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Quo Vadis
Vært: Uffe Sveegaard
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Quo Vadis
Why Do We Give Up Halfway?
Send us Fan Mail Why do some people push through… while others stop when it gets hard? In this episode of Quo Vadis, I explore a fundamental question on the journey of following your calling: Why do we give up halfway? Inspired by a young boy one morning in Nuuk fighting on his bicycle uphill I experience a living metaphor for perseverance. As he climbs a steep hill where most people give up, something unexpected unfolds. Along the way, I reflect on stories and perspectives that challenge what we think we know about talent, effort, and endurance: Can greatness be created, or are we born with it? The remarkable experiment of László Polgár and his daughters suggests one answer. What happens when discipline replaces passion? The story of André Agassi reveals a different truth. What carries us through when desire fades? And what does it really mean to “love your fate” — amor fati? Drawing on the lives of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Viktor Frankl, this episode explores how meaning — not talent, not even passion — may be the deepest source of endurance. Because when everything becomes difficult, what is it that keeps you going?
18. apr.14 min
Quo Vadis
Camino del Norte 6 - Santiago de Compostela
Send us Fan Mail In this chapter, we enter the deeper rhythm of the Camino. Emma and I share a quiet day of rest, where a simple pilgrim’s song unfolds into a greater knowing: we came in search of peace, yet along the way, we find love. As we draw closer to Santiago, we begin to meet more pilgrims, and suddenly the day has come when we are to behold the city we have walked toward for so many weeks. The sound of bagpipes tells us we are near, and we move forward, deeply stirred, toward the square before the great cathedral. We take part in the pilgrims’ mass, and later we carry out a ritual of our own, as we had agreed. Our journey comes to its end at the edge of the world—Finisterre—where Emma finds her scallop shell in the sea, and I return to the prayer that opened this journey, and my life: Am I still searching for a heart of gold?
14. apr.24 min
Quo Vadis
Camino del Norte 5 - Emma becomes a Pilgrim
Send us Fan Mail The taxi arrives late, but the reunion cannot wait. In this chapter I meet my goddaughter Emma in Asturias, and we set out on her first days on the Camino. From the small fishing village of Cudillero to steep climbs, sweat-soaked stages, and unforgettable encounters with fellow pilgrims, our journey together becomes a story of joy, hardship, and fellowship. Emma steps into the rhythm of the Camino with youthful courage, minor injuries, and an open mind. We share smiles, tapas, and stories with people from all over the world – from the Italian Paula and her friend Stefano to Caroline from Canada, who dreams of the PCT. Together we sing the pilgrim song Buen camino peregrinos, share life stories, and discover how the road draws us closer to one another and to something greater. It is a chapter about finding one’s own pace, carrying each other through fatigue, and discovering the magic in unexpected encounters.
12. apr.20 min
Quo Vadis
Camino del Norte 4 - Gracias a la Vida
Send us Fan Mail After the first three stages, something shifts on the fourth stretch of the Camino del Norte — happiness begins to seep in. Through Ribadesella and Avilés, I enter a new lightness. Observing strangers in a fisherman’s restaurant unfolds into small dramas, vibrant and alive. An erotic dream of a mysterious woman awakens the power of the anima. And among the stately casa indiana houses, I find myself reflecting on how love from the past still flows in the blood, like hidden frequencies of energy. Light mingles with darkness. At Hotel Don Pedro, I encounter the blood-soaked legacy of the conquistador, while Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain draws my thoughts toward the nature of time and mortality. And yet, something essential has changed. The body takes over. My legs carry me as if on wheels, and a deep well-being rises where none lived before. Meeting Australian Berry among ripened blackberries becomes the emblem of this new phase — connection, ease, and a quiet gratitude for simply being allowed to be here. A podcast episode about finding light in the heart of darkness — about the pilgrim’s strange and beautiful power to turn pain into joy.
11. apr.36 min
Quo Vadis
Camino del Norte 3 - To Lose in Order to Find
Send us Fan Mail An unexpected encounter throws me off balance: a woman forces herself upon me and steals my crucifix. Like a vampire's bite, it drains me, leaving me shaken and naked. But in the loss, the shell is stripped away – and the light finds its way in. In this third chapter of my pilgrimage on the Camino del Norte, I discover that I have come here to mourn Susanne. Music, encounters, and spiritual texts open the path, and I realize that the Camino is not about holding onto what I thought it should be, but about surrendering to the path I am actually given. Again. A tale of loss, grief, and longing – and of how we sometimes must lose in order to find.
