Kagge is so convinced of our need for silence, he’s written a book about it, titled Silence: In the Age of Noise. Originally published in Norway last year, this thoughtful, philosophical read, which interrogates the word silence through quotes from Kant, Wittgenstein, Plato and Oliver Sacks, alongside Kagge’s own observations on life, is now an international bestseller.

Yet, an aversion to silence is increasingly normal today. In his book, Kagge cites a study by the Universities of Virginia and Harvard where scientists left subjects of all ages alone in a room for six to 15 minutes, with no electronic devices or reading material. Many couldn’t make it through the whole experiment. Those that did were then offered the chance to receive a painful electric shock or to sit in silence again for the same timeframe; over half the participants opted for the shock.

Kagge’s definition of silence is broader than just the absence of noise. He says: “Silence is the opposite of noise. But when I say noise I’m not only thinking about sounds, it can also be about other people’s expectations and always being connected. So when you find what you were looking for [online] but then 10 minutes later realising you’re still googling or waiting for someone to reply to a message. Silence has always been quite complicated for humans but the last five years, it has exploded.”

Did he not feel lonely on that expedition with no chance of contact? Or scared? “No I was so excited about what I was going to do, and I was well prepared. But it’s as it was with the performance artist Marina Abramovic [who Kagge mentions in his book] when she first went into the desert, she was afraid and experienced the opposite of silence, she had all this noise in her head. That was the same for me at first in Antarctica but it’s a threshold you have to pass. We shouldn’t be put off by it being difficult.”

In Silence he writes: “Antarctica is the quietest place I’ve ever been…there was no human noise apart from the sounds I made. Alone on the ice, far into that great white nothingness, I could both hear and feel the silence.”

While walking in the white, with over seven million cubic miles of ice beneath his feet, Kagge noticed abstract shapes formed in ice and snow, and the various gradations in shades of white. “Nature spoke to me in the guise of silence. The quieter I became, the more I heard…I was neither bored nor interrupted,” he wrote.

“The quieter I became, the more I heard…I was neither bored nor interrupted”

Though it wasn’t all thoughtful pondering and meditative pleasure, Kagge suffered serious frostbite along the way. When he eventually reached the South Pole, he arrived at the US science and research base. I ask if it was weird to suddenly speak again? “Really strange as I hadn’t even spoken to myself for 50 days and nights. The first guy said: ‘How do you do?’ So I said: ‘Like pig in a shit,’ and we had a laugh.”

Kagge prefers to find silence through walking, climbing or sailing away from the world. But if he can’t do any of those things he’s learnt to shut the noise out anyway, wherever he is.

“Silence is rare,” he says. “It’s always nice to have peace around ourselves but most important of all is to have silence within. It’s easy to underestimate the possibilities you have to experience silence, it’s more difficult to experience than noise as noise is about living through other people and devices, that’s the easiest option. And that’s why people, myself included, prefer the easiest option but sometimes you should choose a more difficult option.”

“Sometimes you should choose a more difficult option”

“You can find silence on the tube or bus in the morning, or you can jump off a station early for a walk. I’m a father of three teenage daughters but I can find silence at home. It’s possible everywhere. You don’t need course in relaxation to be able to pause, you just need to pause.”

I picture silence as white, like a field of snow, though that’s perhaps as I notice it the most in the mountains, especially when splitboarding away from ski resorts and crowded pistes. Does Kagge think silence has a colour? He laughs and says: “I would think white but green is also a very peaceful colour, it’s very much in the eye of the beholder.”

And when I hear my voice in my head, busily thinking its thoughts as it does, can that still count as silence? “There are degrees of silence. Often it’s relative to the din that was happening before, and you may never get 100 per cent deep silence, but you can still experience something in just five minutes sitting in a chair.”

It’s interesting to note that not all countries shun silence. In Japan, silence is a big part of culture, and the spaces in between words are just as important as the words themselves in ways that can seem unusual to a chatty British person like me. I ask Kagge if silence is important in Norway. “We are more like the UK than Japan in that sense but the difference between Norway and the UK is that we are five million people in the same space as you and closer to nature, so it’s easier to get connected to nature.”

Finally, I ask Kagge why we need silence anyway? “To lead a truly rich life,” he says, “and to get to know ourselves better.” But he also thinks we need it for creativity. He quotes Mark Juncosa, who works on Elon Musk’s space programme, as saying: “A normal work day at best contains eight hours of meetings, a few hours to respond to emails. It all blurs together. The only time to shut out the world is when I exercise, surf, take a shower or sit on the toilet. That’s when new solutions surface.”

Kagge also tells a great story of a Norwegian guide called Claus Helberg, who took a group hiking from Finsehytta, a famous Norwegian cabin and spectacular starting point for hikes. The panorama was breathtaking but before they had the chance to speak Helberg handed them notes, which said: “Yes, it is totally amazing.” He wanted them to enjoy it without words creating a boundary or bringing too much distance from what they were actually experiencing. Which they did. Through the beauty of nature they embraced an inner peace, but such an experience might not work, nor even be practical, for you.

In our search for silence Kagge believes we have to find what works best for us. Our own notional silence. “You have to find your own South Pole,” he says.

Silence: In The Age Of Noise by Erling Kagge is published by Penguin and is out now 

To read the rest of Mpora’s ‘Search’ Issue head here

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