Philosophers don’t have to climb mountains...

He has discussed peacemaking with Albert Einstein and philosophy with the Dalai Lama. Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng is an intellectual, but he has never been concerned to write conventional academic books.

Text and photos: Tore Hugubakken

“We are often asked about the relationship between philosophers and mountains. Many people believe there is a connection between philosophy and mountaineering, just because Arne Næss and I have done some climbing. Sorry, but there is no such connection!”
Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng – mountaineer, eco-philosopher, Buddhist, and researcher in the art of improvisation at NTNU – rests his hands on the steering wheel of his grey Mitsubishi. It is still far to go before we reach Busetgrenda in Mid-Gauldal in South Trøndelag. We are heading for the Setreng farm, where in-between his many other activities our driver spends his time logging, and growing potatoes and ecological hay. When we reach the farm, he is going to make us some coffee before taking us on a guided tour, and we are going to take some pictures.
“Oh yes, then there was Peter,” Setreng continues, remembering his now-deceased friend Peter Wessel Zappfe, who was Norway’s first eco-philosopher. He was also a very productive writer who wrote articles about hiking and mountaineering in a wide variety of magazines. Setreng made a collection of some of these articles. The result was the book Barske Glæder (Rough Pleasures), which is recognized as a classic by lovers of outdoor life.
“Peter was also a mountaineer,” says Setreng. So there are three of them. Even so, Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng is steadfast in his belief that you do not need steep mountains in order to be a Norwegian philosopher.

Discussing peace
In the car his woolly hat remains firmly pulled over the top of his head. His denim jacket is decorated with a seven-year-old badge bearing the slogan “No to the EU”. Setreng is used to swimming against the tide. On 7 July 1970, 40 members of the work group for the protection of the environment put a tent up right bang in the way of a service road in order to halt the construction of a hydroelectric power station. The decision to build this power station on the Mardøla river in Møre and Romsdal was highly controversial, and Setreng was at the forefront of the struggle. This is where “the chain gang” was born.

Setreng has put up bookshelves in the garage lavatory. The eco-philosopher has worked his way through three volumes of the German author Thomas Mann in this little room. Other lavatory reading includes The Forester and the New Scientist.

Ten years later, Setreng was a member of the group that occupied the Norwegian cabinet building during the Alta campaign. He built a reinforced lavvo (a Sami tent) made of ice, and it took the police a whole hour to hack their way through it. Last summer, Setreng joined forces with the young people who were demonstrating during the European Union summit meeting in Gothenburg. Riots broke out and the media blamed it all on the demonstrators. In Setreng’s opinion, there is little doubt that it was the police methods that were used that started the riots, and he is very disappointed that the peaceful contribution made by all the young, enthusiastic people did not catch the attention of the media.
“Recent research has led to the claim that young people of today lack political interest and commitment. Gothenburg proved otherwise, and very convincingly too,” says Setreng, who calls himself a pacifist. He was also a pacifist when he went to the USA as an exchange student in 1953, where he met Albert Einstein and discussed the struggle for peace with him.
Setreng remembers that Einstein believed himself to have been an accomplice in the development of the atomic bomb. The father of relativity theory had by this time become a peace activist, and he was more than willing to discuss pacifist ideas with any European student who visited his home in New Jersey.

Academic generalism
Setreng has lived a full life since then, and he has not been in chains during demonstrations all of that time. Over the years he has been an enthusiastic writer and lecturer, activities that have consolidated his position as something of an intellectual celebrity in Norway. He is also a much sought-after participant in debates.
Whenever civil disobedience is on the agenda, the farmer from Budalen is among the participants. Setreng is among the most popular debaters in any seminar concerned with environmental issues. He also takes part in conferences and other activities that take up issues ranging from globalization, food, and culture to jazz. He was nominated for the Nordic Council’s Nature and Environment prize for 1998. He did not win it then, but he received the prestigious state stipend from the Ministry of Cultural Affairs the same year, something that has enabled him to concentrate on his own writing for some years to come.
“My friends in academia believe that my social engagement has prevented me from writing thick monographs,” says Setreng. He has been told that he will not be able to change society or to gain recognition unless he achieves a higher academic status than that provided by his 1966 Master’s Degree. Only then, he has been told, will his voice be heard. But Setreng does not agree.
“I believe that I have learned more and achieved more through my involvement in practical and political work than I would have done had I just sat in a chair writing academic books. I have also learned a lot by living in other cultures, especially among the mountain people of the Himalayas,” says Setreng.
“Do you regard yourself an academic?”
“No, I don’t regard myself as a specialist at all. I have spent my whole adult life trying to become a generalist and an engaged, complete human being, rather than a specialist. I have always sought broader and more comprehensive academic insight. But I also wanted to gain some practical experience in addition to knowledge about different academic subjects,” says Setreng, who was an aircraft mechanic before he discovered philosophy.
At the moment he is involved in the interdisciplinary NTNU project Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Improvisation, in which researchers from different subject areas such as music, philosophy, and social anthropology seek to explore the concept of improvisation, a concept which up to now has been somewhat neglected.
“We use the word “improvisation” in two ways. First, to imply a fallback solution to which we have recourse when our usual solutions fail. But also as an ideal way forward, based on what we can call acquired readiness-skills, in such artistic fields as jazz, and also as the ultimate solution in many emergencies,” the improvisation researcher explains. It is the second of these conceptions that has intrigued several of the researchers at NTNU, and they study its manifestation on two levels: on the one hand those spontaneous, comprehensive solutions arrived at by individuals, and on the other hand the “improvisation-readiness” possessed collectively by a society. Setreng and the other researchers at NTNU have compared how improvisation functions on these two levels, and they believe that they have gained new, intriguing insights.
“Among other things, these insights relate to the strength and vitality versus vulnerability of both individuals and society as a whole,” says the improvisation researcher.

