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Morten Hilmer

I've seen many polar bears and in general, I'm not afraid of them. They're beautiful creatures.

But it was attacking us in a small cabin and it was very close. It was a actually at the door scratching the door. I was a shitty situation, because we were definitely live danger at that point.

The door couldn't close because there was a lot of snow in it. And our rifles were out there at a sled and we had shot many warning shots, I have hit it directly with a Flash Bang, massive caliber, 12 flash bang. And it just continued. So we figured out that the bear was extremely thin and sick. So there has been something wrong with a bear It wanted to come in. It was desperate. And so where we, when we were standing on the other side of the thin door.

Jonathan Groubert

Morten Hilmer spends a lot of time in the North. It's a place he's dreamed of spending time in since his childhood, AND once he got there, it altered the course of his life forever.

Did you actually have to shoot a polar bear?

Morten Hilmer

Yeah, unfortunately. it was not me, but my colleague who did it.

Jonathan Groubert

This is a story about the trip that changed everything.

Hi, I'm Jonathan Groubert and this is The Journey. The Journey is an original podcast by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines where we meet extraordinary people whose lives are transformed by travel.

Morten Hilmer is definitely NOT a city person. He never was. His preferred mode of transportation? A dog sled.

His fascination with the outdoors - and with the North - started at a young age.

Morten Hilmer

I grew up in Denmark in the countryside on a small farm with my mom and dad. Beautiful area surrounded by forest and meadows and perfect playground. I really liked being out in the forest, also alone. And I had all these always these fantasies in my head about like, either I was Robin hood or I was a native American or a soldier or something.

Jonathan Groubert

Morten shared these dreams with a friend, named Frank.

Morton Hilmer

And he told me about this dog sled patrol in Greenland, the Sirius dogsled patrol and, and we, we went out there in the weekend, in the winter on our little sled..

Jonathan Groubert

The Sirius Dog Sled patrol is an elite unit in the Danish military. It protects Denmark's interests in the Arctic, and operates in northeastern Greenland, which used to be a Danish colony.

Frank and Morten were so fascinated by it, that they would go on their own "dog sled trips" - without dogs, but still pulling a sled behind them.

Morton Hilmer

He was always talking about, yeah in the Sirius dog sled patrol they have like minus 40 degrees Celsius and they are going out for a month. So we just have to go out. We went to my grand mom's, summer house and that would be our base camp and then we went maybe five kilometers out on a frozen field and put up our tent out there.

And I was like, oh, it's cold and stuff. And he was like, yeah, but that's how it is in their dog sled teams. So we imagined us being them.

Jonathan Groubert

Morten's father had also spent 3 years in Greenland, before Morten was born, working at a weather station.

Morton Hilmer

So he always told stories about Greenland and the great adventures. And I also think that was what kind of later on, uh, made me make a decision about going north because I was good in school, but I never figured out what I wanted to be because there was nothing in that big book that I really liked and I just had the feeling that I wanted to do something different.

I didn't like going to school because it was just like teaching something everyone else knew before you. But I knew I wanted to do something in nature.

Jonathan Groubert

School really wasn't Morten's thing. Nothing 'normal' was...

Morton Hilmer

All the time in school, when I woke up in the morning, I looked at the dog. I was really jealous because the dog could just lie there without any worries, just spend the day as he wanted. And I had to go to school at eight o'clock and I'd be home at three o'clock and people would tell me what to do and they would have expectations to me.

And I had so many ideas, so much things I wanted to try. I just felt in school that every day they just taught me to fit into a box. I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life and I didn't want to work for anyone. I wanted to see if it was possible to just be like the dog: wake up in the morning, spend the life, like I'll spend the day as I wanted to and just take me where, where my heart meant me to go.

Jonathan Groubert

But when Morten was 14, he discovered another passion.

Morton Hilmer

I picked up my first camera when I was 14 and immediately it was nature who was interesting. And then I started to photograph everything from horses to people.I experimented with everything in photography. But I could feel that was only one thing that, that I really wanted to do and that was photographing in nature.

Jonathan Groubert

As passionate as he was though, the people around him weren't that encouraging.