6. apr.36 min
Quo Vadis
Camino del Norte 2 - Walking Home
Send us Fan Mail In this episode I follow people and their masks, the longing to be seen and loved — and discover how I myself am searching for something that does not quite allow itself to be grasped. I encounter Mary in the apse of a church as High Priestess and keeper of the veil, finish Lea Korsgaard’s book about butterflies and God in nature, and have a dream of the child within me who longs for home. The episode explores the difference between seeking and finding, and how you sometimes only finds home when you stop looking. A story of pilgrimage, spirituality, and of making oneself available to the small miracles that reveal themselves along the way.
4. apr.28 min
Quo Vadis
Camino del Norte 1 - The First Steps
Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Quo Vadis, In this special Camino series, I temporarily leave the Continental Divide Trail — the very trail I am hiking right now — and set out on a different pilgrimage, one I walked in the summer of 2025: the Camino del Norte in Spain. The first chapter begins at the airport — with anticipation, unease, and a glimpse of the long road ahead. Along the way, I share impressions, encounters, and reflections from the first steps of this six-week journey, one that leads not only toward Santiago, but deeper into life itself. 🎧 Listen in if you are considering walking a Camino, setting out on a pilgrimage — or simply feel like walking a stretch of the road with me.
4. apr.33 min
Quo Vadis
Do you know your Daimon?
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I explore the ancient Greek idea of the daimon — not as a demon, but as an inner guide that accompanies each human life. Drawing on Plato’s Myth of Er, I reflect on the possibility that the soul chooses its life before birth, and that something within us still remembers — even after we have forgotten. The episode weaves together philosophy, psychology, and personal experience to examine: Why we feel a persistent inner restlessness How calling appears not as clarity, but as tension The role of intuition, symbols, and life events as expressions of the daimon Whether purpose is something we create — or something we uncover This is an exploration of calling, memory, and the quiet force that seems to guide us, even when we do not understand it.
21. mar.27 min
Quo Vadis
Synchronicity – when the universe whispers to you
Send us Fan Mail Have you ever felt a moment where the world seemed woven together by invisible threads, too intricate to be mere chance? In this episode of Quo Vadis, I explore Carl Jung’s idea of “meaningful coincidences”: moments when inner experiences and outer events seem mysteriously connected, without any visible cause. Synchronicity is a call to listen to the deeper layers of our psyche and discover that we are not isolated islands, but part of a larger, interconnected whole. Drawing on literature, psychology, physics, and my own personal experience, this episode reflects on how synchronicity may arise when something within us is ready to change — from the strange chain of events on a remote trail to the psychological difference between projection and those rare moments where the world reflects our inner state in ways we haven't created. Synchronicity cannot be summoned. But it may meet us when we loosen our grip, let go of our ego's small plans, and allow life to unfold in a harmonious and meaningful way. “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – C.G. Jung Have you ever experienced a moment that refused to be called a coincidence?
28. feb.16 min
Quo Vadis
The Anatomy of the Call
Send us Fan Mail When a person follows a true calling, something remarkable — and very real — happens. The brain begins to change. The body follows. Belief turns into action before willpower even enters the room. Joe Dispenza calls it placebo. Myth calls it a miracle. I call it the call. In this episode of Quo Vadis, I speak with spiritual teacher Charlotte Fruergaard about the moment a call ignites. Drawing on Dispenza’s work in You Are the Placebo, we explore how a call can function as a spontaneous neuro-emotional re-coding — a moment where identity and direction are reorganized in an instant. This is not about planning or reasoning. It is about the arrival of a certainty that can seem entirely irrational from the outside, yet you take it in as naturally as a mother lifts her child. That is what struck me on the Camino. My own call to the Pacific Crest Trail did not come from logic; it arrived as a fait accompli. Something in me had already moved, and I simply had to live my way into what was already true.
31. jan.48 min
Quo Vadis
The CDT doesn't like people - a conversation with Tim Voors
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Quo Vadis, I speak with Tim Voors about the Continental Divide Trail — the most remote, demanding, and psychologically challenging of the great American thru-hikes. Tim has completed the Pacific Crest Trail, Te Araroa in New Zealand, and the CDT. He is also the author of The Great Divide, a book that approaches the trail not as an achievement, but as an encounter with fear, humility, and awe. Our conversation explores what draws people toward something they know will test them deeply. We talk about fear — not as something to be eliminated, but as something to be transformed into respect. About solitude, uncertainty, navigation, wildlife, and the mental strategies required to keep moving forward when comfort and certainty disappear. This episode is a conversation about the threshold: the moment where longing outweighs fear and you choose exposure over safety, and about what the Continental Divide Trail gives back to those who dare to walk it.
