I grew up as an ordinary girl in the small town of Otta, Norway, and ended up in a beautiful life of adventures. I started kayaking at the age of 15, and when I turned 18 I packed my kayak and left on a 7-months travel to New Zealand, Chile and California. Since then I have travlled to more than 50 countries with my kayak, and in Chile I even fell in love with a river and built a cabin on the shore of the mighty Rio Futaleufú in northern Patagonia.
Being more than average competitive I have a strong drive to test my skills, and this drive has made the past decades a whirlwind of competitions in freestyle, exreme races and canoe slalom. Some highlights were when I became the 2015 World Champion in extreme kayaking, on the Otez river in Austria. In 2016 I became a mother for the first time, and continued on to win the World Championships again in 2019, during the North Fork Championships on the North fork of the Payette river in Idaho. I also paddled into a semi-final place in the highly competitive field of canoe slalom during the World Cup final in Pau, France, in 2015.
I also like to push myself outside of competitions, which is why I run endless waterfalls, surf huge river waves and travel to corners of the world that many never get to. I never get tired of exploring – curiosity is what drives me forward from adventure to adventure. My latest big achievement was when I ran the 23-meter high waterfall Aldeyarfoss in Iceland in 2023, after I gave birth to my second child in 2021.
In recent years I have gotten more into paragliding, and now my ongoing journey of freedom and flight through life continues in the air, where I am slowly progressing towards my token goals.
I do a lot of puclic speeches, talking about how topics like how to create a a life worth living, think outside the box, how to combine motherhoood with a drive for adventure and achievement, and of course pure stories of expeditions and extreme kayaking.
Get in touch!
Mariann
