Arctic evening, October 17, 2007

Per grew up on the western edge of Oslo, but wanted to see Svalbard. He applied for a job as a mess boy on the Brandal ship "Signalhorn", but realized that he would not be considered, so he traveled to Brandal to apply for the job, and he got the job! The following summer he was a petty officer on the same ship. This was the start of Per's polar life, which has since been, in brief, a member of the North Pole expedition, wintering fishing, oil drilling, collecting musk oxen in Greenland, sealing, running a sawmill in Svalbard, selling fjord ice to the shrimp fleet, shipwreck in the Barents Sea, skipper on tourist and freight ships in Svalbard. It was after a summer on board Per's ship "Sandsvalen" that John Michlet wrote the novel "Orions Belte". In short, Per was involved in most of what was happening on the archipelago in the 60s and 70s.