17. jan.1 t 4 min
Quo Vadis
The Dangerous Longing
Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Quo Vadis — a podcast about following your calling into a magical hero’s journey, in order to find your way home. This is the first episode in a new English cycle. In my earlier Danish series, I told the story of thruhiking the Pacific Crest Trail through the lens of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. Now a new threshold is approaching: the Continental Divide Trail — a 5,000-kilometre remote route from Mexico to Canada, high, exposed, lonely, and often not a trail at all. In this episode, I explore a paradox: Why are we sometimes drawn toward something that genuinely scares us? Why does the call to adventure so often arrive wrapped in fear? To answer that, I move through two stories. The first is Tarjei Vesaas’ The Ice Palace — a Nordic classic in which a child walks alone into a frozen labyrinth of dangerous beauty, as if compelled by a secret inner pull. The second is my own childhood story from a Greenlandic village in the 1970s: The Fish Crate — a memory of stepping into a fragile little vessel and drifting toward the pack ice, seduced by its glittering promise, until the moment the ice moves and the world shifts into terror. Together, these stories point to the same experience: the mixture of fear and longing that philosophers call the Sublime — the confrontation with something overwhelmingly vast, powerful, and real. This episode is the beginning of my new journey toward the CDT — and an attempt to name the feeling at its root: the dangerous longing.
3. jan.32 min
Quo Vadis
Episode 12: The Return
Send us Fan Mail In this final episode of the first Quo Vadis cycle, I speak with mythologist and storyteller Dr. Catherine Svehla, host of the podcast Myth Matters, about the most overlooked and difficult stage of the Hero's Journey: the return. Inspired by Joseph Campbell's idea of "the return with the elixir," we explore what it means to come home after deep transformation - and how to live with what you have learned. After five months on the Pacific Crest Trail, I walked around Nuuk with a secret inside my body - the knowledge that I could carry far more than I believed. But how do you share what you've discovered without sounding like someone who had a revelation on a mountain ridge? How do you find a new way to live in the world—not as the old self, but as the transformed one? This is where the hero must learn that the journey never truly ends, but continues in another way. This episode closes the first Quo Vadis cycle. The journey continues, though -now in English - as the path leads toward a new call: Continental Divide Trail. I'm hiking this brutal 3.000 mile trail next year, though it truly scares me, but at the same time draws me, so I gotta go .. For as T.S. Eliot wrote: "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go."
21. dec. 20251 t 5 min
Quo Vadis
Episode 13: Mester af to verdener - samtale med Nana Askov
Send us Fan Mail Når helten vender hjem fra sin rejse, begynder den virkelige prøve: at leve det, man har lært. Joseph Campbell kalder dette stadie Master of Two Worlds – evnen til at være forbundet med det evige og samtidig fuldt nærværende i det menneskelige. I dette afsnit vender jeg tilbage til Nana Askov, forfatter til bogen ”Dit kald” som var med i første episode om kaldet. Sammen taler vi om, hvordan man finder balancen mellem sjæl og verden, og hvordan man kan leve vågent midt i hverdagens rytme. Vi reflekterer over The Matrix, om sjælens kald, og om hvordan hver afslutning altid rummer et nyt begyndelsespunkt. En samtale om at mestre både det magiske og det almindelige – og at bringe sin visdom hjem.
11. nov. 20251 t 4 min
Quo Vadis
Episode 11: Eliksiren
Send us Fan Mail I denne episode når vi kulminationen på heltens rejse: eliksiren eller gaven. Det er det trin, hvor helten modtager en indsigt, der rækker langt ud over rejsen selv – en gave, som kan deles med andre. Man kunne tro, at min gave var at nå Canada efter flere tusinde kilometer på PCT'en. Men det var ikke dér, jeg fandt den. For skønt jeg følte, turen var slut ved grænsen til Canada, vidste jeg, at jeg måtte tilbage til High Sierra i Californien for at færdiggøre det stræk, jeg havde skippet på grund af den enorme snemængde. Så jeg vendte tilbage. Men midt i bjergene – udmattet, med en snestorm på vej og kroppen ved sammenbrudets rand – opdagede jeg noget fundamentalt: Forskellen mellem at følge sjælens kald og egoets insisteren. Dette er historien om, hvordan den ægte eliksir viste sig gennem lidelse og fald. Om at slippe taget i stedet for at holde fast. Om at lære at skelne mellem længslens stemme og egoets krav. For den største gave fra rejsen var ikke at nå målet – men at lære, hvornår man skal stoppe.
11. okt. 202538 min