Peter Frechen.
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Peter Freuchen 1886 - 1957
Peter Freuchen of 444 E 57th St, in New York, New York County, New York United States was born on February 2, 1886 at Nykøbing Falster, Denmark, and died at age 71 years old on September 2, 1957 at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Anchorage County, AK. Peter Freuchen was buried in September 1957 at Ashes Scattered over Thule, Greenland. in Greenland.
Peter Freuchen
444 E 57th St, in New York, New York County, New York 10022, United States
February 2, 1886
Nykøbing Falster, Denmark
September 2, 1957
Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Anchorage County, Alaska, 99506, United States
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Peter Freuchen's History: 1886 - 1957
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Peter Freuchen Born Lorenz Peter Elfred Freuchen February 20, 1886 Nykøbing Falster, Denmark Died September 2, 1957 (aged 71) Anchorage, Alaska, US Nationality Danish Known for Arctic explorer, author, journalist, anthropologist. Spouse(s) Navarana (Mequpaluk) Magda Vang Lauridsen Dagmar Cohn Scientific career Fields Anthropologist Lorenz Peter Elfred Freuchen (February 20, 1886 – September 2, 1957) was a Danish explorer, author, journalist and anthropologist. He is notable for his role in Arctic exploration, namely the Thule Expeditions. Personal life Freuchen was born in Nykøbing Falster, Denmark, the son of Anne Petrine Frederikke (née Rasmussen; 1862–1945) and Lorentz Benzon Freuchen (1859–1927). His father was a businessman. Freuchen was baptized in the local church. He attended the University of Copenhagen where for a time he studied medicine. Freuchen was married three times. He was first married in 1911 to Navarana Mequpaluk (d. 1921), an Inuk woman who died in the Spanish Flu epidemic after bearing two children (a boy named Mequsaq Avataq Igimaqssusuktoranguapaluk (1916 - c. 1962) and a girl named Pipaluk Jette Tukuminguaq Kasaluk Palika Hager (1918–1999)). His second marriage was to Magdalene Vang Lauridsen (1881–1960), daughter of Johannes Peter Lauridsen (1847-1920), Danish businessman and director of Danmarks Nationalbank. The marriage started in 1924 and was dissolved in 1944. In 1945, he married Danish fashion illustrator, Dagmar Cohn (1907–1991). Freuchen's grandson, Peter Ittinuar, was the first Inuk in Canada to be elected as an MP, and represented the electoral district of Nunatsiaq in the House of Commons of Canada from 1979 to 1984. From 1926 to 1940, Freuchen owned the Danish island Enehoje on Nakskov Fjord. During this period he wrote several books and articles and entertained guests. Since 2000, the uninhabited island has been a part of Nakskov Vildtreservat, a wildlife reserve. At this time, Freuchen became heavily invested in socialism and anti-fascism. Career In 1906, he went on his first expedition to Greenland as a member of the Denmark expedition. Between 1910 and 1924, he undertook several expeditions, often with the noted Polar explorer Knud Rasmussen. He worked with Rasmussen in crossing the Greenland ice sheet. He spent many years in Thule, Greenland, living with the Polar Inuit. In 1935, Freuchen visited South Africa, and by the end of the decade, he had traveled to Siberia. In 1910, Knud Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen established the Thule Trading Station at Cape York (Uummannaq), Greenland, as a trading base. The name Thule was chosen because it was the most northerly trading post in the world, literally the "Ultima Thule". Thule Trading Station became the home base for a series of seven expeditions, known as the Thule Expeditions, between 1912 and 1933. The First Thule Expedition (1912, Rasmussen, Freuchen, Inukitsork and Uvdloriark) aimed to test Robert Peary's claim that a channel divided Peary Land from Greenland. They proved this was not the case in a 1,000 km (620 mi) journey across the inland ice that almost killed them. Clements Markham, president of the Royal Geographical Society, called the journey the "finest ever performed by dogs." Freuchen wrote personal accounts of this journey (and others) in Vagrant Viking (1953) and I Sailed with Rasmussen (1958). He states in Vagrant Viking that only one other dogsled trip across Greenland was ever successful. When he got stuck under an avalanche, he claims to have used his own feces to fashion a dagger with which he freed himself. While in Denmark, Freuchen and Rasmussen held a series of lectures about their expeditions and the Inuit culture. Freuchen's first wife, Mekupaluk, who took the name Navarana, accompanied him on several expeditions. When she died he wanted her buried in the old church graveyard in Upernavik. The church refused to perform the burial