←More about me

👋 Hello internet, I’m Thor!

I’m a 20-something he/him dude living in Helsinki. Here’s a little more about me.

If you just want to contact me, click here. If you only care about my professional story, well, here you go! There’s something for everybody.

🔨 The Name

First things first. About my name: yes. It directly refers to the almighty god. Indirectly, it is an apt wordplay from my dad on one of his favorite comic book series: Thorgal (Thor Galle, Thorgal, get it?). I hold no grudge, it’s a great series.

🇧🇪 The Formative Years

Thorgal is also a Belgian series, which brings me to my second point: I have lived most of my 20-something years in Leuven, Belgium. I grew up there happily, went to a fun Freinet primary school (no homework!), a proper Catholic high school (homework!), and finally, a world-renowned university for my bachelors’ in Computer Science.

All that in the same small, cozy medieval university town. Thus, when graduating from my bachelor’s in 2018, I felt the urge to expand my horizons.

🇫🇮🇸🇪 The Nordic Years

I left my dear Belgium, 2500 km by bike, to pursue an European master’s program in Human-Computer Interaction & Design, at EIT Digital.

My studies brought me to Aalto University near Helsinki (Finland) for a year, and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (Sweden) for another.

In the summer of 2019 I interned at Columbia Road in Helsinki, a digital sales consultancy. I liked the job and stayed on, taking the job with me to Stockholm, where they had just opened a new office. I lived and worked in Stockholm two years (more about that work here).

I have now moved back to Helsinki for reasons of ❤️, where I’m working as freelance developer and designer via my firm BitHarmony.

🧶 Hobbies

I like to read regularly, which I do online on Readup, or by reading and listening to books.

I find languages fascinating. I’m currently fluent in Dutch (native) and English (actually, I seem to be gradually losing my Dutch 🙀). I’m also able to hold a decent conversation in Swedish and French. I enjoy hacking on language-learning technology, so I was lucky to be able to do my master’s thesis on this topic, at Språkkraft.

I have an obsession for personal data (management). I created a visualization of all movies I’ve watched since 2015, but I think we could collectively do much more interesting things with our personal data. In 2020 I gave a talk about getting your personal data from big tech & doing something with it. This ties in closely with a strong interest in productivity apps and knowledge management tools. Also, my Notion is nuts.

🤾‍♂️ Sports

I enjoy being active, but as someone who also enjoys sitting in front of a computer; there’s always the goal of being more active.

🧗🏼‍♂️ In my teens have dabbled many years with wall climbing and bouldering. This resurged in Sweden last year by dint of living next to a climbing gym. The practice never turned very serious however; so I’m stuck at a ~6c grade. Bouldering can be an super fun form of social problem solving, away from the computer.

🏃🏼‍♂️ I’m running regularly for all the good reasons. No races yet, though my first half marathon seems to be approaching. Also, I’m in no hurry here.

🚴‍♀️ A very Belgian thing to do: road cycling. I miss the days where I’d zoom through the fields of Flanders. I’ve also done my fair share of tour cycling, the most intrepid one being a one-month, 2500km trip that took me from Leuven to Helsinki in 2018. A different beast entirely, but a glorious one. Here’s a collection of Instagram posts from then.

⚽️ Football! Also a very Belgian thing to do, but I would have never guessed I’d do it. Only the last years have I joined in with colleagues to kick a ball every now and then. I even got a cheap pair of football shoes! It’s fun.

There, now I shouldn’t be a total stranger anymore! Feel free to poke around further on this site, or get in touch. You can find me in the comments on Readup, or intermittently on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can reach me at thorgalle <at> gmail.com. (thor <at> readup.com for Readup-related matters).