Peter Skyllberg: How Did He Survive in Snow-Bound Car for Two Months?

Peter Skyllberg, a Swedish man who was found in his snow-covered car in Northern Sweden claiming to have been there without food for two months, is facing a host of questions over his incredible survival story.

The 45-year-old was discovered in his trapped vehicle on Friday in temperatures of -22F, at the end of a road leading to a major highway in the town of Umea, police reported, according to the BBC. Yet mystery remains over just why Skyllberg apparently did not attempt to leave the car.

At least part of the perplexity looks to have been cleared up by a local gas station owner who has claimed that Skyllberg regularly came into his store and had been living in his car since last summer.

He drove here in his car, said Andreas Östensson, as reported by Britain's Telegraph.

Sometimes he filled the car and bought hot dogs, bread, cigarettes and coffee. He said that he lived in the forest and slept in the car. I got the impression that he had driven through all Sweden, then stopped here and told himself 'this is a good place, I will stay here.'

I knew he was a loner but that he could live in the car for such a long time is difficult to understand.

Skyllberg claims to have survived the ordeal merely by eating snow, according to local reporter Bertil Wallin.

Nothing else. He had food for one day and I think he had decided to stay with the car for some reason that no one knows why, he said, as reported by ABC in Australia.

No-one has missed him. At first I didn't believe it myself ... he was very, very weak when they found him, he continued.

Experts believe that one reason Skyllberg, who was said to be emaciated and barely able to speak when found, may have survived is that the air around his vehicle created an igloo effect.

In the car he had very warm clothes, he had a warm sleeping bag, and as the car was snowed under, that would have made it more like an igloo, said Dr Ulf Segerberg, the Chief Medical Officer at Norrland's University Hospital, in Umea, according to The Telegraph. Down below the snow, you would normally have a temperature of around zero.

Despite amazement at how someone could survive without food for such a long period of time, Segerberg claimed that this was theoretically possible.

Starvation for one month, anyone can tolerate that if they have water to drink. If you have body fat, you will survive even longer, although you end up looking like someone coming from a concentration camp.

As for what Skyllberg was doing living in his car in freezing temperatures in the first place, a former neighbor of his has said that Skyllberg had got into a lot of debt, according to the Telegraph.

Skyllberg, who continues to recover in hospital, has so far declined to elaborate on his death-defying story and has refused to accept any visitors, report the Telegraph.