Wanderlust: An Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, a Lost Age

by Reid Mitenbuler

The mesmerizing, larger-than-life tale of an eccentric adventurer who traversed some of the greatest frontiers of the twentieth century, from uncharted Arctic wastelands to the underground resistance networks of World War II.

"An absolute joy...Wanderlust is a compelling introduction to one of the most charismatic explorers to ever cross the ice."—New York Times Book Review

Deep in the Arctic wilderness, Peter Freuchen awoke to find himself buried alive under the snow. During a sudden blizzard the night before, he had taken shelter underneath his dogsled and become trapped there while he slept. Now, as feeling drained from his body, he managed to claw a hole through the ice only to find himself in even greater his beard, wet with condensation from his struggling breath, had frozen to his sled runners and lashed his head in place, exposing it to icy winds that needed only a few minutes to kill him… But if Freuchen could escape that, he could escape anything.

Freuchen’s life seemed ripped from the pages of an adventure novel—and provided fodder for many books of his own. A wildly eccentric Dane with an out-of-nowhere sense of humor, his insatiable curiosity drove him from the twilight years of Arctic exploration to the Golden Age of Hollywood, and from the burgeoning field of climate research to the Danish underground during World War II. He conducted jaw-dropping expeditions, survived a Nazi prison camp, and overcame a devastating injury that robbed him of his foot and very nearly his life. Through it all, he was guided not only by restlessness but also by ideals that were remarkably ahead of his time, championing Indigenous communities, environmental stewardship, and starting conversations that continue today. 

Meticulously researched and grippingly written, Wanderlust is an unforgettable tale of daring and discovery, an inspiring portrait of restlessness and grit, and a powerful meditation on our relationship to the planet and our fellow human beings. Reid Mitenbuler’s exquisite book restores a heroic giant of the last century back into public view.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, History, Travel, Adventure, Audiobook, Biography Memoir

509 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 21, 2023

Reviews

[Brendan (History Nerds United) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a lot of Arctic/Antarctic literature. Every now and again, I wonder if I will get sick of these adventures. Honestly, sooner or later you can only read the word "pemmican" so many times before you lose your mind.

Then a book like Wanderlust by Reid Mitenbuler arrives and makes you feel like a fool for every doubting how exciting travel in extreme environments can be. Now, before you write this book off by saying this isn't your thing, I would like to point out a few things. Namely, the subject of the book, Peter Freuchen was the following things: Arctic explorer, writer, reporter, game show contestant, Danish resistance fighter, actor, and MacGyver in one of the grossest stories I have ever read in my life. Everyone likes at least one of those things.

Mitenbuler writes a book which feels effortlessly short while containing an increasingly insane amount of varied stories. And yet, I also felt like Mitenbuler could have easily written 1,000 pages on Freuchen and not gotten all of it in. The book is very well written, but even Mitenbuler would probably admit, once he chose Freuchen, the hard part was already over. It's great and you should read it, no matter who you are.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Mariner Books.)

[Lyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall positive, but lots of disappointment too.

First off, how about that cover? Not gonna lie, that’s what drew me in, I mean there’s this big polar bear of a man but his little wife steals the show with that bored look that says, take the picture already I’m hungry for lunch. That’s Peter Freuchen’s third wife Dagmar BTW.

This was all over the place. I mostly enjoyed his writing and I like the way he writes, he just wrote WAY too much. Freuchen, a Danish arctic explorer who gained notoriety for his Greenland adventures, was our subject and writer Reid Mitenbuler tells his clearly well researched story with wit and an eye for detail. The early Greenland explorations demonstrated some of his best writing, and Freuchen is an interesting man, but the later times writing in Hollywood and his later life were only OK.

And what is it with writers these days needing to virtue signal about every kind of social justice issue? I get wanting to tie in some social consciousness but damn, let’s move it along and don’t bog down the story with lots of commentary.

That’s my call: take out all the social commentary, cut it in half, and this is a much better book.

