1. Lorenz Peter Elfred Freuchen was a Danish explorer, author, journalist and anthropologist.
14 Facts About Peter Freuchen
1. 2.
Peter Freuchen is notable for his role in Arctic exploration, namely the Thule Expeditions.
3.
Peter Freuchen attended the University of Copenhagen where for a time he studied medicine.
4.
Peter Freuchen worked with Rasmussen in crossing the Greenland ice sheet.
5.
Peter Freuchen spent many years in North Star Bay, Greenland, living with the Polar Inuit.
6.
In 1935, Peter Freuchen visited South Africa, and by the end of the decade, he had travelled to Siberia.
7.
In 1910, Knud Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen established the Thule Trading Station at North Star Bay in the Cape York district of Greenland, as a trading base.
8.
The church refused to perform the burial, because Navarana was not baptized, so Peter Freuchen buried her himself.
9.
Peter Freuchen strongly criticized the Christian church which sent missionaries among the Inuit without understanding their culture and traditions.
10.
When Peter Freuchen returned to Denmark in the 1920s, he joined the Social Democrats and contributed with articles in the newspaper Politiken.
11.
Peter Freuchen openly claimed to be Jewish whenever he witnessed anti-semitism.
12.
Peter Freuchen was imprisoned by the Germans and sentenced to death, but he managed to escape and flee to Sweden.
13.
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.
14.
Peter Freuchen died of a heart attack three days later at the Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska.