Ole Jørgen Hammeken
Trained as a lawyer in Copenhagen, he chose to return to his fatherland to work with neglected Inuit children and preserve local culture and traditions. He led and participated in many expeditions in the Arctic. Among them are 1,670 km solo Dogsled Expedition from Uummannaq to Siorapaluk and Neqi, Greenland 1997, The Polar Passage 2000 – a 30,000 km circumnavigation of the Arctic Ocean in a small open boat, The Global Warming Dogsled Expedition 2007 which helped to find an alternative route from Uummannaq and Ikerasak to Ilulissat, Greenland through the ice- cap, The Euro-American North Greenland Expedition to Peary Land, The 2012 small open boat Expedition Avannaa to the northernmost settlements of Greenland, 2013 Expedition Middle World in Siberia (Yakutia and Chukotka), The 2014 Pole of Cold Expedition, the 2015 National Geographic Pristine Seas in Northern Greenland, The 2016 Arctic Without Borders Cultural Expedition to the North Pole and many others.
Ole Jorgen is a fellow international at The Explorers Cub in New York. To the general audience he is known as a lead actor playing the great polar bear hunter Ikuma in Greenlandic film INUK that has won over 20 prizes at international film festivals. He was also featured in many documentaries dedicated to the Arctic such as Silent Snow, Inuit School, La Longue Trace and others. He regularly talks as an expert on climate change and indigenous issues on BBC, Euronews, CBS, National Geographic and others. The world’s northernmost mountain in Peary Land, Hammeken Point, was named after him.
Through his Cultural Expedition Avannaa and Arctic Without Borders Initiative he is trying to build bridges between the most isolated settlements in the Arctic and help its residents overcome the hardships of climate and societal change. Ole Jorgen is a master storyteller with a long experience of presenting to international audiences.
