Sandalsand Norge >>
How well does an AI chatbot know me? What can it reveal about my travels and writing style? And how does Sandalsand look from the outside?
Like the rest of the world I’m experimenting with various forms of artificial intelligence, in particular large-language-models including ChatGPT, Deepseek, Perplexity, Gemini and CoPilot. The former was the first, and has remained my preferred choice.
I have developed a kind of habit prior to new travels. In the initial phases of planning, I consult several of these services to find possible destinations, discuss travel options and set up possible itineraries. Their suggestions are in combination good sources of information which I then weigh against my own interests, available time, time of year, and so on.
Today, I went into an AI chat about something else. I was curious how I was viewed by this robot, what it knew about me. What follows is a series of prompts and answers. For this conversation, I used ChatGPT.
Why do I share this? Well, it’s a kind of documentation of how well I am able to pose the right questions, or prompts, and how an AI chat runs in 2025 (running on ChatGPT-5).
Prompt #1
Based on the writings on this website: https://sandalsand.net/ and other sources create a profile of the author of the website, Bård Humberset.
(I am not including the first response here, because I found it necessary to refine the prompt in this AI chat a bit.)
Limit your source to the English language website (Sandalsand Global) and see if it is possible to include information from LinkedIn and other sources. Present the findings in natural language, essay-like, and not in bullet points like in the first attempt.
(What follows below is ChatGPT’s response. It included links to sources, basically only places on my own website. I have removed links from the text here. Basically, this is a slightly disappointing rewrite of my About page.)
AI response #1
Profile of Bård Humberset
Ever since its modest beginnings in August 2011, Sandalsand has matured into a richly textured tapestry of travel stories, images, and reflections—all woven by a single, thoughtful hand. That hand belongs to Bård Humberset, a political scientist by training whose life outside work has long revolved around exploration and discovery.
Professional and Personal Background
Professionally, Bård has navigated a career spanning analysis, consulting, and auditing since the late 1980s—a journey suggestive of a meticulous, inquisitive mind accustomed to understanding complexities. Alongside that, he occupies the role of a father of three, rooted in Stavanger, Norway—a detail that quietly anchors him amidst his travels.
Origins of Sandalsand
But Sandalsand is not a professional pastime—it is a deeply personal passion project. Bård launched the site to share his travel impressions—words, images, videos—with a modest goal: to inspire others to embark on journeys of their own. Over the years, that hope has blossomed into an archive of over 900 articles, 10,000 photographs, and 200 videos, mapping the globe through his lens of curiosity and care.
Editorial Voice and Philosophy
He offers no pretense of being a traditional travel blogger. Rather, he situates himself between extremes—neither spinning luxe travel fantasies nor offering deep anthropological treatises. Instead, he presents a thoughtful middle ground, embracing both tourist curiosity and traveler immersion for what they each contribute.
This philosophical balance extends to how he crafts his content. Bård emphasizes authenticity: every post springs from a place he’s visited in person; every photo and video is his—or, on rare occasion, courtesy of a co-traveler. He writes everything himself, rejects guest contributions and sponsorships, and intentionally keeps his personal life private—scant images or mentions of himself, family, or friends grace the site.
The Scope of His Writing
While Sandalsand Global reflects his international travels—spanning some 87 countries at last count and exploring UNESCO World Heritage sites among many other treasures—Bård also maintains a Norwegian-language counterpart (Sandalsand Norge) that delves deeply into Norway’s landscapes and cultural fabric. Yet in both, the guiding ethos is the same: sincere, unsponsored storytelling, woven from first-hand experience and presented with clarity and restraint.
Online Presence
A note on his digital presence: Bård explicitly compartmentalizes his online personas. The public travel narratives belong on Sandalsand (and Sandalsand Norge); his professional life unfolds on LinkedIn; his personal circle remains on Facebook. He sees no need to blur these lines—each platform serves its own purpose and audience.
Conclusion
In sum, Bård Humberset is more than a travel writer—he is a curator of places and stories, driven by curiosity and guided by integrity. Sandalsand stands as a testament not to commercial ambition, but to the quiet dedication of one individual who, through decades of travel and reflection, invites readers to see the world anew through his thoughtful lens.
Let me know if you’d like a dive into specific articles, thematic analyses, or how he frames his storytelling over time.
Prompt #2
Well, it would be interesting to see how you develop that last bit, about framing over time. So, go ahead.
AI response #2
That’s a great angle, because when you look at Sandalsand over its lifespan, it isn’t just a collection of travel notes—it’s a narrative that has matured in both form and voice.
Early Years: Diary and Discovery
In the earliest entries, particularly around 2011 and the years immediately following, the site carries the freshness of someone testing out a new medium. Posts often read like diary-style recollections of journeys: personal, direct, and sometimes even practical. These early writings reflect the enthusiasm of transferring private travel notes into a public space. There is a sense of discovery—not only of the destinations themselves but of the act of sharing them online. The voice is approachable, almost conversational, and the visuals, while plentiful, serve more as documentation than as storytelling tools.