Morten Hilmer

I would say. want to become a wildlife photographer or photographer

Jonathan: And they would say?

Oh, that sounds very exciting, but I could see in their eyes they thought, I hope this kid will talk to his parents and they will make him change his mind because this is not realistic. I was told it was not possible because you could be like a commercial photographer, you could be a portrait photographer, but you couldn't really get any education on being a wildlife and nature photographer. I didn't really think about it that way. I just thought I love photographing. I just wanted to go out and explore things with my camera.

Jonathan Groubert

But all of Morten's friends were taking a more traditional route. Right out of high school they were going on to university to continue their studies. Morten knew that he wanted to be a wildlife photographer, but how?

And then one day he heard about an organization in Ecuador that was looking for volunteers to help plant trees. And that seemed like a way in.

Morten Hilmer

I didn't know what to do. I'd been told for 10 years what to do and now suddenly I was there on my own. everyone was going straight ahead with our lives and I was faffing around with my camera. And I thought, Whoa, I want to get down there with my camera. I can go around there making a lot of nice photos and see the rainforest and help doing this volunteer work. And then I could come home and start my career as a wildlife photographer with all these wonderful photos I'll get down there. So I didn't have a choice. I had to follow this dream and go to South America and Ecuador and try to become a wildlife photographer.

I went to the rainforest, photographed in the Amazon swimmed in the, underneath the waterfalls and did what I thought was the most amazing thing. It was an adventure and I came home with all these photos and thought, now I'm a wildlife photographer and I became a member of a, a stock agency and I made a small exhibition and I think I sold two photos, one to my mom and one to my aunt.

So that was pathetic. So it was, that was it. I thought now, now I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm in the game, but I was definitely not in the game. I had no idea about what it would take to be a wildlife photographer.

Jonathan Groubert

Fortunately, Morten's mom could see that he really wanted to do this.

But she could see that he wasn't happy with how it was going - after all, Morten was striking out on his own - naive, inexperienced and unknown in the photography world. But then she heard about a school that combined journalism and photography. And it was there that Morten met someone else who was on his side - another wildlife photographer named Bert Wiklund.

Bert: Hello, this is Bert.
Jonathan: Hi Bert, this is Jonathan. Nice to speak with you. How are you?
Bert: Oh, I'm fine.

Jonathan Groubert

Bert Wiklund is Swedish, but he lives in Denmark. He's the one who encouraged Morten to pursue his dream. And he knew the going would be tough.

Bert: Everybody wants to be a nature photographer, but then I tell them, okay, how many years can you be doing this without earning a penny? Well, maybe half a year. Okay. Try that half year and see what you get out of it. And most of them never starts.

Jonathan: But Morten was different.

Bert: Yes. He really got things moving. There are a lot of people taking a lot of pictures, but that's just for fun. You have to make a living of it.

Jonathan Groubert

Bert taught Morten something critical to good nature photography… looking. Really looking.

Bert: You can take... anywhere, you can take 1000 different pictures of a motive or a landscape or everything. How does the different subject in this totally big area compare to each other, with the light, what is the sky, what is everything? So you just go around and look and when you find the point, here, the point where I'll take that picture, just looking and being very conscious about looking.

Jonathan Groubert

After finishing school, Morten's dream hadn't changed. But he also wasn't sure how he could make a living out of it. So instead, he chose a temporary diversion that would lead him down a seemingly very different path...

Morten Hilmer

I like adventures and I like to do things that turned my life upside down. And I was a young man, strong, a lot of confidence, at that point. I thought, I want to test myself in the army.

Jonathan Groubert

It was the end of the 20th century, and in Denmark, joining the army then was more about survival training than it was about preparing for war.

Morten Hilmer

And for me I was excited. I like being in nature. I like going on these survival trips. I like to going on hiking trips to Norway and I thought, okay, military, why not? It's a good place to give you get, it's kind of an education in being outdoors, taking care of yourself. And also at that time I really like to challenge myself a little bit. I thought like I could still do wildlife photography in the weekend because you are in the army, Monday to Friday and then you're home in the weekend and it's only for 10 months. it was like an adventure. It's not like a career at all.

