Knut Haugland

Knut Haugland

1917–2009

Knut Haugland, who has died at 92, was one of Norway’s most celebrated adventurers. During World War II he helped lead a daring raid on a suspected Nazi atomic facility. Later, he sailed 4,300 miles across the Pacific aboard a raft named Kon-Tiki. He was the last survivor of the six-man crew headed by Thor Heyerdahl.

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A military radio operator, Haugland joined the resistance when Norway fell to Germany in 1940. In November 1942, his unit was charged with reconnoitering a major hydroelectric plant near Rjukan that could produce tons of deuterium oxide, or heavy water, a key component of atomic-bomb research. For three months they waited for reinforcements, hiding on a frozen plateau in subzero temperatures. “Food was so short they resorted to eating the contents of a reindeer’s stomach,” said the London Independent. “Haugland’s job was to keep in contact with the British using a radio he had fashioned from a stolen fishing rod and an old car battery.” Finally, in February 1943, Haugland’s team and six other men infiltrated the plant and blew up its heavy-water equipment without firing a shot.

After the war, Haugland joined his fellow veteran Heyerdahl on an expedition to test a theory that South American Indians may have been the first peoples to settle the Polynesian Islands. On April 28, 1947, Kon-Tiki—“a raft composed of nine balsa tree trunks, each 45 feet long, lashed together with hemp ropes”—set sail from Peru, said the London Daily Telegraph. Haugland, who handled the radio, “was involved in two of the expedition’s most dramatic incidents.” Once, while swimming, he was nearly eaten by a shark. Later, he saved crewman Herman Watzinger when he fell overboard. When Kon-Tiki was beached on an uninhabited isle in the Tuamotu group after 101 days, Haugland sent out the “all well” message that signaled their arrival. The adventure was the basis of a best-seller by Heyerdahl as well as an Oscar-winning documentary.

For many years, Haugland ran both the Norwegian Resistance Museum and the Kon-Tiki Museum. His wife and three children survive him.