[Julianne Saratsis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, this book isn't for everyone. I borrowed a digital copy without realizing just how lengthy it was! That being said, this man's life was absolutely fascinating. I learned so much about Greenland and about the Danish perspective of the world in the 20th century. Not to mention, Peter F. is one of a kind. What an amazing life he led!

[Magen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Updated review now that Harper Collins Union has received a contract.

Fantastic! I’ve seen the picture on the book over so many times and wondered the story behind it and it’s certainly did not disappoint. This is a biography, so of course it’s full of facts and written in a certain way to give those facts. But! Between Reid Mitenbuler’s writing style and the subject himself, this reads as close to an adventure novel as a biography can get. I cannot recommend it enough. Peter Freuchen is a fascinating man who seems (and is) larger than life, completely unreal. I really enjoyed this book, truly an unforgettable reading experience!

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Eli - Bookworm & Vine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting story of a man from start to finish!

[Pooja Peravali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Freuchen first rose to prominence as an Arctic explorer in the early twentieth century, but during his long adventurous life he wore many other hats, becoming a best-selling author, working in Hollywood, and being imprisoned in a Nazi prison camp for being a member of the resistance.

I like exploration stories. They introduce you to an old world that no longer exists, they have the kinds of details that boggle the mind, and are usually populated with exactly the eccentric kinds of people you'd imagine enjoy traveling to the most challenging and remote places on the planet. As such, I was perfectly happy to settle down with this comprehensive biography of Peter Freuchen.

I'd never heard of Freuchen before, and as I began to read it became perfectly clear why - though he led a long and adventurous life, he often played second-fiddle on expeditions and things to better publicized explorers. Still, I became fond of his larger-than-life personality and commitment to his personal values. The author goes into depth about his personal life and relationships, showing how deeply he became entrenched in Greenland.

However, I did wish the author had grappled more with the negative aspects of Freuchen's life. While we spend plenty of time discussing his forward-thinking nature and positive points (of which there are plenty), any grey-shaded or negative aspects (how he did not raise his own children for long periods of time, his expectation that Inuit women during the filming of Eskimo should have been sexually receptive to him, etc.) were not really dug into or discussed, making me feel a bit robbed of a more well-rounded and therefore more interesting portrait of the man.

Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.

[Bon · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF at 50%, notes to self: not caring for the "story of one man" here, I think, because it has been a slog despite owning this on audible, lol. Will probably not return to.

[Rosann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reid Mitenbuler introduces us to Peter Freuchen, one of the last great Arctic explorers. Though this is not a name well known in the western hemisphere, Mitenbuler successfully paints the picture of a very much larger than life adventurer, a man who's life spanned the golden age of exploration through the early days of Hollywood-- and managed to somehow be a part of it all. He was in turns a technician/stoker on a ship heading to the Arctic, a founder of a Greenland trading station, an anthropologist, journalist, actor, writer, public speaker, a member of the Danish resistance, and early environmentalist.

Truly well researched, documented, and very entertaining, Peter Freuchen comes to life in the appropriately titled "Wanderlust".

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5*

[Apriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wild ride of a life! Freuchen is the most interesting man that I’ve never heard of before stumbling across this book. While I am an avid armchair polar explorer I’ve only read a few books on Greenland so I suppose that’s why I’ve never come across Freuchen until now. I want to read all of his books (and Dagmar’s cookbook) and watch Eskimo. He and Greenland are going to be my new reading obsession for a while.


Also how cool to see my alma mater and a prof from there mentioned in the “thank you” section!!

[[Jamie] · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I've learned anything from this book it's that Peter Freuchen is a restless man, and, that it really REALLY sucks to be a sled dog in the arctic.

I will admit that I skim read the last quarter of the book because it got kinda boring after Freuchen lost his leg and mainly stayed at home. But you cant blame the book for that, I mean the man lost his leg. Super cool how he resisted the Nazis with himself and his daughter being part of an underground resistance.

[Jared · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Peter Freuchen has lived nine lives, and it could be tempting to write about them all, about Peter as a traveler, as a lecturer, as a film actor, as an abstainer, as a politician, as a freedom fighter, as an associate, as a journalist, and as a writer.”

