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Peter Freuchen (1886-1957) |
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Danish journalist, writer, and explorer, who established with Knud Rasmussen (1879-1933) the exploring station in Thule (1910). In addition to Arctic journeys, Peter Freuchen also visited South Africa in 1935. Freuchen has confessed in his book of memoirs, Min grønlandske ungdom (1936), that he never planned to become an Arctic explorer, although he had from childhood wanted to go to sea. As a writer-adventurer he belongs to the company of such great names as Henry Morton Stanley, T.E. Lawrence, and Thor Heyerdahl. "Nomads are always on the move—not because restlessness is their nature, but because living conditions drive them from place to place. The Arctic Eskimo must catch seals for meat and kamik skins and other things he needs. He must get walrus tusks in order to have flensing knives and harpoon points. He finds foxes at the mountains where the birds are too numerous to count. He goes north and he goes south. Thus it has been for so long that he no longer knows why he is moving." (Vagrant Viking: My Life and Adventures by Peter Freuchen, translated from the Danish by Johan Hambro, New York: Julian messner, 1953, p. 2) Peter Freuchen was born in Nykøbing, on the island of Falster, the
son of Lorentz Benzon Freuchen, a Danish Jew businessman,
and Anne Petrine Frederikke Rasmussen. Already at the age of eight
Freuchen had his own small rowboat, which his parents had bought for
him. Most his free time Freuchen spent on the open water – the somber Cathedral School and classical education in Latin did not
much interest him, but he felt more comfortable in the
company of sailors at the local harbor, listening to their stories from
distant countries. Among his childhood friends was Niels Bohr (1885-1962), who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. For
a time, Freuchen studied medicine
at the University of Copenhagen, without regarding the medical
profession as his his true calling – it was not exiting
enough. After making a good impression on the author, ethnologist, and
explorer Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, he was asked to join the Denmark
expedition to map the coast of northeastern
Greenland north of Kap Bismarck. His mother Frerikke said that he "was
doing the right thing." With an
examination in chemistry, Freuchen said good-bye to university life. In 1906, he sailed on the expedition ship Danmark to Iceland. Also aboard were two zoologist, a botanist, a
meteorologist, a physician, and two artists. The winter of 1907-1908 he
spent alone in Iceland's innerland making meteorological observations
at a tiny weather station and collecting specimens. The expedition
sailed for home in 1908. Its members received the Order of Merit from
King Frederick VIII. ('Freuchen, Peter' by Merill Distad, in Encyclopedia of the Arctic: Volume 1, edited by Mark Nuttall, New York: Routledge, 2005, pp. 682-683) From 1910 to 1924 Freuchen took part in several expeditions, often traveling with the famous Polar explorer Knut Rasmussen, a living legend of the era when polar exploration made international headlines. The First Thule Expedition started in April 1912. Freuchen, Rasmussen, and two Inughuit hunters, Inukitsoq and Uvdloriaq, set out with 35 sleds and 350 dogs to map the north coast of Greenland up to Peary Land. Freuchen sang Napoleon Marsch by Johann Strauss. Rasmussen's account of the expedition, Min Rejsedagbog: Skildringer fra den første Thule-Ekspedition (1915), remained popular reading for decades. (Mapping Ultima Thule: Representations of North Greenland in the Expedition Accounts of Knud Rasmussen by Agata Lubowicka, translated by Patrycja Poniatowska, Berlin: Peter Lang, 2020, pp. 151-154) Freuchen learned
to relish blue
green seagull eggs and year old whale blubber, use urine as a cleanser and wear heavy fur pants. These and other experiences he
later described in Vagrant Viking (1953) and I Sailed with Rasmussen
(1958). "Nothing draws men closer than to hunger together, to see death
in each other's eyes. I knew him as did no one else. Lying together in
snow huts during snowstorms of many days' duration, waiting for better
weather, and seeking to drown out hunger by each telling the other
everything he knows—then you pour out your life, and old memories
emerge in your mind. . . . That is how I know things about Knud
Rasmussen that no one else knows . . . " (I Sailed with Rasmussen by Peter Freuchen, New York, N..Y.: Julian Messner, 1958, p. 13) Upon returning to Denmark from the first journey, on which he
served as Rasmussen's navigator and cartographer, Freuchen wrote
articles for the newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad,
published serial stories in the magazine Familie-Journalen, and eventually earned his M.A. from the university.