because Navarana was not baptized, so Freuchen buried her himself. Knud Rasmussen later used the name Navarana for the lead role in the movie Palos Brudefærd which was filmed in East Greenland in 1933. Freuchen strongly criticized the Christian church which sent missionaries among the Inuit without understanding their culture and traditions. When Freuchen returned to Denmark in the 1920s, he joined the Social Democrats and contributed with articles in the newspaper Politiken. From 1926 to 1932 he served as the editor-in-chief of a magazine, "Ude og Hjemme" owned by the family of his second wife. He was also the leader of a movie company. In 1932, Freuchen returned to Greenland. This time the expedition was financed by the American Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studios. He was also employed by the film industry as a consultant and scriptwriter, specializing in Arctic-related scripts, most notably MGM's Oscar-winning Eskimo/Mala The Magnificent starring Ray Mala, and featuring Freuchen as Ship Captain. In 1956, he won $64,000 on The $64,000 Question, an American TV quiz show on the subject "The Seven Seas". In 1938, he founded The Adventurer's Club of Denmark (Danish: Eventyrernes Klub), which still exists. They later honored his memory by planting an oak tree and creating an Eskimo cairn near the place where he left Denmark for Greenland in 1906. It is situated east of Langeliniebroen in central Copenhagen and not far from the statue of The Little Mermaid. During World War II, Freuchen was actively involved with the Danish resistance movement against the occupation by Nazi Germany despite having lost a leg to frostbite in 1926. He openly claimed to be Jewish whenever he witnessed anti-semitism. Freuchen was imprisoned by the Germans and was sentenced to death, but he managed to escape and flee to Sweden. In 1945 he married Danish-Jewish designer Dagmar Freuchen-Gale. As he related in Vagrant Viking, he was friends with the royal families of Scandinavia and other countries, and his movie work in New York City and Hollywood brought him into the 'royalty' of moving pictures and the political world of Washington, D.C. Later years Commemorative plaque on Freuchen's birthplace in Nykøbing Falster Freuchen and his wife Dagmar lived in New York City and maintained a second home in Noank, Connecticut. The preface of his last work, Book of the Seven Seas, is dated August 30, 1957, in Noank. He died of a heart attack three days later at the Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska. After his death, his ashes were scattered on the famous table-shaped Mount Dundas outside of Thule. Honours and awards Member, Royal Danish Geographical Society Fellow, American Geographical Society. 1921 - Hans Egede Medal from the Royal Danish Geographical Society Freuchen Land in Greenland was named after him and Navarana Fjord was named after his first wife.
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02/21886February 2, 1886BirthdateNykøbing Falster, DenmarkBirthplaceADVERTISEMENT BY
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Children: Mequsaq Avataq Igimaqssusuktoranguapaluk, Pipaluk Jette Tukuminguaq Kasaluk Palika Hager Spouse: Dagmar Cohn (m. 1945–1957), Magda Lauridsen (m. 1924–1944), Navarana Meqopaluk (m. 1911–1921)
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His father was a businessman and wanted nothing more than a stable life for his son. So, at his father’s behest, Freuchen enrolled at the University of Copenhagen and began to study medicine. However, before long Freuchen realized that life indoors was not for him. Where his father craved order and stability, Freuchen craved exploration and danger. So naturally, he dropped out of the University of Copenhagen and began a life of exploration. In 1906, he made his first expedition to Greenland. He and his friend Knud Rasmussen sailed from Denmark as far north as possible before leaving their ship and continuing by dogsled for over 600 miles. On their travels, they met and traded with the Inuit people while learning the language and accompanying them on hunting expeditions. The Inuit people hunted walruses, whales, seals, and even polar bears, but Freuchen found himself right at home. After all, his 6’7 stature made him uniquely qualified to handle taking down a polar bear, and before long he had made himself a coat out of a polar bear he’d killed himself. In 1910, Peter Freuchen and Rasmussen established a trading post, in Cape York, Greenland, naming it Thule. The name came from the term “Ultima Thule,” which to a medieval cartographer meant a place “beyond the borders of the known world.” The post would serve as a base for seven expeditions, known as the Thule Expeditions, that would take place between 1912 and 1933.