As Freuchen learned the hard way, things might look bad—your foot might be rotting off your body—but as long as you’re still breathing, the end remains to be written.

WHAT’S THIS BOOK ABOUT?
- The mesmerizing, larger-than-life tale of an eccentric adventurer who traversed some of the greatest frontiers of the twentieth century, from uncharted Arctic wastelands to the underground resistance networks of World War II.

Note: There is some interesting info in the book and I found most of it to be mildly interesting. The last chapters threw me for a loop, though. * Spoiler alert * Freuchen had lived a long life and gained celebrity by winning $64,000 Question. He then was about to take a trip to the North Pole (something he had not done before) and falls over dead while en route. It made me consider all kinds of questions.

FREUCHEN WINS $64,000 QUESTION
- Over several rounds, Freuchen correctly answered many other questions of this nature until . . . He managed to win the top prize! He was one of very few contestants ever to have done so.

- Peter Freuchen on $64,000 Question game show in 1956: https://youtu.be/cILSmxWowOg?si=5anJn...

- In 1956, $64,000 was roughly twenty times the average American’s yearly salary: a financial windfall that put to rest any of Freuchen’s previous money concerns—“

BECOMES A MINOR CELEBRITY
- The win changed many other aspects of Freuchen’s life as well. For the past several decades, he’d enjoyed a certain level of celebrity—enough to occasionally get recognized on the street, but not constantly. Now, everybody recognized him on the street, and he was frequently asked for his autograph.

- He was suddenly more famous than many of his explorer colleagues, but not because of his accomplishments in the field. Rather, he’d done well on an American game show sponsored by a makeup company. It almost seems unjust—being known for the lesser of your achievements—but maybe this was exactly how things should have been. The incident was all so random and yet so perfect, brimming with unexpected quirks and serendipity. It was, indeed, Freuchenian.

“HE WON THE LOTTERY AND DIED THE NEXT DAY”
- Then, he received a call from a television producer offering him another intriguing opportunity. It was his chance, finally, to see the North Pole. He almost certainly wouldn’t get another.

- On this trip, Freuchen would be joined by three of his old explorer friends, all of them senior members of a fading generation: Bernt Balchen, Donald MacMillan, and Sir Hubert Wilkins…this older group of explorers would make way for the clean-shaven astronauts with their wholesome buzz cuts, straight teeth, and perfect posture.

- Then he drank a cup of hot chocolate, as he always did to celebrate birthdays and special occasions.

- There’s little doubt that Freuchen was admiring this light as he entered his room. It was one of the last things he probably saw before he felt the sudden tightening in his chest…He wasn’t moving; he’d suffered a massive coronary, ending his life in an instant.

*** *** *** *** ***

NOT SURE WHAT HE WANTED TO DO IN LIFE
- When Freuchen dropped out of medical school, he decided that some form of life at sea was probably a better fit for him. He just needed to find the right opportunity.

HE STUMBLED INTO SOMETHING OF INTEREST
- Before long, he fell into the orbit of a comedy troupe planning to do a satirical play about the Danish explorer Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, who had recently led an Arctic expedition and was now touring Copenhagen giving lectures about the experience…Eventually, he hunted down the man’s address.

- Then he asked if Freuchen would like to join [his expedition]. The younger man said yes faster than saints pass through the gates of heaven.

WHY GO TO THE NORTH POLE?
- reaching the pole offered an accomplishment where success was measured not by climbing the corporate ladder but by showing indomitable will and courage.

- Some people also felt that polar exploration reasserted old-fashioned masculine qualities that modern life increasingly threatened: independence, strength, virility, power, sanctioned craziness.

- Arctic expeditions, by contrast, offered clean victory without a mess, national honor without international controversy.

ANOTHER WORLD
- Perhaps this is one of the reasons he liked the Arctic so much: it existed in its own bubble, in a different reality, separated from the rest of the world and its madness.