With Knut Rasmussen he did lecture tours. While in Greenland he collected items for Danish museums. The Danish Government appointed him in 1913 Resident Governor of the colony at Thule, a post he held for seven years. A gifted linguist, he spoke several languages, and had no difficulties learning the Inuit dialect. During this period he lived with the Inuits (or Eskimos as he writes), and shared their way of life. Freuchen had a very negative opinion about Christian missionaries. "But a missionary—who is supposed to teach a little of everything—should be a man of great culture, general knowledge and sympathetic understanding. It is unfortunate that such a combination is rare among missionaries. Usually all it takes for them to secure appointments is a burning desire to preach about their God, and everything else be damned! . . . Usually they set to work on the question of sex. It is strange how sex has always interested the church." (Arctic Adventure: My Life in the Frozen North by Peter Freuchen, New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1955, p. 161) In
1911 Freuchen married Mekupaluk, an Inuit woman, who started to use the
name Navarana. They had a son, Mequsaq, and a daughter, Pipaluk. She followed him on some
of his later explorations. With Navarana he visited Copenhagen, too;
she was eager to see Freuchen's home land, but found it difficult
to understand why any woman would live in Denmark –
there are no seals or walruses and everybody must buy their food from a
shop. However, she was especially enthusiastic about ballet. Navarana
died in 1921 during an influenza epidemic and was
buried in Upernavik's old churchyard. Because Navarana was not
baptized – she wore both a crucifix and an old amulet, a ball of a
piece of drift timber – the local church refused to participate in the
burial and Freuchen himself undertook it. Recruited by Rasmussen, Freuchen accompanied him on the Fifth Thule Expedition (1921-1924), which explored and mapped the Canadian Arctic. After settling down in Denmark, Freuchen bought himself a little island, Enehøje. He also joined the Social democrats, contributed to the newspaper Politiken, headed a film company, and served as president of boxer's union in Denmark. In 1924 he married his old friend Magdalene Vang-Lauridsen, a margarine heiress; the marriage dissolved in 1944. "Unfortunately, I froze my left leg off, and that turned me into a writer," said Freuchen in an autobiographical piece. "And as I had started, I could never stop again." ('Freuchen, Peter,' in World Authors: 1900-1950: Volume Two, edited by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens, New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1996, p. 915) It was in 1926, when Freuchen got frostbite in his leg. He first amputated his own gangrenous toes with shears and a hammer – no anesthesia. The leg was operated by a doctor in Hudson Bay. Though Freuchen could not continue his full-time career as an explorer, he still continued journeying and pursued a succcesful career as a lecturer and writer. Grønland, land og folk, his first book, appeared in 1927. Storfanger, Freuchen's first novel, came out in the same year. Providing his stories with fascinating details, Freuchen claimed to have witnessed polar bears' covering their black noses with their paws while hunting their prey. The American anthropologist Ruth Benedict said of the novel Eskimo (1931) that it "is the best evidence so far given that novels of primitive people can be of ethnological importance. Freuchen has the story teller's gift, and a delight in the life he is depicting: beyond this, his story carries conviction of the fundamental authenticity of his portrayal of Eskimo character." (Review: Eskimo by Peter Freuchen, American Anthropologist, Vol. 34, No. 4, 1932, p. 721) Freuchen was again in Greenland in 1932 - this time he was hired by American Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios at $300 a week to assist in the semi-documentary Eskimo, based on his books Der Eskimo and Die Flucht ins Weisse Land.
