Famous Danish explorer Peter Freuchen (1886-1957) lived an epic life of adventures ranging from exploring the frozen Arctic to fighting the German war machine of World War II. In Vagrant Viking he chronicles his exploits from Copenhagen to Siberia to Hollywood.
Together with fellow polar explorer Knud Rasmussen, Freuchen established the Greenland trading station of Thule, and spent many years living amongst the indigenous people of the region. During World War II Freuchen served in occupied Denmark's anti-Nazi underground and survived being imprisoned and sentenced to death by the Germans. His subsequent life of countless travels and adventure took him from the United Nations to Hollywood, where he mixed with notables on the world stage, movie stars, and beauty queens.
During all these years, Freuchen wrote, leaving a body of work that includes both fiction and memoirs, all rich with an experienced storyteller's sense of action, romance, and dry wit. He authored Book of the Eskimos and other fascinating works about exploring and living in the amazing world of the Arctic. All of his works portray a person determined to live life to the fullest, and at that he succeeded with extraordinary spirit and courage.
This book is also available from Echo Point Books as a hardcover (ISBN 1648372686).
Shortly after his death in 1957, The New York Times obituary of Peter Freuchen noted that except for Richard E. Byrd, and despite his foreign beginnings, Freuchen was perhaps better known to more people in the United States than any other explorer of our time. During his lifetime Freuchen's remarkable adventures, related in his books, magazine articles, and films, made him a legend. In 1910, Freuchen and his friend and business partner, Knud Rasmussen, the renowned polar explorer, founded Thule-a Greenland Inuit trading post and village only 800 miles from the North Pole.
Freuchen lived in Thule for fifteen years, adopting ways of its natives. He married an Inuit woman, and together they had two children. Freuchen went on many expeditions, quite a few of which he barely survived, suffering frostbite, snow blindness, and starvation. Near the North Pole there is no such thing as an easy and safe outing.
In Arctic Adventure Freuchen writes of polar bear hunts, of meeting Eskimos who had resorted to cannibalism during a severe famine, and of the thrill of seeing the sun after three months of winter darkness. Trained as a journalist before he headed north, Freuchen is a fine writer and great storyteller (he won an Oscar for his feature film script of Eskimo). He writes about the Inuit with genuine respect and affection, describing their stoicism amidst hardship, their spiritual beliefs, their ingenious methods of surviving their harsh environment, their humor and joy in the face of danger and difficulties, and the social politics behind such customs as wife-trading. While his experiences make this book a pageturner, Freuchen's warmth, self-deprecating wit, writing skill and anthropological observations make this book a literary stand out.
For a more durable Echo Point Hardcover edition please search ISBN 162654929X.
Famous Danish explorer Peter Freuchen (1886-1957) lived an epic life of adventures ranging from exploring the frozen Arctic to fighting the German war machine of World War II. In Vagrant Viking he chronicles his exploits from Copenhagen to Siberia to Hollywood.
Together with fellow polar explorer Knud Rasmussen, Freuchen established the Greenland trading station of Thule, and spent many years living amongst the indigenous people of the region. During World War II Freuchen served in occupied Denmark's anti-Nazi underground and survived being imprisoned and sentenced to death by the Germans. His subsequent life of countless travels and adventure took him from the United Nations to Hollywood, where he mixed with notables on the world stage, movie stars, and beauty queens.
During all these years, Freuchen wrote, leaving a body of work that includes both fiction and memoirs, all rich with an experienced storyteller's sense of action, romance, and dry wit. He authored Book of the Eskimos and other fascinating works about exploring and living in the amazing world of the Arctic. All of his works portray a person determined to live life to the fullest, and at that he succeeded with extraordinary spirit and courage.
This book is also available from Echo Point Books as a paperback (ISBN 1648372694).
Shortly after his death in 1957, The New York Times obituary of Peter Freuchen noted that except for Richard E. Byrd, and despite his foreign beginnings, Freuchen was perhaps better known to more people in the United States than any other explorer of our time. During his lifetime, Freuchen's remarkable adventures related in his books, magazine articles, and films, made him a legend. In 1910, Freuchen, along with his friend and business partner, Knud Rasmussen, the renowned polar explorer, founded Thule-a Greenland Inuit trading post and village only 800 miles from the North Pole.
Freuchen lived in Thule for fifteen years, adopting the ways of the natives. He married an Inuit woman, and together they had two children. Freuchen went on many expeditions, quite a few of which he barely survived, suffering frostbite, snow blindness, and starvation. Near the North Pole there is no such thing as an easy and safe outing.
In Arctic Adventure Freuchen writes of polar bear hunts, of meeting Eskimos who had resorted to cannibalism during a severe famine, and of the thrill of seeing the sun after three months of winter darkness. Trained as a journalist before he headed north, Freuchen is a fine writer and great storyteller (he won an Oscar for his feature film script of Eskimo). He writes about the Inuit with genuine respect and affection, describing their stoicism amidst hardship, their spiritual beliefs, their ingenious methods of surviving in a harsh environment, their humor and joy in the face of danger and difficulties, and the social politics behind such customs as wife-trading. While his experiences make this book a page-turner, Freuchen's warmth, self-deprecating wit, writing skill and anthropological observations make this book a literary stand out.
Throughout history, few cultures have seemed more mysterious than the native hunter-gatherer societies of the far north. These nomadic people often thrived in unforgiving conditions on frozen, treeless terrain above the Arctic Circle, where mere survival was an everyday challenge. Known among themselves simply as the People, the Inuit men and women that Europeans called Eskimos existed for centuries in harmony with the unforgiving natural world around them; when times were good they prospered on natural bounties, and when times were bad they overcame the bleakest of conditions just to make it through.
Prior to their contact with many other Europeans in the early twentieth century, Danish explorer Peter Freuchen befriended and lived among the Inuit in Greenland. He studied their language and ways of life firsthand, eventually marrying and having children with an Inuit woman there. Since they were a people with no written language, Freuchen's captivating observations offered the rest of the world some of the earliest eyewitness accounts of Eskimo lifestyle. Before his account was published, Western writers often romanticized the life of the Inuit; where others pictured a near-mythological life of hardship in an inhospitable landscape of icy bleakness, Freuchen revealed the tapestry of a rich and storied culture set in a world of raw beauty.
Examining pre-westernized Inuit societies in Greenland, northern Canada, and Alaska, Freuchen's Book of the Eskimos is a rare and uniquely personal portrait of the indigenous people of the Arctic. Brimming with fascinating information, color, humor, and warmth, this classic chronicle of the everyday lives and customs of these resourceful communities and families offers a completely engaging immersion into a foreign land and an excellent introduction to the tenacious people living at the top of the world.
This book is also available from Echo Point Books as a hardcover (ISBN 1648372708).
In Arctic Adventure he writes of seal and polar bear hunts; surviving starvation; meeting people who'd resorted to cannibalism; and of the moving experience of seeing the sun after three months of winter darkness. Freuchen's warmth, wit, and literary relent make this book stand out; it is a rich human saga.