- The Fifth Thule Expedition was one of the last excursions of its kind to travel without wireless communications. Its members were entirely present in their surroundings, utterly self-reliant, and undistracted by the outside world.

FOUND SOMETHING THAT HE REALLY ENJOYED
- Freuchen’s mission [on his first expedition] was to camp next to it for a year and collect data from equipment scattered in the vicinity.

- “Maybe I’ll be dead in three days, but then one thing will be certain: I will have fought to the end and never sat back and twiddled my thumbs. But I don’t ever think I regretted, even for a second, that I went along on this expedition. I belong here. I am good at something here.” Challenges like this were one reason he’d wanted to visit the Arctic in the first place: to test his mettle, earn some bragging rights, and discover his endurance.

- “That night as I lay on my ledge I understood for the first time the earnestness of what I was doing. My life, as well as my friends’ lives, was endangered every moment of the day and night. I had merely admired explorers and their adventures before but had never understood the real significance of it all.”

ENTHUSIASM
- But despite their lack of physical stamina and coordination, all of them were enthusiastic about the mission.

SACRIFICE
- After the search party went through Brønlund’s clothing, they found Hagen’s maps, which Brønlund had carefully protected so the mission wouldn’t entirely have been in vain—a heavy price to pay for just a few maps…“I perished in 79° N. lat., under the hardships of the return journey over the inland ice in November. I reached this place under a waning moon, and cannot go on because of my frozen feet and the darkness.”

FREUCHEN AMPUTATED HIS OWN TOES DUE TO FROSTBITE
- But it was nonetheless clear that Peter’s toes, worn down to their nervy roots, were beyond repair. It was time to amputate them. Freuchen thought it best to perform the procedure himself.

- He gently pinched the first toe with the pliers and then swung the hammer down on top of them, hearing the bone snap before feeling an electric jolt of pain that “cut into every nerve of my body, an agony I cannot describe.”

- Once the damage was done, he sobbed deeply, “partly from pain, partly from self-pity.” For a man whose living was made on his feet—indeed, whose very identity involved feats of strength and stamina—the loss was significant, even existential. Freuchen had survived, but at what cost?

- “Your foot will have to come off,” Berntsen said—a grim assessment. “And I’d like to amputate part of the leg as well.”…The amputation that Berntsen was talking about posed much more of an existential dilemma than the loss of a few toes.

POSITIVITY
- Freuchen’s therapy included lessons in the power of positive thinking.

- At this moment, Freuchen had an epiphany. “I realized then that it would not be a missing leg that would hamper me, but myself if I let it be so,” he wrote. “It is not the handicap that counts but the man.” From this point on, his recovery quickened.

- He understood that the loss of his foot would impede travel to places like the Arctic, but he couldn’t wallow in self-pity. Besides, he had other ambitions, so why not pursue those instead?

MISSING FOOT ENDED UP SAVING HIS LIFE
- He might have stayed and died if his aching stump hadn’t forced him to leave early. After his amputation, he’d worried that not having a foot would end his adventure seeking. But in this case, his missing foot had saved his life.

LOVING THINGS FOR REASONS THAT AREN’T APPARENT TO OTHERS
- Despite Greenland’s challenges, something about the place had taken hold of him.

TROUBLE CONNECTING
- Nor did he connect with his classmates, who now struck him as inexperienced and untested. Most had never carved seal meat or raised a rifle against a hungry wolf, nor had any of them buried a man as good as Jørgen Brønlund.

- “I felt like a stranger when I encountered my old friends,” he wrote. “During the three years of my absence many of them had become learned men and women. I was proud of my strength, and of my ability to live for long stretches without food, but these things meant nothing to them.”

- “My place, I felt anew, was not here with people who could see through me, but up there . . . I longed to go back to Navarana and the cold North.”

OVERCOMING FEAR OF DEATH
- a euphoric feeling rushed through him: he realized he didn’t care about dying anymore. “If I killed the animal we would survive, if not we would die,” he later recalled. Oddly enough, this thought stopped his hands from shaking.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
- Now that he possessed what he had pined for, he realized he resented it a little.

