Phil Elverum Quotes

The regions of the North Pole situated within the eighty-fourth degree of north latitude have not yet been utilized, for the very good reason that they have not yet been discovered.

Iceland, though it lies so far to the north that it is partly within the Arctic Circle, is, like Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, affected by the Gulf Stream, so that considerable portions of it are quite habitable.

Now my eyes are turned from the South to the North, and I want to lead one more Expedition. This will be the last... to the North Pole.

I seemed to vow to myself that some day I would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till I came to one of the poles of the earth, the end of the axis upon which this great round ball turns.

I have a number of places on my wish list, including Antarctica, the Norwegian fjords, and the Amazon. I have a passion for wilderness, and Siberia is on my list - however, that may be a bridge too far.

O, how glorious would it be to set my heel upon the Pole and turn myself 360 degrees in a second!

The new discovery of a 3.3 billion barrel oil deposit off Norway's coast cements that nation's claim to being Europe's second largest oil producer.

Even in our day, science suspects beyond the Polar seas, at the very circle of the Arctic Pole, the existence of a sea which never freezes and a continent which is ever green.

When I read about how 200 people died on a polar expedition, I wonder why they didn't get to know the Inuit people who were around and presumably know something about surviving in the Arctic after living there for thousands of years. Talking to people is a survival mechanism.

Like any traveler, I'm always looking for those experiences that are almost unique to any place, and watching films around Alaska of the skies in winter made me want to taste those unworldly showers of light in person.

I went for a walk in the Arctic Circle without map or compass. Fortunately, I was only lost for hours, not days.

To get the feel of the polar night, I went back to Spitsbergen in winter. I went snowshoeing in the dark and experimented with headlamps and climbed a glacier in driving snow.

If it's enough money, I'll play the North Pole.

Were it believed that vacant places could be had at the North Pole, the road there would be lined with dead Virginians.

Every man who rowed upon the sea to fish should pay the king five fish for the defense of the land. At Yule every man should pay the king a meal of malt from every harvest steading, and a leg of a three-year old ox. Every house-wife [must pay] a rock full of unspun lint, as thick as one could span with the longest fingers of the hand. Every man, foreigner or native, who went to Iceland, should pay a tax to the king.

You're never the same after you run the Iditarod, and I still lust to go out and run with dogs, even though I know that I shouldn't. But I'd give just about anything to be able to do it again. To see the horizon again from the back of a dog team would be wonderful.

The maximum expression of running dogs is the Iditarod. You enter a state of primitive exaltation, and you never return. You're never normal again.

Watching a documentary with people hacking their way through some polar wasteland is merely a visual. Actually trying to deal with cold that can literally kill you is quite a different thing.

I was so fortunate; in the years that I was in 'Thrones,' we were able to shoot in Iceland. I think some of my favourite memories would have to be isolated out there, surrounded by nothing but snow and ice.

Man, a polar bear almost grabbed me once.

I went snorkeling between tectonic plates in Iceland's Silfra fissure in the winter. You have to wear thermal layers and a wet suit and what's called a 'teddy-bear suit' so you don't die of hypothermia. My lips still went blue. That was an experience that I will carry with me for the rest of my life - so beautiful and so quiet.

I would like to go to Iceland to see the northern lights.

That was another incredible thing: the opportunity to be in Greenland, a place I had read about in NatGeo a decade before. Suddenly I was staying there and hiking there, and we took a mini iceberg out of the water and chipped it up and used it as ice cubes and made cocktails with it. It's surreal.

O proudly name their names who bravely sail: To seek brave lost in Arctic snows and seas!

There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better.