Narrative Non-fiction · Hardback

In Praise of Paths

Norwegian title: Stiens historie

Torbjørn Ekelund

Torbjørn Ekelund takes the reader on a personal and fascinating journey through the history of the path; from when the first humans migrated north after the last ice age, to the organized hiking trails of our time.

History of the Path is a tale of movement and sense of orientation, migration and shortcuts, about the migraiton routes of birds and animals, about the landscape's significance to our lives, about our inherited need to move around, and about what we have lost in an age where everyone is in an office, drives a car and navigates using GPS. The first thing humans did when they climbed down from the trees of the African savannah, 200,000 years ago, was move about. We were nomadic, we had no concept of residence. We walked, and from that the first footpaths emerged. Footpaths came before everything else, before tools, fire, religions and the formation of society. Footpaths appeared and vanished, and new ones came along; myriads of stories, spun around the earth like the thread in a ball of yarn. I dream about footpaths. How many have I walked? Hundreds, maybe thousands. I remember them all, clearer than almost everything else I’ve seen or experienced, better than people I’ve ever met.