Jonathan Groubert

Morten joined the army in service of his dream. He planned to stay only 10 months. But remember the Sirius dog sled patrol he’d heard and dreamed of as a kid? It was an elite force of the Danish army, in the very place he’d heard his father talk about all his life: Greenland. He decided to apply for it.

Morten Hilmer

It's more like a park ranger because you are driving around in the national park on a dog sled, looking for activities, counting birds, all that kind of stuff. But the reason why I wanted to go so bad was because of the adventure, the thought about going in these extreme conditions, being insulated in Greenland for 26 month, driving 10,000 kilometer on dogsled on your own, trust in your own mind and your own hands and your ability to work together with other people, just being pushed to your limit and all that kind of stuff. And then the beautiful nature up there, I want to go there and I want to bring my camera. 50% or more of the reason why I went was to take my camera and explore this land with my camera.

And I was like training like a maniac to, to, to be able to do it. And, but I still knew that the chances were not that great because there are about 50 people applying every year and they'd take out between six or seven.

Jonathan Groubert

Morten didn't make it in the first time. But he spent the next 2 years training harder. And tried again.

Morten Hilmer

I was physically and mentally 100% ready and at that time I was lucky. I was selected as one of the seven person who started on the dog sled patrol.

I knew that it would change my life.

When I actually got to Greenland and I opened the door in the airplane and stepped out for the first time, put my feet on Greenlandic ground with the snow-covered mountains and huge landscapes, the first thing I noticed was this crystal clear air into my lungs. And I saw some sled dogs and I saw everything was so different. And at that point I kind of knew this is going to be a crazy adventure. What the hell have I started here?

Jonathan Groubert

The Sirius dog sled patrol serves as a Danish presence in the Arctic. But on the ground, its job is to maintain and supply a series of hunting cabins scattered throughout the park during winter expeditions using dogsleds. For Morten, being part of the patrol was everything he’d hoped for... and much more.

Morten Hilmer

When you stand there, it's totally white out. You're surrounded by nothing. No landscape. No smells, no sound, nothing. Only the only the sound off the dogs paws, tik tik tik tik and your skis (makes noise). Having your, your, your 12 dogs and the sled and just going about 30 kilometer all day through the most amazing landscape with only the sound of the paws towards the hard surface and, and the dogs like you know heh, heh, heh, and they are all happy. They all have their own little personality. So instead of traveling with a machine, you are traveling with 12 friends. And then you go on an adventure together. It's, it's priceless. It's impossible to describe how nice that is. I love that.

Jonathan Groubert

And of course, this wilderness was the perfect place to capture the landscape and its animals on camera.

Morten Hilmer

I had a high priority in bringing my camera. I knew from the beginning, from when I was applying for that dog sled patrol, I knew this was a part of the rest of my life. I knew the pictures I will get there, the stories I'd get there would be the best possible start I could ever get to do wildlife photography.

Jonathan Groubert

But it took considerable effort, and negotiating... after all, dogsleds only have so much space.

Morten Hilmer

You wear the same pair of underwear for about three weeks. You'll have like two suits of clothes for four months. Just to save weight and volume. So if you have 15 kilo of camera equipment, I can tell you that's pretty hard to convince your colleagues that you have to bring that.

I actually already started there sending letters home, got in contact with some businesses. I wrote long articles in the, tent in the cabins I want to publish when I come home. So I was 100%, focused on that part of it.

I would say I was a wildlife photographer back then. I just didn't know.

And I had this game changing moment that kind of sums up the way I want to, to do my photography now. I was out with my pole and my tent having, a cup of coffee there and I saw this arctic fox that was running around and my thought was oh, I want to get close to it. So I was photographing it for a while and it went to sleep on a little iceberg. I then sneaked in on it, with my camera and I got closer and closer and it was rolling together with, a little nose under the tail, the bushy tail. I was about to move even closer to see how close I could get.

Then suddenly, I realized that I'm not sneaking in on the fox. This fox can spot a little lemming underneath the snow, on a five meter distance. So the chance of it being able to discover a two meter high and 100 kilo heavy photographer trying to sneak... it would probably have seen me. So I realized that it's not because I'm good at sneaking, it's because the animal is allowing me to get close into its sphere and at that moment I realized how beautiful this is. Right now I'm not a photographer photographing a fox, right now we are two mammals out here and the one mammal is a fox and the other mammal is a human being.