Freuchen also acted in the
film, which depicted the life of an Inuit hunter and his family. He was
cast, uncredited, in the role of Ship Captain, who
rapes the hero's wife. Six feet seven inches tall, with a bushy
beard, and a peg leg, he was an
imposing figure. MGM kept the film in circulation for years but it did not make enough money to recoup its huge negative costs ‒ shot on location in Alaska, the crew had included 42 cameramen and technicians. Ultimately, Eskimo suffered $236,000 loss at the box office. In Hollywood, Freuchen became friends with Jean Harlow and Mae West. At the Berlin premier of the film, he lifted Hitler's favorite cinematographer Leni Riefenstahl playfully over his head. Many of Freuchen's stories portray cultural differences. Once he was
given walrus meat by Inuit hunters and when he thanked them, he was
laughed at by all: "You must not thank for your meat; it is your right
to get parts. In this country, nobody wishes to be dependent on others.
Therefore, there is nobody who gives or gets gifts, for thereby you
become dependent. With gifts you make slaves just as with whips you
make dogs." (Peter Freuchen's Book of the Eskimos, edited and with a preface by Dagmar Freuchen, Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1961, p. 154) Ivalu (1930, Ivalu, the Eskimo Wife), the novel which
Freuchen valued most, was a tribute to Navarana. Ivalu is an
Inuit girl, who hears stories of white men, and knows that they have a
great lust for women. She meets Karl Boesen, called Bosi. After the
death of Ivalu's husband, Mitserk, her new man Minik treats her badly.
Eventually Bosi takes her as his wife. "It makes fascinating reading if
you are interested in how other people live," wrote Fred T. Marsh in
his review of the book. "If the story of Ivalu has a sort of romantic
and unreal touch about it; if she seems, although not at all idealized,
somewhat unreal, the running narrative of the men and women of the
settlement, individually and collective, is wholly realistic and
consistently interesting." ('Eskimo Life; Ivalu: The Eskimo Wife' by Fred T. Marsh, The New York Times, November 24, 1935) Nordkaper (1929) tells a story of a polar whaling voyage and Hvid mand (1943) is a historical novel based on life in the Danish colony in Greenland in the early 1700s. On a lecture tour to the Balkans he was temporarily arrested in Germany, and his manuscripts and papers confiscated. "Thank God I have found some people who care that I am a Jew!" he said in a telegram to a friend. ('Peter Freuchen, a Resurrected Viking, is a Danish Jew by Birth.' JTA Jewish Telegraphic Agency, December 20, 1934) Upon the invitation of Russians, Freuchen went to Siberia, and wrote about his experiences in Sibiriske eventy (1939). On the way home his train rammed head into another in collision that demolished the locomotion and the four cars ahead of his. An outspoken anti-Nazi, Freuchen proposed a ban against Danish athletes taking part in the Olympic Games in Berlin. His speech about German concentration camps was noted by a cultural propagandist, who declared that there was not a single concentration camp in the country. As a result of Freuchen's stand, his books were banned and he was declared a "Jiidisher Schweinehund." During World War II, Freuchen worked for the Danish underground, sheltering refugees on his island farm. At Hitler's insistence, a warrant for his arrest was issued. Though he was captured by the Germans occupying his country and sentenced to death, Freuchen managed to flee by climbing over a barbed-wire fence. With the help of his friends, he was smuggled to Sweden in a fishing boat. After moving to the United States, Freuchen lived mostly in New York City, maintaining also a country home in Connecticut. His third wife, Dagmar Cohn, was a fashion illustrator. Freuchen was a member of the council of the Royal Danish Geographical Society and a fellow of the American Geographical Society. Among Freuchen's later, highly popular works is Book of the Seven Seas (1957). In Fangsmænd i Melville-bugten (1956) Freuchen described his family life, his hunting on whaling ships on the sea or hunting seals and polar bears on the coast. Freuchen also recorded stories which his Inuit friends told about their own adventures. White fishermen, explorers and trappers, who learned the hard way how to survive in the arctic surroundings, were a constant source of anecdotes for the natives. In
1955, Freuchen returned for the last time to Thule, where at that
time houses and paved streets had replaced the igloos and snow paths.
Freuchen's son, who could not endure European
life, went back to Greenland; Pipaluk was educated
in Denmark. Peter Freuchen died suddenly of a heart attack in Alaska, at Elmendorf Air Force Base, on
September 2, 1957, while carrying a heavy baggage up a loading ramp. His ashes were scattered from a plane over North Star Bay.
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