About me – Birgit Lutz

I am an author, lecturer and expedition leader.

Birgit Lutz As an awarded journalist, I worked for the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) for 15 years. In 2007, during my work for the SZ, I undertook an expedition to the North Pole on a nuclear icebreaker. Since then I have specialised in the High Arctic. I began, among other things, a further course of study, “Circumpolar Studies” at the Canadian University of the Arctic to help me with this work. In 2010 and 2011, I skied to the North Pole, together with the Swiss adventurer Thomas Ulrich – over the last degree of latitude. My first book, “On the road with wild guys”, was published in 2012 and tells of this tour and other arctic experiences. My second book, “Boundary Experience Greenland” is about my Greenland crossing, which I did in 2013 together with friends, without a guide. In 2017 I wrote “Black Water”, a small book with huge content: I wrote it for Thomas Ulrich, about his Solo Arctic Expedition 2006, which almost ended fatally.

In 2014, I led a voyage on a sailing vessel for the first time, the three-masted SV Antigua. In 2015, I stopped working for the Süddeutsche Zeitung and founded my own business.

Birgit Lutz (c) Peter von Felbert The first years that I travelled in the north were marked by my own urge to discover this wonderful region and my immersion in the historical expedition stories. This drive has changed since then. Since crossing Greenland in 2015 and 2016, I have returned to East Greenland three times, each time for a month, because the people interested me much more than the ice – the people of this unique era, somewhere between tradition and modern life. I wanted to tell their stories. “Today we go Whaling”, published in October 2017, is certainly my most elaborate book so far.

In 2016 I developed a Citizen Science project, together with the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven. With guests on our boat trips, I collected, counted and weighed the plastic garbage on the beaches of Spitsbergen. This project today accounts for a large part of my work. I give lectures in numerous schools and also speak publicly about plastic garbage and the Spitsbergen project, and have begun a blog about plastic avoidance. Since ten years I also offer a series of other talks, be it motivational or simply for entertainment to public and private audiences and companies.

In total, I have made more than 60 trips to the Arctic to date and have been to the North Pole 15 times. The Greenland Book and the Plastic Project are my ways of giving something back to this wonderful region. My drive has evolved, away from one of athletic discovery, to a drive to make my own small contribution to the preservation of the magnificent nature of this region, and its people.

My base camp is situated at Lake Schliersee, in Upper Bavaria. From my place of work I have a view to the peaks of the Brecherspitz and the Jägerkamp. I make around ten trips a year, mostly as an expedition leader on sailing ships. When I’m not at sea, I write new books at home, work on new lectures, or on the plastic project.

Since a couple of years I also provide selected trips to the polar regions or consultation to travellers and explorers who wish to make independent trips or expeditions to these spectacular, remote reaches of our planet.

If you too feel the distant call of the ice, be it in a beautiful ship or on skis, please get in touch with me. I’ll be happy to help you!

Awards