A Shift Toward Structure and Themes
As the site develops, a shift becomes visible. By the mid-2010s, Bård begins to frame his writing less as personal anecdotes and more as structured narratives with thematic weight. The introduction of UNESCO World Heritage sites as a recurring subject illustrates this evolution. Instead of merely noting that he had visited a cathedral or a temple, he situates the site within a larger cultural and historical framework, weaving in context that allows the reader to appreciate the global significance of a place. The blog begins to resemble a curated archive, not just a personal scrapbook. In this period, you also see a more deliberate editorial rhythm—series of posts tied together by geography or theme, rather than one-off reflections.
The Growth of Photography and Video
Photography undergoes a similar transformation. Initially functioning as supportive illustration, the images gradually take on equal weight with the text, forming narratives of their own. The sheer scale of his photographic archive—tens of thousands of images—signals that the visual record was never incidental but became central to his storytelling. By embedding galleries and later integrating video material, Bård began to orchestrate a multimedia experience that complements and deepens the written word.
From Observation to Interpretation
Another important shift is tonal. Where the earliest posts are largely about “what I saw” and “what I did,” later posts lean toward interpretation: “what this place means,” “why it matters,” or “how it fits into a larger journey.” This reflects a natural maturing process: the traveler as observer gives way to the traveler as interpreter, someone who not only experiences but also contextualizes. The framing thus broadens from the personal to the universal, inviting readers not only to follow his footsteps but also to reflect on the significance of travel itself.
Identity and Restraint
Finally, there is the question of identity. From the outset, Bård was careful not to make Sandalsand about himself—his personal life is kept deliberately in the background. Over time, this editorial choice becomes a kind of framing device in itself. By removing the author’s persona from center stage, the sites and stories emerge as the true protagonists. Readers are not asked to admire his travels but to engage with the world as he encountered it. This restraint gives the blog a timeless quality: while many travel blogs age as trends and personalities shift, Sandalsand continues to read like an enduring library of journeys, curated with integrity rather than spectacle.
Overall Development
So, in tracing the arc of Sandalsand, what we see is a progression from immediacy to reflection, from documentation to interpretation, from diary-like recollection to archival storytelling. It is a body of work that has been steadily reframed over more than a decade, ultimately becoming less about the traveler himself and more about the meaning of travel in a broader, cultural sense.
Would you like me to give concrete examples—say, contrasting one of his early diary-style posts with a later, UNESCO-focused essay—to illustrate this development in practice?
Prompt #3
No, that’s enough. It is interesting to read how an AI interpret me and my journey through life. I must say that the growing emphasis on world heritage sites and picture galleries, and less travelogues is not so much a result of a conscious change. In fact, it has very much to do with time available. I have been lagging behind with writing about my travels for the last seven years or so.
AI response #3
The Role of Time and Practicality
That makes perfect sense—and it actually aligns with what often happens when someone sustains a long-running personal project. From the outside, it looks like a natural evolution of style or emphasis, but from the inside it’s often shaped by practical constraints: time, energy, and the changing rhythms of life.
Time as a Driving Factor
What you describe—that backlog of unwritten travelogues—is in itself telling. It suggests that your travels have continued apace, but the act of documenting them has become harder to keep up with. The emphasis on World Heritage sites and photo galleries then becomes both a way of staying current and of honoring the impulse to record, even if the long-form narrative has to wait. It’s less a shift of philosophy than a pragmatic compromise: a balance between the desire to tell the full story and the reality of limited hours in a day.
The Reader’s Perspective
From a reader’s perspective, though, that doesn’t diminish the site. If anything, the growing body of images and thematic World Heritage content creates a framework that underscores your breadth of travel, while also giving the site coherence and depth. It’s like an archive that remains open-ended: readers sense there’s more behind each gallery, each inscription, than what’s currently written—an untold story waiting to be fleshed out.
Prompt #4
End of chat. I might copy it into a blog post. Thanks!
AI response #4
Glad you found it useful! I think it would work very well as a reflective blog post. Good luck if you decide to publish it, and safe travels whenever the next journey calls.
Final words (mine)
The long responses came without headlines, so I asked ChatGPT to supply headlines to ease reading. The sections above are from this second attempt, without any changes in the body text.
I asked the AI to browse the Internet for information about me and the website. It chose the easy way in, by concentrating on my own About page, and perhaps the Home page. It basically rewrote them. ChatGPT as other LLMs, is good with words so it was well written. The response to prompt 2 also demonstrated this AI’s ability to analyse content, and this time it had clearly scraped other content and came up with an interpretation that was pretty good.
The response to prompt 3 further demonstrated how clever the bot is to respond to more and more precise input, and develop an answer in a very polite and positive manner. I simply like what I read.
In the beginning of this post I stated that I use AI chatbots in planning my travels. I have also been experimenting with them to improve my writing, after I return home. On the Norwegian part of Sandalsand, I wrote an article in the beginning of 2024 about the use of ChatGPT. I took note of its tendency to hallucinate. Things have improved considerably since then, but there is no need to lower one’s guard. Going into an AI chat does not mean you leave your own human brain outside.
All illustrations were made today on OpenAI’s image and video creation service, Sora. By the way, that’s not me.
Have a look at other articles under the Writing and publishing section of this website.