Jonathan Groubert

The dog sled patrol operated in a national park, a place that's home to a lot of animals, including dangerous ones they encountered regularly, like muskox, and the polar bear that tried to get into Morten’s cabin.

Morten Hilmer

Being out there with, with the other animals. I can judge the situation where the polar bear, when it's dangerous, when is it not dangerous. I am realistic when I'm out there, but I'm also very eager to, capture some of these moments and I think and believe that sometimes you just have to trust that these animals are not going to kill you.

Jonathan Groubert

Morten's tour was year-round, for 26 months straight. It was intense, but he was getting some good photographs. On the other hand, it wasn't always ideal - it was incredibly remote, and the conditions were extreme.

Morten Hilmer

When you're so high up north you have a dark season as well as you have the midnight sun, meaning that we have almost three months of where the sun doesn't rise, like a three-month long winter.

The sun doesn't rise for the first time until like the end of February.

There was a deadline where I was going home, back to normal life, and what then?

I was not so certain about my life and what should I do when I come home and watch the rest of my life be. And I wanted to be a wildlife photographer, but it was just becoming something I said to myself without believing 100% in it.

I remember this day we knew the sun was about to rise, we could see clear sky, we could see the horizon, standing next to the dogsled, me and my colleague and the sun was about to rise up there. And I just remember when it came over the horizon, it was like, it was just unbelievable, crazy to get that sunlight in my face for the first time. And I had that feeling, I thought, okay, life is actually pretty nice right now. I'm here in the middle of the world's biggest national park surrounded by ice and snow. Good dog. A nice friend and when I come home I'm going to be a wildlife photographer. That was like, one of these moments I'll never forget.

Jonathan Groubert

After his 26-month long tour ended, Morten returned to Aarhus, Denmark's second largest city. He bought a small apartment there, as an investment.

It was an abrupt change from the solitude of the Arctic!

Morten Hilmer

It was so hard to get back home. I was ripped out of this simple world where you chop off a piece of ice and melt it when you want water and suddenly you come back to to Denmark with cars and Facebook and everything was going mental. I kind of felt that the whole thing had changed when I was there because I had changed so much. But when I came back, the only thing that had changed was they have built a new parking place behind the supermarket and people were not talking that much together.

Up there, we were 12 people in the station, and everyone that passed the station you have in relation to, and then you come home to Aarhus, and no one talked together. I came from being surrounded by the most fantastic nature to being in a small 30 square meter apartment I had this little window where I could see a lake and some trees and I had a terrible time there.

Jonathan Groubert

And then there was the work side of things...

Morten Hilmer

I started out and I sent out 130 letters to people or schools about doing my lectures and I got one answer and I called them all up after a week I'd say, Oh, have you got my letter? And I got one lecture and then I thought, wow, this is going to be hard. But I believed in it.

Jonathan Groubert

If there was one thing Morten knew how to do, it was to stick with his dream. And eventually he did start publishing articles with his photos, and giving lectures and photography courses.

But he missed the North. It was much too expensive for him to go up there on his own dime, but as luck would have it, he heard about a job near the headquarters for the dogsled patrol.

It was for a chef, and even though he wasn't a cook, Morten was determined to do it. Somehow - he got the job.

Morten Hilmer

I was a master of slow cooking because I found a way to put all on the meat so it was ready for the dinner and then go out and photograph during the day.

And the boss up there said that I was an above average cook, but an excellent photographer. That said everything about where I put my priorities.

I think the pictures from the dog sled patrol and the true pictures from this trip kind of created the, fundament, for, getting my name out because after this trip, I got an award in the wildlife photographer of the year competition.

Jonathan Groubert

In 2009, Morten submitted a photo of some arctic hares boxing with each other to the Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. He won runner up in the mammals category.

Morten Hilmer

Then it all started. Then the wildlife photographer adventure really started.

Jonathan Groubert

But even after winning the award, the going was tough. His friends and family had been right. It WAS really difficult to earn a living being a wildlife photographer.