The skull is a present from the mayor of the village of Varanasi. Setreng met the living owner of this skull. It reminds him that nothing lasts forever.

Philosophy
He stops the car at Støren to buy a loaf of bread. Most of the time he is on his own at the farm in Setreng. His wife works in Oslo and commutes every month, while his three children left home years ago. As he is about to turn on the ignition, he asks politely whether he can have a cigarette while we are driving, if he promises to blow the smoke out of the window. He then begins to tell me about another car trip. In 1969, Johan Galtung and philosopher friends Arne Næss and Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng went for a drive. They drove from Norway to India in a Peugeot 404. Setreng filmed the whole trip with his 8-mm camera. The car took them all the way, and they all made it to the international seminar at the Gandhi Institute in Varanasi, held in connection with the centenary of the birth of the legendary Indian.

This trip was only the beginning of a whole series of journeys to this part of the world. Since then, Setreng has also met and discussed philosophy with the Dalai Lama. And at some point during his 22 journeys to Nepal and Bhutan, Setreng became a Buddhist himself.
“I am not a religious Buddhist, I am a philosophical Buddhist. There is an important distinction here,” the driver emphasizes as he rolls up the window.

“Philosophical Buddhism is an ethical position, and it embraces a concept of the world which I find satisfactory. The right insight calls for the right action, says the Buddhist behind the wheel, and he goes on to give me a lecture on the analysis of ecological cause-and-effect.”
Among his many concerns, Setreng is best known for his eco-philosophical ideas. His is a kind of practical approach to the world which raises ecological issues and concerns, such as the ways in which global free trade changes the environment. According to Setreng, the huge increase in the international proliferation of destructive organisms is a direct result of the free movement of goods and services. Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng has been characterized as a radical eco-philosopher, whereas Arne Næss has been seen as a moderate eco-philosopher. But many people confuse the work of the two philosophers.
“Everyone working within eco-philosophy gets lumped together with Arne Næss. There are several academic theses which attack both me and Arne as if we were philosophical identical twins. But my thinking is different from his,” says Setreng. “We are concerned with different issues, but you might say that we complement each other.”

Flypaper
In 1994 Setreng’s article “Nature’s No” was published in a book issued by the Norwegian farmer and small-holders union (NBS). The article was about the European Union, free trade, and the ecological chaos to which these could lead. He was ridiculed when the book was published, but he was proved right about many of his predictions several years later. An eco-philosopher who is sceptical about getting rid of border controls and restrictions on the movement of food as well as about globalization, and who is very much influenced by Gandhi too, finds that critics fasten on to him much like flies to flypaper. The Norwegian pro-urban Erling Fossen believes that a number of prophets of doom are to be found in the ranks of the Norwegian political left, and he lists Ottar Brox, Hartvig Sætra, Arne Næss, and Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng as the red-green gang-of-four in Norwegian politics. The last-named member of the “gang” is fed up with this kind of criticism.
“I am under attack from both left and right, and I can no longer bear to get involved in that sort of discussion. They haven’t even bothered to find out what exactly I have been doing!”
He hopes that his legacy will involve a contribution to a more sophisticated analysis of social development.
So is there anything he regrets in his 67-year-long life?
“Buddhists don’t regret anything, it is totally pointless. If I hadn’t done what I have done, I wouldn’t have found the impetus to go on to the next challenge. And that’s how it has been, all the way.”
“Does that mean that you are satisfied with your life?”
“No, I can’t say that I am satisfied either. Commitment is a lifestyle, and I am of course frustrated that it takes so long before the environmental issues that I have been working on have led to anything being done.”

Here at last
The car labours up the endless, slippery hills, but when we finally reach the top, the hamlet opens up to us.
“This is Brusetgrenda;” exclaims Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng. He points at his farm, at the forest, and at the sixteen small houses that still remain on the farm. This is where he feels at home. He picks up his post and puts the kettle on. Then he shows us up to the first floor of the old storehouse, where he has a Buddhist temple which one of his Bhutanese friends fitted out for him. Setreng picks up a drum and beats it a little. Afterwards he produces some long notes from a telescopic lure. And then a few sounds are struck from some Tibetan cymbals. Rhythm and sound are blended in the old Norwegian-Nepalese storehouse. But then he puts the instruments away. The cosmopolitan in rural Norway is dying for his morning cup of coffee.

Contact: Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng
Department of Music, NTNU
Tel: + 47 72 43 63 40