Today on the pod, we'll be talking about non other than the enigmatic Peter Freuchen. What's that you say? Never heard of him? We hadn't either. Listen along with us as we cover his colorful life and just a handful of the crazier stories. Like the time he escaped the Nazis, or starred in an Oscar-winning movie, or perhaps the 30 books he wrote, and of course, don't forget about the poop knife.
Peter Freuchen (Pronounced FROY-kn). Peter Freuchen was born in Denmark in 1886. His father wanted him to have a stable career so he sent him to enroll in the University of Copenhagen. Freuchen soon dropped out of school so that he could sign on to any polar expedition that would have him.
In 1906, Freuchen (age 20) and Knud Rasmussen sailed from Denmark as far north as they could and then they continued with dogsleds for over 600 miles. They build relationships with the Inuits and learned how to hunt and speak their language. Fruechen even made himself a coat out of a polar bear he killed. He was 6’7” and weighed over 300 pounds.In 1910 Freuchen(24) and Rasmussen went on to establish and trading post in Cape York, Greenland that they named “Thule”(thoo-lay).
Freuchen lived in Thule for the next ten years and inadvertently became the world expert on the native peoples of Greenland. They used Thule as a base for seven more expeditions between 1912 and 1933. During one of these expeditions Freuchen was testing a theory that there was a channel that divided Greenland and Peary Land (a peninsula in NE Greenland) which was a plus mile trip across Greenland. During their journey, the crew was hit by a blizzard and Freuchen found himself entombed in ice after taking refuge under a dogsled. Since he had no tools on himself, he ended up fashioning a shiv out of his poop. Once it froze, he used it to hack his way out after 30 hours of being trapped.
He married an Inuit woman in 1911 named Navarana Mequapaluk and had a son and a daughter with her. Freuchen and Mequapaluk went on many expeditions together. She later died from the Spanish flu in 1921.
After his first wife died, Freuchen returned to Denmark and began his writing career, writing everything from books on Inuit culture to manly fiction stories and arctic exploration. One of which, Eskimo, a fictional story about an Inuit warrior living in the arctic, was turned into a movie in 1933, and Freuchen played the part of the villain. Even though he lived predominantly in Denmark during this point in his life, he still visited Greenland from time to time and continued on arctic expeditions as well as trips to Siberia and South Africa.
In Denmark he became a regular contributor to a political newspaper. During the second World War, he was such a vocal part of the Danish resistance that Hitler put out a hit on him. Apparently he had no qualms about announcing his jewish heritage any time he heard someone making antisemitic comments. He would walk over in his 330 pounds and over 6’7” and say, “I’m Jewish, what are you going to do about it?”. He was also known for hiding refugees and working to subvert Nazi operations in Denmark. After he was captured and sentenced, this giant with a peg-leg managed to escape to Sweden in 1945.
That same year (1945) Freuchen remarried a Danish fashion illustrator named Dagmar Cohn. Together they moved to the US where he worked on writing his many books, and she worked for Vogue.
In 1956, the year before he died at age 70, Freuchen went on the American game show, The $64,000 question and became the 5th person in the course of the show to win the $64k. He died of a heart attack in 1957, just three days after finishing his final book, “Book of the Seven Seas”. His ashes are scattered in Greenland.
thestoriesweforgot.com
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