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ESKIMO - The Film 1933 Directed by W. S. Van Dyke Screenplay by John Lee Mahin Based on Der Eskimo (1927 book) and Die Flucht ins weisse Land (1929 book) by Peter Freuchen Produced by Hunt Stromberg W. S. Van Dyke Irving Thalberg Starring Ray Mala Cinematography Clyde De Vinna Edited by Conrad A. Nervig Music by William Axt Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Release dates November 14, 1933 (New York City) 1934 (U.S.) Running time 117 or 120 minutes Country United States Languages English and Inupiat Budget $935,000 Box office $1,312,000 Eskimo (also known as Mala the Magnificent and Eskimo Wife-Traders) is a 1933 American Pre-Code drama film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). It is based on the books Der Eskimo and Die Flucht ins weisse Land by Danish explorer and author Peter Freuchen. The film stars Ray Mala as Mala, Lulu Wong Wing as Mala's first wife Aba, Lotus Long as Mala's second wife Iva, Peter Freuchen as the Ship Captain, W. S. Van Dyke as Inspector White, and Joseph Sauers as Sergeant Hunt. Eskimo was the first feature film to be shot in a Native American language (Inupiat), although the AFI Catalog of Feature Films lists several earlier features shot in Alaska beginning in the later teens with The Barrier (1917), The Girl Alaska (1919), Back to God's Country (1919), and Heart of Alaska (1924). Eskimo documented many of the hunting and cultural practices of Native Alaskans. The production for the film was based at Teller, Alaska, where housing, storage facilities, a film laboratory, and other structures were built to house the cast, crew, and equipment. Eskimo was nicknamed "Camp Hollywood" with a crew that included 42 cameramen and technicians, six airplane pilots, and Emil Ottinger — a chef from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Numerous locations were used for filming, including Cape Lisburne in March 1933, Point Hope and Cape Serdtse-Kamen in April to July, and Herald Island in the Chukchi Sea in July. The film crew encountered difficulties recording native speech due to the "kh" sound of the native language. Altogether, pre-production, principal photography, and post-production took 17 months. The motion picture was well received by critics upon release on November 14, 1933, and received the first-ever Oscar for Best Film Editing. Plot Mala is a member of an unspecified Eskimo tribe living in Alaska. He has a wife, Aba, and two children. As he and the villagers welcome a hunter from another village, they hunt walrus, and celebrate. Mala learns of white traders at nearby Tjaranak Inlet. He desperately wants rifles, and Aba longs for sewing needles and other white men's goods. Mala and Aba travel by dog sled to the trading ship with their children, and encounter an old friend whose wife died about a month before. Mala offers his friend to have sex with a willing Aba, which comforts their friend, and they part ways contentedly. When they meet the white ship captain, he exchanges Mala's tanned animal skins for a rifle. The captain demands that Aba spend the night with him and gets her drunk, and has sex with her. Mala demands that the captain promise him that Aba will not be molested again. Mala and the Eskimos go bowhead whale hunting in wooden boats with harpoons, and an actual whale hunt and carcass butchering is depicted. After the successful hunt, two drunken white men kidnap Aba and the ship captain rapes her. Aba staggers away still drunk at dawn. The Captain's mate, disgusted by the captain's betrayal, is hunting seals. He mistakes Aba for an animal and kills her. Mala kills the ship's captain with a harpoon, mistakenly believing the captain shot his wife. He flees to his village. Lonely and needing someone to care for his children, Mala asks the hunter if his wife Iva can help with sewing hides. Mala still longs for Aba, and, though Iva moves in with him, their relationship is cold. The Eskimos go hunting caribou by stampeding the animals into a lake and shooting them with bow and arrow and spears. Mala is haunted by Aba's death, and after pouring out his grief through dance and prayer, he changes his name to Kripik. Kripik's attitude toward Iva softens dramatically, and they make love. The hunter whom Mala befriended decides to return to his village and gives Kripik his other wife in gratitude, who is delighted to live with Iva and Mala. Many years pass. