Arctic Adventure

In 1910, Freuchen and his close friend, the famed arctic explorer Knud Rasmussen, founded a settlement and trading post among the Greenland Inuit at Thule, only 800 miles from the North Pole. Freuchen lived there for fifteen years, adopting native ways of life, and married an Inuit woman and had two children. He went on many expeditions, surviving frostbite, snow blindness, and starvation. In Arctic Adventure he writes of polar bear hunts, of meeting people who had resorted to cannibalism in times of famine, and of the moving experience of seeing the sun after three months of winter darkness. He writes about the Inuit with great respect and affection, describing their stoicism amidst hardship, their spiritual beliefs, their ingenious ways of surviving their harsh environment, their humor in the face of danger, and the social politics behind such customs as “wife-trading.” Freuchen’s warmth, wit, and tremendous literary ability make this book stand out from so many explorers’ tales; it is a rich human saga.