INUIT
- The unforgiving nature of their environment had given them a special awareness for minutiae, a fine-tuned sensitivity to the vaguest flutters of change happening around them.

- “The actual need of an individual determines the price,” Freuchen wrote…In Europe and America, prices were set by the seller, whereas in northern Greenland they were set by the buyer, based on their need. The greater the need, the more the buyer insisted on paying, even if the seller wasn’t asking much.

- But Freuchen wanted to emphasize to outsiders that, even though the Inuit genuinely were some of the most cheerful people he’d ever met, their buoyant optimism was often a way of dealing with tremendous pain.

- While traveling with Cook, Ittukusuk had left his wife behind in Etah. After Peary arrived in the region, he hired her as a seamstress, then took her with him to the expedition outpost at Cape Columbia. While there, another young hunter told Peary he desired a wife, and Peary, for some unknown reason, gave him permission to marry Ittukusuk’s wife. In the patriarchal and polygamous culture of the Inuit, treating women like property certainly wasn’t uncommon, nor were marital arrangements like this one, but it certainly wasn’t Peary’s place to act as he did. As a result, Ittukusuk returned home to an empty hut.

- This was another trait he admired about these people: the way they rolled with the punches…It was an important lesson, to take things in stride.

- This decision to wander was how the Inuit, a nomadic people, often recovered from sadness. Freuchen explained his reasoning in a letter to his parents: “At least I have the remedy that is often applied by the polar Eskimos: to go far away to forget one’s sorrows.”

- This custom of savoring the long wait time before receiving good news was likely something he picked up from the Greenland Inuit.

- “As usual with the Eskimos, there were no farewells,”

IMPORTANCE OF VALUING OTHER CULTURES (AND YOUR OWN)
- Both men were sensitive to the impact of change—understanding that it came with perils as well as possibilities—and approached northern Greenland in the spirit of having a cultural exchange, ready to receive as well as to give.

- Navarana was wary of living in the south for so long. Her friend Eqariussaq had once told her: “When you go down to the white man’s country, be careful not to absorb too much of their spirit. If you do, it will cause you many tears, for you can never rid yourself of it.”

- There was genuine spiritual fulfillment to be gained from Christianity, but Freuchen didn’t like how some missionaries tried to ban certain Inuit cultural practices, forcing the Inuit to take those traditions underground.

- Yes, the First Thule Expedition had been unconventional, but plenty of better-organized expeditions had suffered fates much worse than theirs. The men defended their approach of doing things as the Inuit did them: living off the land, making do with as little as possible, and not being wasteful.

- The locals asked Freuchen why Thule should suffer because of a war happening so far away, but he didn’t have a good answer. The question demonstrated just how much their culture had changed because of the trading relationship. Ten years earlier, these people wouldn’t have missed anything coming from Europe, but now they did. Despite their best intentions, Freuchen and Rasmussen had helped create a dependency.

- “She was a finer and better person than anyone I have ever known, but the world saw her only as a little Eskimo girl who was to be looked down upon or ignored.”

- The line of questioning was insensitive, and Freuchen was told that his marriage to Navarana wasn’t real. This woman who had been so important to him was dismissed simply because she didn’t have a long trail of paperwork attached to her name.

- since the children had been born before 1921, the year the Thule District officially came under Danish control, the children technically didn’t have Danish nationality. This problem was resolved when Freuchen “adopted” his own children. It was a long and difficult process, and needlessly humiliating.

*** *** *** *** ***

GOOD QUOTES
- “What is it about the present that makes it so eager to judge the past? There is always a neuroticism to the present, which believes itself superior to the past but can’t quite get over a nagging anxiety that it might not be.”

- If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.—LAO TZU

- The chance and hazard of existence brings many surprises, and you soon learn to seize and enjoy what life offers. —KNUD RASMUSSEN, THE PEOPLE OF THE POLAR NORTH

- Peary then addressed his men, telling them exactly what to expect from this mission: “The only variation in the monotony being that it occasionally gets worse.”