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police[a] establish a post at Tjaranak, bringing law to the area. Several white men accuse the Eskimos of being savage and without morals and charge Mala with the murder of the ship's captain. Sergeant Hunt and Constable Balk try to find Mala and arrest him but nearly freeze to death in a blizzard. Kripik saves their lives and is hostile toward the men until Hunt explains that they do not want Kripik's wives. The Mounties believe Mala is dead, but Akat arrives in the village and unintentionally exposes Kripik. The Mounties convince Kripik to answer questions, and several months pass. Hunt and Balk give Kripik freedom, but Hunt learns about the horrors the white traders committed on the Eskimo. When the Eskimo village moves to new hunting rounds, Kripik's family stays behind. They starve, and Kripik learns of their plight. However, the rigid and rule-bound Inspector White has arrived at the RCMP outpost and demands that Kripik not be allowed to hunt and chains him at night. During the night, Kripik mangles his hand removing the shackles and escapes. He flees the post and heads for his family's old village. Hunt and Balk pursue him. Kripik kills his sled dogs for food. In a driving blizzard, Kripik is attacked and injured by a wolf, which he kills. He is rescued by his eldest son, Orsodikok. The Mounties arrive the next morning, and Kripik prevents Orsodikok from killing them. The Mounties say he must leave and never come back. Kripik departs on foot, but Iva goes with him. The Mounties pursue them across the ice, which is breaking up. Sergeant Hunt takes aim at Kripik with his rifle, but cannot shoot because Kripik had saved their lives. Kripik and Iva escape on an ice floe. Hunt tells Balk that the ice will take Kripik and Iva across the inlet, and both will be able to return to Orsodikok next spring. Cast Following is a list of the cast members: Ray Mala as Mala/Kripik Lulu Wong Wing as Aba Lotus Long as Iva Iris Yamaoka as the Second Wife Peter Freuchen as Ship Captain Edward Hearn as Captain's Mate W. S. Van Dyke as Inspector White Joseph Sauers as Sergeant Hunt Edgar Dearing as Constable Balk Born: February 2, 1886, Nykøbing Falster, Denmark Died: September 2, 1957, Elmendorf Air Force Base, Anchorage, AK Height: 6′ 7″ Children: Mequsaq Avataq Igimaqssusuktoranguapaluk, Pipaluk Jette Tukuminguaq Kasaluk Palika Hager Spouse: Dagmar Cohn (m. 1945–1957), Magda Lauridsen (m. 1924–1944), Navarana Meqopaluk (m. 1911–1921)
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09/21957September 2, 1957Death dateElmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Anchorage County, Alaska 99506, United StatesDied: September 2, 1957, Anchorage, AKCause of deathDeath locationADVERTISEMENT BY
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09/dd1957September 1957Funeral dateAshes Scattered over Thule, Greenland. in GreenlandBurial location
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Peter Freuchen: The Real Most Interesting Man In The World By Katie Serena | Checked By John Kuroski Published November 15, 2017 Updated June 4, 2021 Whether exploring the Arctic or fighting the Nazis, Peter Freuchen did it all. Peter Freuchen The shortlist of Peter Freuchen’s accomplishments includes escaping an ice cave armed with his bare hands and frozen feces, escaping a death warrant issued by Third Reich officers, and being the fifth person to win the jackpot on the game show The $64,000 Question. However, the life of adventurer/explorer/author/anthropologist Peter Freuchen can hardly be contained in a shortlist. Freuchen was born in Denmark in 1886. His father was a businessman and wanted nothing more than a stable life for his son. So, at his father’s behest, Freuchen enrolled at the University of Copenhagen and began to study medicine. However, before long Freuchen realized that life indoors was not for him. Where his father craved order and stability, Freuchen craved exploration and danger. So naturally, he dropped out of the University of Copenhagen and began a life of exploration. In 1906, he made his first expedition to Greenland. He and his friend Knud Rasmussen sailed from Denmark as far north as possible before leaving their ship and continuing by dogsled for over 600 miles. On their travels, they met and traded with the Inuit people while learning the language and accompanying them on hunting expeditions. The Inuit people hunted walruses, whales, seals, and even polar bears, but Freuchen found himself right at home. After all, his 6’7 stature made him uniquely qualified to handle taking down a polar bear, and before long he had made himself a coat out of a polar bear he’d killed himself. In 1910, Peter Freuchen and Rasmussen established a trading post, in Cape York, Greenland, naming it Thule. The name came from the term “Ultima Thule,” which to a medieval cartographer meant a place “beyond the borders of the known world.” The post would serve as a base for seven expeditions, known as the Thule Expeditions, that would take place between 1912 and 1933. Between 1910 and 1924, Freuchen lectured visitors to Thule on Inuit culture, and traveled around Greenland, exploring the previously unexplored Arctic. One of his first expeditions, part of the Thule Expeditions, was embarked upon to test a theory that claimed a channel divided Greenland and