Morten Hilmer

The bank was calling me and saying, it's red numbers all over the lines. When is some money coming in? And I looked at my schedule and I saw no money is coming in. What am I doing? And I sold one of my big lenses and paid the bank and knew that now they wouldn't bother me for the next three months and then I thought to myself, what am I doing now? I'm just teaching photography. I'm making photo courses, photo travels and lectures, but I'm not photographing anymore. Not as I did used to do.

Jonathan Groubert

Instead of figuring out how to make money, Morten decided to figure out how to spend more time doing the thing he loved: taking pictures.

He even stopped giving courses for a whole year.

Morten Hilmer

And then the bank went mental again and I had to sell some other equipment and then I like could, could relax a little again. So I sold a lot of my things too to make that year possible and rethink how I wanted to spend my time. And I'm so grateful I did it. My passion is to be out in nature. Having that fox or that deer in front of my camera, capturing the spirit of the moment and share that with people through my photos.

Jonathan Groubert

For Morten, though, there's really only one place to do that. The North.

Morten Hilmer

When I'm out there in the cold, it just feels right. I'm there.

it's the feeling of a great combination of solitude and a beautiful, unspoiled nature. A place where you can go for weeks and months without any kind of connection to the world and just, be present.

When you get to the Arctic in the winter, everything is covered with snow. All the sound has been dammed by ice. The river, the streams, the waterfall is all frozen. No sound there. All the birds has migrated to the south so you only have the raven left and some of the mammals. you have a colour pattern in blue and white and gray. You wish you had some colors but you only get white. you wish you had a smell but you have nothing but clean air. my eyes and my brain get more creative when I'm surrounded just by whiteness and snow.

Because suddenly with all of these distracting things away, it's suddenly easy to focus on a little straw of grass coming up from the ice with a, with a little snow on top. Suddenly that becomes the only thing that is, and you can concentrate fully on that. Or that little bird or the little fox that comes running, suddenly it's just you and the fox. Nothing else. No sounds, no smells, no colours. And I like that simplicity in my photography and also in my brain. It's like a clean desk. Yeah.

Jonathan Groubert

Morten's persistence, patience and stubbornness have helped him to survive in extreme conditions, but those are also the qualities that define his photographs, and make them unique.

Bert: He can taught me something now. So it's absolutely not the teacher pupil today. He's on his own feet. I'm proud because Morton has done what he's doing and what he's done. He should be proud.

Morton Hilmer

For me it's not a question about making a perfect portrait or a nice action-packed photo of an eagle gripping a fish in its claw with uh, with a water drops like diamonds around it. For me, a perfect photo, if that even exists, is a photo that captures the mood or feeling or an emotion.

The perfect photo for me is the photo that brings the viewer or myself into a little the same mood as when I took the photo or even better a photo that doesn't show everything so clear and nice, that can like trigger the viewer's imagination and fantasy.

The day before yesterday when I was out and it was heavy rain and I was standing there soaked in water and I had a smile on my face when it was dripping down my, my shoes because it was such an awesome feeling. And then the rain stopped, the thunder stopped and this bird started to sing. That can never be boring.

Jonathan Groubert

For those of us who are not aficionados of the lens, or for whom the prospect of months in the Arctic wilderness... surrounded by ice, snow and, er, polar bears, does not seem particularly attractive, all is not lost.

Morton Hilmer

I feel it's easier to take uh, a civilized man from the city and make him feel comfortable around the fireplace or in the forest than it is to take a wild man and make them feel comfortable in Copenhagen and I have not once in my life had a trip to the forest or the middle or the beach, I have never come home in a bad mood. I've always been happy. No matter if you live in New York or if you live in London, just don't forget that we are still mammals. We are not some kind of subspecies, we are still mammals with a beating heart.

And like all of the mammals, we just belong in nature. Leave your phone at home, go out in nature, spend a few hours there unconnected. Try to do that. Make that a part of life. Experience the beauty of being present right here and right now in nature and let the nature touch you and come to you. I genuinely believe that everyone without exception would be more happy and get a little the same feeling as when I saw the sun for the first time.

Jonathan Groubert

Morten Hilmer.

We'll put links up to his website and his nature conservancy work on our website: podcast.klm.com