I have no formal training in film-making or editing. I started making actors’ showreel DVDs in my studio in London and silly films for my family, such as for my father’s 60th birthday when I got the Prime Minister of Norway at the time to congratulate him!

My brother sent me his unprofessional footage from his expedition across Greenland, asking me to edit it into something that could be kept as a souvenir. Upon seeing the raw footage I thought it was good enough for TV and started editing and producing my first documentary, Surviving the Arctic. In the end it was aired on Viasat Explorer with the Norwegian title Grønland På Tvers.

I got a semi-professional camcorder for my journey around the world which I used frequently for myself or to support a number of projects of a humanitarian nature. They are summarised on the Journey > Projects page, or they can be accessed individually here in the Films From My Journey section.

Eight years of filming certainly improved my skills as a cameraman. As an editor I am no technical wizard but I feel I know how to clearly tell a story and how to organise complex material. I am slow and methodical and I need to know the material extremely well and come up with a vision before the actual editing can commence. My organisational brain was certainly pushed to the limit when organising 15 years of raw material in Jasper Hall or when editing in the Dogon language in the Female Genital Cutting project.

I have almost finished editing the documentary series of my brother’s next adventure, Norge På Langs (Norway Lengthwise), only subtitles missing, which I hope to release in late 2018 / early 2019. To finalise all the film projects from my journey will undoubtedly take many years.

I also have a half-thought-out film script running constantly through my head, of a medieval musical adventure that I would like to shoot in the mountains where I live, mostly for fun, but serious fun, and to include people from the village where I live. To do this I would need new camera and sound equipment and an experienced Director of Photography who would be willing to join our little community for a while and to create the project for the same non-commercial reasons. I also imagine the sustainable community we are in the process of creating to be a living film set.