A Collection of Essays about Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng

Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng and his Ecophilosophy: An Introduction

By Bjørn Tordsson

Bjørn Tordsson is a specialist in outdoor pedagogy. In 2014 he wrote this introduction to the life and work of Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng.

My Pal Sigmund

By Doug Tompkins

In this short text from 2015, Doug Tompkins shares his profound admiration for Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng’s ecophilosophical writings and activism. He is particularly impressed by the technology critique that Setreng expounded in Gaia versus Servoglobe – a text that was “far ahead of all of us,” according to Tompkins.

A Lasting Love for Wild Nature and Wild Souls

By Helena Norberg-Hodge

Helena Norberg-Hodge was a good friend of Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng; to her he was one of the greatest thinkers she has ever encountered. In this text from 2015, she tells of the frustration she shared with him in trying to wake the environmental movement up to the threat of economic centralization. But both of them also shared the inspiration of having been in extensive and deep contact with people in non-western cultures, particularly in Buddhist ecological communities.

Jumping into the Stream of Things

By Peter Reed And David Rothenberg

In this text from 1993, Peter Reed and David Rothenberg make it abundantly clear why Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng, at the time, was regarded as “Norway’s leading environmentalist.” For a quarter century there were few ecological maelstroms he was not somehow mixed up in, and the ideas, protests, and organizations he initiated have permanently changed the face of Norwegian ecopolitics.

Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng Essays & Articles


Arne Naess

Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng (1934-2014)
Photo: Private collection