• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

NORDIC EXPLORERS Danish Explorer Peter Freuchen Navigates the Cultural Divide By John Bechtel to dense darkness with only the sounds of the wolves pacing outside his door. Freelance culture and travel writer Later Peter learned a number of the others on the expedition, including the eter Freuchen was a child of leader Mylius, had not survived. Nor privilege from the village of could he have known at the time that Nykøbing, on the Danish island the loss of life was unnecessary and ofP Falster. His father, Lorentz Freuchen, could have been prevented with better was a Danish Jewish businessman who judgment and preparation. Peter was spent a lot of time in South America. learning how fragile life was in the When he came home it was an event. Arctic; one moment you were talking He wanted his son to continue the to someone and the next moment they family tradition of learning, stability, were gone—forever. and financial success. By the time • he was eight years old, Peter knew Back to school he loved the sea and had his own Peter’s father was waiting for him, small boat. In adolescence he was and back to medical school he went, to expected to go to university, perhaps follow the career path expected of him. • But it was no use; the dean advised business or medicine or another of Village of Nykøbing, • his father that Peter needed to look in the professions held in high esteem in Freuchen’s boyhood different directions. With his head full his society. Unfortunately Peter found home on Falster Island. of recent memories of the uncharted the stories of sailors coming off their Falster Island Below: Peter Freuchen frozen deserts of Greenland, Peter went ships to be of far more interest, stories • Nykøbing at various seasons of to London to study surveying, a skill he of faraway places, strange people and his adventurous life. knew he would need when he returned unimaginable customs. to Greenland. stoker on a whaling ship. He arrived just Peter started college, but at the first years Peter’s solitary assignment was This time he hooked up with Knud in time to be accepted as an assistant opportunity he bolted. When he didn’t to man a tiny weather station 113 Rasmussen, and the two of them show up for breakfast one morning, meteorologist on the ill-fated Mylius- kilometers (70 miles) distant from his became fast and lifelong friends. At 6 ft. his mother found an empty bedroom. Erichsen expedition to northeast closest neighbor. The weather ranged 7 in. (2.04 meters) tall, Peter was a full Peter was on his way to Greenland as a Greenland. It was 1907, and for two from blinding whiteness and high winds foot taller than Rasmussen. (Continued on page 00) Copenhagen’s June 24,1906 “Illustret Tidende” [Illustrated Journal] displaying members of the upcoming Mylius-Erichsen expedition. Left: Arctic expedition leader Mylius-Erichsen, who died in Greenland. Photo of young Peter Freuchen, on top row, second from right. Arctic explorer Knud Radmussen. O SPRING- 2018 | SCANDINAVIAN PRESS SCANDINAVIAN PRESS | SPRING 2018 O Left: Ummannaq, Greenland, home of the Thule Trading Station where In 1910, Rasmussen and friend Rasmussen and Fruechen were Peter Freuchen established the business partners. Thule Trading Station at Cape Peter, above right, managed the station York (Uummannaq), Greenland, from 1910 to 1919. as a trading base. From there, they launched a series of seven (Continued from page 00) gorgeous Inuit woman named Arnarak, expeditions, known as the Thule They became business partners so beautiful she had been painted by a Expeditions, beginning in 1912. in the Thule Trading Station (today famous Danish artist, and her portrait The First Expedition aimed to test called Ummannaq), the northernmost has since graced the walls of a German Robert Peary’s claim that a channel human habitation on the planet. The museum. Arnarak had finally accepted divided Peary Land from Greenland. word Thule derives from “ultima thule”, to go dancing with Peter, and she Freuchen and Rasmussen proved which means north of everywhere and invited him to her hut while she got this was not the case. everybody. Peter managed that station ready. He describes how she removed Clements Markham, president until 1919, collecting items for Danish the ribbon that held her long black hair of the Royal Geographic Society, museums back home. in place, and how it fell down around called the journey the “finest ever From 1910 to 1924, Peter Fruechen her shoulder, and she told him in performed by dogs”. went on a series of expeditions, some sign language that she wanted to do a Freuchen wrote personal of them lasting for years. Peter