A 72-year-old Norwegian activist who lost 95% of his vision at age 15 rolled into Honolulu this week on a tandem bicycle, the latest stop in a decades-long campaign to pedal the world toward nuclear disarmament. Tore Nærland, founder and president of Bike for Peace, arrived in Hawaii on September 29 after flying from Fiji, joined by his sighted cycling partner Erik Berge, who is also helping write Nærland's latest book.
The pair has spent recent days meeting with lawmakers and activists across Oahu, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Among their recent stops was a Wednesday visit to KVIBE, the Kalihi Valley Instructional Bike Exchange, where Nærland and Berge toured the youth-focused bike shop run by Kōkua Kalihi Valley. The nonprofit shop was established in 2005 and lets youth earn a bike through sweat equity and educational programming, according to Kōkua Kalihi Valley.
Nærland has cycled through 125 countries over the decades, and he says he plans to keep riding for another 30 years. He began circling the globe on two wheels to demonstrate that disabled people can cycle, travel, and participate fully in the global community, a mission that eventually folded into broader advocacy for peace and nuclear disarmament under the Bike for Peace banner.
A Tour Rooted in Northern Ireland and Hiroshima
Bike for Peace traces its origins to 1977, when Nærland rode across the United States from Seattle to Washington, D.C., before launching the organization's first international campaign the following year in Northern Ireland to advocate against the violence there, according to Bike for Peace. In 1979, Nærland visited Hiroshima, the Japanese city destroyed by an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, a trip that drew him into the anti-nuclear movement that has shaped his life's work since.
That work has included some striking milestones. In 1983, at the height of the Cold War, Bike for Peace organized a tour from Moscow through Oslo and New York to Washington, D.C., bringing together 40 cyclists, per the Russian Cycle Touring Club. In 2011, the group led a multi-day cycling campaign across Kazakhstan from Semey to Astana marking the 20th anniversary of the closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site.
Nærland and Bike for Peace have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize eight times and have collected honors including the Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award in 2015, the Norwegian King's Medal of Merit in 2017, and the Seán MacBride Peace Prize in 2023, according to Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. He also sits on the board of the Geneva-based International Peace Bureau, a peace federation founded in 1891 that itself won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1910.
Honolulu Stop Comes With a Former Colonel as Guide
In Honolulu, the delegation was hosted and guided by Ann Wright, a former U.S. Army officer and diplomat. Wright made national headlines in March 2003, when she became one of only three State Department officials to publicly resign in protest of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to CODEPINK.
Wright told the Star-Advertiser she is concerned that someone may eventually conduct a live nuclear weapons test, a worry she tied to rising tensions in the Pacific, where the United States and China are competing for influence across the islands and have test-fired nuclear-capable missiles in the region, though those missiles have not so far been armed with nuclear warheads. The paper also reported that the war in Ukraine has prompted a new arms race in Europe, and that weapons field-tested in Ukraine have reached Asia and the Pacific. Ukrainian army veterans reportedly spent a week on Oahu raising money and advocating for military support.
New START's Expiration Looms Over the Visit
Nærland's Hawaii stop lands against a stark backdrop: the 2010 New START treaty, the last remaining bilateral agreement capping deployed strategic nuclear warheads at 1,550 for each of the United States and Russia, officially expired on February 5, 2026, according to the Arms Control Association. The global nuclear weapons stockpile has declined from roughly 70,000 weapons to about 11,400, but the expiration of the last binding limit marks a notable reversal in the decades-long trend toward arms reduction.
Nærland visited Moscow in August and plans to return to Russia at the end of November to meet officials and promote dialogue and peace talks, according to the Star-Advertiser's reporting. He has also traveled recently to Finland, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia and Fiji to discuss peace before arriving in Hawaii. Honolulu was one stop on Bike for Peace's global tour.
Next Stops: Mexico, the Mainland, Then the UN
From Hawaii, the Bike for Peace delegation will travel next to Mexico, Arizona, and Georgia before reaching the United Nations in New York, after which the group will return to Norway. The campaign's stated goal is a world free of nuclear weapons by 2045, timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Nærland has said he believes the world can stop war through dialogue, and he has pointed to the United Nations as a platform for mediation and conflict resolution. It's a message he has carried on a bicycle seat for nearly five decades, through 125 countries and, for now, through a quiet bike shop in Kalihi where kids are still learning to fix their own wheels.
