narvik, escaping capture twice, including back-flipping over a snow bank and fleeing into the woods, and avoiding capture by shooting his way out of a Oslo maternity hospital where he had hidden a radio transmitter, he was a natural to lead one of the most celebrated resistance efforts in Northern Europe. In 1943, after 5 months of winter reconnaissance in Norway with 4 others sustaining themselves on reindeer and lichen, he directed efforts to destroy the giant Norsk Hydro plant at Vermonk that was suspected of producing heavy water for a German atomic bomb, maintaining contact with Britain on a radio fashioned out of a car battery and three fishing rods. After that, serving as Thor Heyerdahl’s radio man on the 101-day trip from Peru to Polynesia across open ocean aboard a balsa raft was a pleasure cruise, albeit one where he once had to dive into the sea to rescue a crewmate who had been swept overboard.