This Guy Is Walking from Norway to Morocco for Fun

All photos courtesy Oskar Klaren

Meet Oskar Klaren. Oskar is a 26-year-old Swede who is doing that thing many 20-somethings do where they wander around Europe for a while. Only most people use trains and buses and planes, and Oskar is using his feet—he’s walking from Oslo, Norway, to Morocco, which by my count is something like 2,500 miles. What’s more, he’s not doing this to raise money for a cause or anything; he’s just kinda doing it to do it. I called him up on Skype (he’s in Belgium right now) to ask him what the heck he was thinking.

VICE: Why you are walking to Morocco?
Oskar Klaren: Those kind of questions don’t have any good answers. But I guess I got an idea and thought that I should do it. So I did it. I started walking because I can walk.

Fair enough. Where do you walk? Is it even possible to walk along highways?
I mostly walk on walking paths and tiny roads in forests. And when that’s impossible, I walk along the roads. I often find cycling paths that I can walk on. There are actually paths like that all over Europe.

Isn’t it physically grueling to do that much walking?
Are you kidding me? I have never been in so much pain before in my entire life. I have never walked this far before. And I’ve never trained for this either. I was so eager to begin my walk, I was like, “This is going to be amazing! It’s such an adventure.” So I walked 35 to 40 kilometers per day [around 20 or 25 miles]. After four days, I got an infection in my Achilles tendon, parts of my feet broke down, I got a pain in my knees, and my hips started to hurt. Basically everything hurt for two and a half months.

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Fuck. How did you sort that out?
I walked less. So instead of walking 35 kilometers a day, I walked maybe ten [about six miles]. And then I started walking more and more again until I was doing 25 kilometers [15 miles] a day.

When did this journey begin?
I started walking on June 9, at 4 AM.

Why did you start so late at night?
There was a lot of goodbyes and farewell stuff before.

Are you not suffering from doing this all alone?
In one way, I guess I am. It’s boring to see all these people passing by. But it’s pretty nice, too. It’s meditative.

How long do you think it will take you to reach Morocco?
I will hopefully get there by the end of January or the beginning of February. I calculate how much I walk every day with Google maps. According to that, it was supposed to have taken six months. But then that turned into eight months. And now I’m on the edge [where it might take] nine months.

What’s going to happen when you reach your destination, will you just fly back home?
Oh, I really can’t fly back. Imagine walking such a long way for nine months, then flying back in four hours. That’s like beating myself with a baseball bat. That would be too weird. So I have to take the train, if anything. I’m also thinking about maybe getting a motorcycle and go back riding that. I want to see the entire distance I’ve walked on my way back.

What are you missing the most on your walks?
Warm food and a shower.

How and where are you sleeping?
Under the open sky. I have a bivy bag, which is an expensive plastic bag I cover myself with when it rains.

How are you financially able to do this?
Initially, I was considering doing street performance. I went to circus school when I was young. But then I tried crowd-funding and managed to get around 1,000 euros [around $1,400], which is enough for now. I might do that again when the money is gone. But then again, today when I was going to Skype with you I went into a coffee shop and asked if I could use their internet, and we started talking and I got a coffee and food for free. And that happens pretty often, actually. People are nice. Some people tell me to keep away from cities and be really careful, but I’ve only met nice people.

Sleeping outside so much, are you never afraid of getting robbed?
I was almost robbed ten days ago. A few people came up to me and were about to rob me. They were talking in French so I don’t really know everything that they were saying. They left me alone, except for one guy who wanted to take my camera. But I told him that I needed it to live. And then I asked him why he wanted it and he said he wanted to sell it and use the money to buy food. So I told him I had food that he could have instead, and he was OK with that. So I gave him a bit of pasta with pesto and tomatoes.

What’s the most amazing thing you’ve seen so far?
One of my best moments was on the west coast in Sweden where I met a guy who invited me to the island where he lives, so I put all my belongings in his small skiff. And then when we were out [on the water] and had been sailing for four hours, he told me that just before we met, he sank his own boat. The wind had been really strong and he might not have been the best of sailors. And there I was with absolutely all my belongings in his boat, just at the beginning of the journey of my life. I had laid my life in another person’s hands—a person who just had sunk his boat.

Another thing that’s great is everything with nature. There’s something really particular about living the way I currently live—sleeping in open fields and waking up in the thickest fogs. It’s like waking up in a fairy tale. And that’s how it is for me seven out of ten days.

Wouldn’t you like to share that with someone?
I was thinking about that this morning. I’m currently in Ghent, Belgium. And last night I slept in an abandoned house. A proper ghost house, inside an old conservatory where I think people were studying music at the beginning of the 18th century. In one way, it was really scary, but it was also the best thing ever. It would have been cool to show someone that.

Do you ever feel as if you’re losing your mind?
Yeah, maybe sometimes. I’ve realized that it’s not considered totally normal to walk up to someone in a city and talk to them. I like to talk to people while waiting for something.

Are you longing for the point when you reach your destination?
I have mixed feelings about that. On one had, I’m doing this great adventure, which I want to continue doing for a long time. But I also realize that this life I’m living isn’t going to work in the long run. It’s pretty exhausting to be separated from people all the time. And I’d like to get there so I can feel that I went through it all. But I’m having a really good time at the moment.

Do you have any idea of what you will be doing when it’s all over?
Yeah. I want to go to Ceuta, the Spanish colony outside of Morocco, and look at the wall that was around the city to keep Africans from getting in. I’m also thinking about going to Tunisia and lying down on a raft and floating over to Italy.

I think that sounds extremely dangerous.
I don’t know about that. People do that all the time to get into Europe.

A lot of those people die.
Yeah, that’s true. But I don’t think you should think that way. It might sound a bit weird now, but I will plan that and prepare myself before, obviously. Maybe check on the weather and bring a GPS.

You might float in the wrong direction, you know.
Yeah, that’s true. I’ve thought about that, too. This is just an idea at the moment. But I’ve talked to people who have done it in the past, and it sounds like a really particular experience.