- “When you stop to consider it, it is amazing how little one year matters.”

- “Before the arrival of children a man is seldom aware of the need for them. Afterward, he can scarcely credit life as holding any interest without them.”

- One is tired of living in the country, one moves to the city; one is tired of one’s native land, one travels abroad; one is europamüde, one goes to America, and so on; finally, one indulges in a dream of endless travel from star to star. —SØREN KIERKEGAARD, EITHER/OR (1843)

- “Those of us who go to the far corner of the earth cannot help but be God-conscious,” Wilkins said. “And when we travel in the lonely, desolate spaces of the polar regions we have time for contemplation. There we feel conscious of the greatness of God.”

FACTOIDS
- Norsemen settled in Greenland, they gave the island its lush-sounding name so that others would consider joining them. But the pleasant name was false advertising and many of the Norse had abandoned their settlements by the thirteenth century.

- Navigating this fractured terrain was particularly difficult because light becomes distorted this far north and warps one’s sense of distance and proportion: a point that seems ten miles away might actually be fifty miles away, while small objects can appear much larger than they really are.

- The name they chose instead, Thule, came from the ancient expression ultima Thule, which loosely translates to “north of everything and everybody.”

- American aviator Eugene Ely had become the first person to land an airplane on the deck of a ship, USS Pennsylvania,

- Sailors had long compared the color to that of drowned human corpses (the word narwhal actually comes from the Old Norse for “corpse” and “whale”).

- snow blindness, an age-old malady akin to having sunburn on the eye’s cornea. (He described it as “having red-hot knives stuck into my eyes.”) The condition was usually prevented by wearing dark goggles and sometimes treated using cocaine eyedrops,

- fata morgana, a type of mirage common in the high Arctic that occurs when temperature inversions (warm air over cold) distort an image beyond recognition, creating an impression of mountains or other objects that aren’t actually there.

- White Shadows in the South Seas (the first MGM film in which a roaring Leo the Lion introduces the studio’s logo).

- advertisements, and so forth—had started including more images of Santa Claus in a sleigh being pulled by reindeer, which were invariably depicted as cute and friendly. Once Americans started seeing the animals in this way—as cute and adorable—they suddenly stopped wanting to eat them.

- Denmark’s sale of the Danish West Indies to the United States, which subsequently named them the U.S. Virgin Islands. The U.S. had purchased them in 1917, for $ 25 million, to prevent the Germans from seizing them as a base for launching attacks on the Panama Canal.

- one of Nobel’s many pet projects was to engineer square-shaped trees that would create less lumberyard waste. Unfortunately, he’d poured a fortune into the effort but could never get it quite right—his experimental trees kept coming out with round trunks instead of square ones.

- Nobel’s reckoning came in 1888, after the death of his older brother, Ludvig. Several newspapers had accidentally published obituaries of Alfred instead, giving the younger brother a glimpse of how his legacy was set to go down in history. The headlines weren’t flattering—“The Merchant of Death Is Dead,” read one. Appalled at being remembered this way, Nobel decided to change his legacy…he decided to dedicate his entire fortune to promoting peace through a foundation named after him. A year later, in 1896, he died.

- (A scene in The Manchurian Candidate was later inspired by the American takeover of Greenland.)

HAHA
- Freuchen watched her walk over to the bed and pull a bucket out from beneath it. When the sharp ammonia smell hit his nostrils, he realized it was filled with human urine. Then she dipped her hair in the amber liquid and began scrubbing…he learned that the gesture was Arnarak’s attempt to prove her cleanliness and make a good impression.

- He was so starved for conversation that he gave names to his cooking utensils and started having lively discussions with them. Hello, Mr. Fork! Why hello, Mrs. Spoon!

- Yet another reduced Inuit culture to a simple tagline: “The strangest moral code on the face of the earth—men who share their wives but kill if one is stolen!” (One newspaper cleverly reversed this notion, writing, “Apparently the only thing the Eskimos have in common with Hollywood is wife-trading.”)