Peary Land. The expedition involved a 620-mile trek across the icy Greenland wasteland that culminated in Freuchen’s famous ice cave escape. During the trip, which Freuchen claimed in his autobiography Vagrant Viking was the first successful trip across Greenland, the crew got caught in a blizzard. Freuchen attempted to take cover under a dogsled, but ultimately found himself completely buried in snow that quickly turned to ice. At the time, he hadn’t been carrying his usual assortment of daggers and spears, so he was forced to improvise — he fashioned himself a dagger out of his own feces and dug himself out of the cave. Peter Freuchen with an Inuit man on one of the Thule expeditions. His improvisation continued when he returned to camp and found that his toes had become gangrenous and his leg had been taken over by frostbite. Doing what any hardened explorer would do, he amputated the gangrenous toes himself (sans anesthesia) and had his leg replaced with a peg. From time to time, Freuchen would return home to his native Denmark. In the late 1920s, he joined the Social Democrats movement and became a regular contributor to Politiken, a political newspaper. He also became the editor-in-chief of Ude of Hjemme, a magazine owned by the family of his second wife. He even became involved in the film industry, contributing to the Oscar-winning film Eskimo/Mala the Magnificent, which was based on a book written by him. During World War II, Peter Freuchen found himself in the center of political drama. Freuchen never tolerated discrimination of any kind, and any time he heard someone express anti-Semitic views, he would approach them and, in all his 6’7″ glory, claim to be Jewish. He was also actively involved with the Danish resistance and fought Nazi occupation in Denmark. In fact, he was so boldly anti-Nazi that Hitler himself saw him as a threat, and ordered him arrested and sentenced to death. Freuchen was arrested in France, but ultimately escaped the Nazis and fled to Sweden. During his busy and exciting lifetime, Peter Freuchen managed to settle down three times. First Wife Of Peter Freuchen Freuchen with his first wife. He met his first wife while living in Greenland with the Inuit people. In 1911, Freuchen married an Inuit woman named Mequpaluk and had two children with her, a son named Mequsaq Avataq Igimaqssusuktoranguapaluk and a daughter named Pipaluk Jette Tukuminguaq Kasaluk Palika Hager. After Mequpaluk succumbed to the Spanish Flu in 1921, Freuchen married a Danish woman named Magdalene Vang Lauridsen in 1924. Her father was the director of Denmark’s national bank and her family owned the Ude of Hjemme magazine that Freuchen would ultimately run. Freuchen and Lauridsen’s marriage would last 20 years before the pair split. In 1945, after fleeing the Third Reich, Freuchen met Danish-Jewish fashion illustrator Dagmar Cohn. The pair moved to New York City to escape Nazi persecution, where Cohn had a job working for Vogue. Portrait of Peter Freuchen After he moved to New York, Peter Freuchen joined the New York Explorer’s Club, where a painting of him still hangs on the wall amongst the taxidermied heads of exotic wildlife. He lived out the rest of his days in relative quiet (for him) and eventually passed away at the age of 71 in 1957, three days after completing his final book Book of the Seven Seas. His ashes were scattered over Thule, Greenland, where his life as an adventurer began.ADVERTISEMENT BYLooking for more information?
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12 Memories, Stories & Photos about Peter
Amanda S. Stevenson
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10/05/2021
Peter Frechen.
Explorer and Author.
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Not specified or unknown.
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Amanda S. Stevenson
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10/05/2021
Peter Freuchen.
Nazi-hating Freedom Fighter.
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Amanda S. Stevenson
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10/05/2021
Peter with his third wife.
Danish artist and designer.
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Amanda S. Stevenson
16.8k+ favorites
10/05/2021
Brave and strong explorer of Greenland.
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Amanda S. Stevenson
16.8k+ favorites
10/05/2021
Peter Freuchen.
Arctic Tough Guy.
My mother sat and read his books to us from cover to cover. We loved him. He moved to New York and had a heart attack climbing the subway stairs. But he died a few days later in Anchorage, Alaska!
My mother sat and read his books to us from cover to cover. We loved him. He moved to New York and had a heart attack climbing the subway stairs. But he died a few days later in Anchorage, Alaska!
Date & Place:
Not specified or unknown.
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