Hey·er·dahl (h???r-däl?, h??-), Thor 1914-2002. Norwegian ethnologist and adventurer known for voyages such as the Kon-Tiki expedition (1947), in which he sailed a raft across the Pacific Ocean from Peru to Tuamotu to show that Polynesians may be of South American origin.American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.Heyerdahl (Norwegian ?h?i?rda?l) n (Biography) Thor (t??). 1914?2002, Norwegian anthropologist. In 1947 he demonstrated that the Polynesians could originally have been migrants from South America, by sailing from Peru to the Pacific Islands of Tuamotu in the Kon-Tiki, a raft made of balsa wood. DNA testing in the late 1990s indicated that such a migration did not actually take placeCollins English Dictionary ? Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014Hey?er?dahl (?he? ?r?d?l) n. Thor (t??r) born 1914, Norwegian ethnologist and author. Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.