- the actress Mae West, whose sexually charged persona—she was famous for quips like “A hard man is good to find” and “I’ve been in more laps than a napkin”—

BONUS
- Short bio of Peter Freuchen: https://youtu.be/CoNt4BVNV-s?si=FqR8h...

- Explorers Club: https://youtu.be/nqbtisPyTdE?si=tv_AM...

- Kiviaq (bird fermented inside a seal): https://youtube.com/shorts/6APPzUwPIv...

- Artic vs Antarctic: https://youtu.be/Z5VRoGTF60s?si=p7hyu...

- Phantom limb of amputees: https://youtu.be/KdihphPp1Q0?si=sMjrB...

- Life at Thule Air Base in Greenland: https://youtu.be/op8Q2QIjRQo?si=X_0bM...

[Johan Larsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing, just loved every second of it

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be very interesting and the subject of the biogrpahy is just so incredibly likeable. It has inspired me to seek out more exploration narratives and now I really want to visit Greenland.

[Caryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a life! Just surprised I had never heard of him before. Well read in audio.

[Mrs. Danvers · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great explorer saga, a little repetitious here and there but a fun read.

[Cody · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF….i had my fill of Freuchens adventures at around page 260, I skimmed through another 100 pages but it all felt redundant. The more I read the more he seemed like a petulant child. I felt for his children and the women who were unlucky enough to be in his company.

[Nicholas Martens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this biography of Peter Freuchen because of the epic cover photo of a towering bear of a man draped in luxuriant furs, and I’m happy to report that the man himself does not disappoint. Arctic explorer, Hollywood journeyman, novelist, part of Denmark’s WWII resistance movement, meteorologist, zoologist, anthropologist, journalist, and overall decent dude – Freuchen is the very embodiment of a life lived to the fullest. Many of his associates ultimately left a bigger imprint on history (Paul Robeson, Alfred Wegener, Knud Rassmussen, Fridtjof Nansen, Robert Peary), but no one had nearly his breadth of experience, and practically no one the same force of personality.

Mitenbuler does yeoman work bringing together the many facets of a varied and adventurous life, but I generally think Freuchen deserved better at the hands of his biographer, who frequently undermined his subject with handwringing asides to fret over the disconnect between Freuchen’s own time and “modern audiences” (“later generations… would probably have trouble grasping the book’s appeal”; “... he occasionally used stylistic and word choices that seem antiquated today.”; “although later generations probably wince and the book’s now-outdated use of dialect…”; ). It’s perfectly reasonable and necessary for an author to provide context to better understand his subject’s milieu, but can’t I arrive at my own conclusions without Mitenbuler’s embarrassed editorializing?

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This biography shows Peter Freuchen as larger than life and a man before his time. Despite his dichotomy of interests, he was a polymath extraordinaire: an Artic explorer, hunter, writer, naturalist, anthropologist, meteorologist, movie star and even winner of the $64,000 Question. I greatly enjoyed this book and afterward, I looked up the movies made from his books and was entranced to glimpse a time that no longer exists. In the late 1940s, after the end of WWII, Freuchen was able to travel back to his beloved Greenland and was shocked by the changes in lifestyle that had occurred with the Inuit people. He warned of the climate change he saw and the magnitude of shifts that could occur in the world climate if nothing was done. I learned so much from this book as well as being entertained. It was as if I was reading the forerunner of comic book heroes or Saturday matinee serials.

[David Petersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an account of Peter Freikin (sp? I listened) a danish explorer, actor, writer, activist, game show contestant... Peter was a giant of a danish man who lived in the early 1900's. He started his "career" in Greenland as an explorer and shopkeeper where he lived among the inuit (eskimo) as one of them. Peter spoke many languages fluently including the inuit native tongue. He truly lived an eclectic life full of adventure, and travel. He lived through both World wars and was active in the Danish resistance during WW2. He was very outspoken through out his life which got him into trouble at times. He lost one of his feet to frostbite and wore a peg leg for decades. I really enjoyed this book and would have given it 5 stars but there were too many references to his sex life. Definitely worth the read.

