Why did I create Nordic Wolves?

Everybody is taught how to grow up, but nobody teaches you how to grow old.

Growing older comes with a certain silence. Not an empty silence or one filled with fear, but the silence that comes when you find yourself reflecting on your life and everything you have experienced. The big question that follows is simply:

"What now?"

Those of us who are older men have many things in common that others find difficult to understand, or that remain something of a mystery.

For a long time I wondered what I could contribute, both for myself and for other men like

I have exercised regularly all my life, and in recent years I have paid more attention to my diet because, like most men, I have put on a few extra kilos. My first thought was to create exercise videos for older men and combine them with some advice about nutrition.

That would have been well within my comfort zone after a lifetime of exercise and my medical training. Besides, most people who teach older adults how to exercise are considerably younger and therefore do not experience their bodies the way we do.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that the project was far bigger.

Older men do not simply need an exercise programme. They need better reasons why they should exercise regularly and take care of themselves in the first place.

The problem is that they are not used to asking questions or seeking advice.

Older men do not always say very much, but that does not mean they have nothing to say. More often than not, nobody even thinks of asking them.

We have tried to adapt to a changing society while holding on to the values shaped by our own lives. Sometimes we are almost portrayed as cavemen, and somewhere along the way something called the patriarchy appeared, although many of us are not entirely sure what we are supposed to have done with it.

We have little interest in self-help clichés, influencers or people who claim to have the one right answer.

We are far more interested in honesty, experience based on both science and real life, humour, stories, spending time with our peers and simply being around good people.

I felt that our voice was missing.

Not necessarily in relation to everyone else, but first and foremost among ourselves. Yet I could not find a place where that voice already existed.

There are, of course, many different organisations that men belong to, but none that are specifically devoted to older men.

That is why I came up with the idea of Nordic Wolves.

It is not a traditional health website, nor is it a religion. My hope is that it will become a place for knowledge, discussion and different opinions among men at this stage of life.

While working through these thoughts, I found myself remembering Bertrand Russell's essay How to Grow Old, which I first read as a teenager. He remained physically and mentally healthy until he died—what almost seemed by accident—from influenza at the age of ninety-seven.

Perhaps that was when the first seed was planted, without me even realising it.

Nordic Wolves did not come into being because I wanted to create yet another health website or tell men what they should eat or how they should exercise.

It came into being because I felt that something was missing.

A voice.

A voice that speaks to those of us who have passed the halfway point of life. A voice that recognises that life has changed, while at the same time reminding us that it is still full of possibilities.

I do not believe older men need more rules. They have had rules imposed on them throughout their lives.

I believe they need better reasons.

Reasons to exercise.

Reasons to take care of their health.

Reasons to laugh.

Reasons to stay curious.

And perhaps, above all, reasons to look forward to tomorrow.

I do not know where this journey will take me, but I do know that I have set out. And that, more than anything else, is what really matters.