was well Knud explained to Peter that mothers special job on her hair to go out with a accounts of this journey (and along in his education about crossing would nurse their sons until they got man such as him. His words: “She bent the cultural divide. He had learned others) in Vagrant Viking (1953) and married because to do so proves the forward and let her marvelous black from Knud Rasmussen, who was half I Sailed with Rasmussen (1958). mothers are still young and vigorous. hair fall to the floor. I felt weak from Danish and half Inuit himself, and The moment she can no longer nurse love and my sailor’s heart was bursting from the other Inuit, how to survive in her son she is considered old. with pride—all this beauty was for me.” the harsh environment, and the tough An obsession with maintaining a Sex or sewing? rarely gave permission for his choices that would make softer men Arnarak then followed an old youthful appearance is certainly not Greenland custom, went to her bed A hundred years ago, there wife to sew for another man. cringe. He had learned how to hunt and limited to the Inuit. We simply have was a strict sexual code among Sex was to give pleasure, but eat seal meat, how to clothe himself and pulled out from under it a pail different ways of expressing similar the Inuit; but there was no moral footwear in the Arctic was with animal skins to survive the sub- filled to the brim with human urine, desires. offense in a man letting his wife closely tied to survival. zero climate, and how to outwit fellow which the Inuit use for tanning hides Peter learned to first ask predators trying to survive. You loved and for cleaning. She carefully let her give sexual pleasure to other your dogs but you would eat your dog Everything gets cleaner dark long hair into the pail and gave it men, as long as the husband permission of the husband if survival depended on it. with ammonia a good shampooing, and then wrung grants permission. In fact it was for his wife to sew his In time, Peter gained great it out, “with my love ebbing faster considered flattering if others kamik, and when granted, Staying young acceptance with the Inuit, even being than the tide in the English Channel. found a wife desirable. But to reward him. The husband One day when he was in mixed given the respect of a medicine man. All that was left, as we set off for the sewing a man’s shoes or socks— would always respond company in a small boat, a 14-year old Like his friend Knud, he had a great dance, were my self-control, my good well that was entirely different. indirectly, in a passive boy pulled alongside in his kayak, and sense of humor and an openness to manners, and the odors from her It was considered worse for a voice: “A straight piece of leaned toward his mother in Peter’s the Inuit culture that often got him proud coiffure.” He then phlegmatically woman to sew for another man wood might be used for a boat. She immediately pulled up her special treatment. In his autobiography, concluded “In the end the ammonia than to sleep with him without harpoon.” anorak and began breast feeding him. Vagrant Viking, he describes this proved stronger than love.” her husband’s consent. A man (Continued on page 00) O SPRING- 2018 | SCANDINAVIAN PRESS SCANDINAVIAN PRESS | SPRING 2018 O (Continued from page 00) Polygamy, sharing, and jealousy On one of Peter’s expeditions, he came across an Eskimo friend who was just returning from a hunt with his two wives. He asked Peter and his group to stay overnight in his igloo, and he generously offered Peter one of his women for the night. That was a gesture of hospitality that could not be turned down, but it did cause trouble. During the night the man woke Peter Greenland Inuit family relax during a reindeer hunt. up and said the other wife was insulted They began this expedition because she had not also been offered, on April 19, 1912, with 54 and so Peter was obliged to extend his dogs to return 5 months stay another night. later with only 8 dogs. There is a semi-celebrity buried at Their 1,000 kilometer (621 Upernavik Cemetery in Greenland. Cuisine mile) journey across the Peter Freuchen’s wife Navarana, as Gestures of gratitude and friendship Greenland ice cap almost she was called, became ill and died were not to be taken lightly, and small killed both of them. Besides here. Since she was Inuit and not things could make survival differences. checking on Peary the two baptized in the Christian church the An Inuit guide named Kratalik was so Danes were also looking for local priest would not perform the a lost Danish expedition led grateful that Peter accepted his pleading funeral service or bury her.

Load more

  5

Copy Link