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a man! When he died at the end (spoilers?), I was moved in a way I rarely am by biographies.

[Joseph Hamilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peter Feuchen (pronounced “Froy-ken” we are told on page 1) was born a little too late to fully participate in the heroic age of polar exploration. However, he did get in on the tail end of it but when his frostbitten foot was amputated he regretfully and somewhat belatedly relegated himself to the sidelines. That got me to about page 300 with about 130 pages left. I parted company with the book at that point because I felt his transition to Hollywood screenwriter must have been ignominious and reading about it would be, as they say, a colossal bummer.

(Regarding the amputated left foot, Feuchen acknowledged that it would have been entirely avoidable if he had exercised a little less machismo and a little more common sense. What would have been inexcusable would have been going on to lose the second one in the same way but arctic exploration has no place for the one legged explorer so that has never happened as far as I know, Captain Ahab being a conspicuous although fictional and somewhat dissimilar exception.)

The writing is excellent and the story flows smoothly but to call Freuchen an explorer, especially in the subtitle is a bit hyperbolic. Also, as the author points out, Freuchen decried the decline of native Eskimo culture while through his own actions and even presence in Greenland, like many of the heroes of the American West, contributed to and perhaps even accelerated that decline.

[Broken Lifeboat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-researched biography of Peter Freuchen, a Danish explorer of the Arctic, an adopted Inuit, author, playwright, actor, farmer, amputee, public speaker, early climate change alarmist, civil rights promoter, WWII resistance member and about 100 other things. This guy lived his life.

Some of the writing and choices by Mitenbuler make parts of this book a slog but it's worth hanging in there for a larger than life story of a larger than life man.

Not just a biography of Freuchen this is also a history of Greenland and the culture of the indigenous people living above the Arctic Circle.

[Devan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but a bit choppy at times.

[Ksiazkowa_dieta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Freuchen to najciekawszy człowiek na świecie. Koniec, kropka. I ja wcale nie przesadzam, bo jestem po przeczytaniu prawie sześciuset (600!!!) stron opisujących jego życie, a i tak mi mało! No i mam wrażenie, że jego późniejsze życie nie było aż tak dokładnie rozpisane 🦭❄️🧭

Peter z pochodzenia był Duńczykiem, miał zostać lekarzem, ale podczas studiów zrozumiał, że spokojne, powtarzalne życie nie jest dla niego i wtedy zaczęło się jego prawdziwe życie. Trafił pierwszy raz na Grenlandię i odkrył, że to jest jego dom 🦭❄️🧭

Kocham wszystko co związane jest ze śniegiem, a ten tytuł miałam na oku już od czasu zapowiedzi, chociaż wcześniej ani razu nie słyszałam o Peterze, co jest nieprawdopodobne, bo ten człowiek to legenda! 🦭❄️🧭

Żył jakieś 100 lat temu, ale już wtedy zaczynał mówić o zmianach klimatu, związanych z działalnością człowieka, sprzeciwiał się okrucieństwu wobec zwierząt (między innymi foie gras czy korridzie). Jasne, sam polował mieszkając na Grenlandii, ale widział różnice między polowaniem dla przeżycia, a krzywdą dla zabawy 🦭❄️🧭

Poślubił Inuitkę w czasach, gdy tych ludzi traktowano jak zwierzęta i przeprowadzano na nich eksperymenty, a potem dzięki książkom przybliżał ich życie codzienne i kulturę 🦭❄️🧭

I chociaż to biografia, zaufajcie mi, czyta się jak najlepszą przygodówkę w stylu Indiany Jonesa, tylko w zimnym klimacie, a strony same się przewracają, aż okazuje się, że to koniec 🦭❄️🧭

Jestem totalnie zakochana zarówno w postaci Petera, jak i samej książce, która jest jednym z moich ulubieńców roku (tak, wiem, wiem, mamy kwiecień) - będę wam ją polecać bardzo często, bo naprawdę warto 🦭❄️🧭

[Ivy Cote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! What a fascinating life!
This book is a detailed account of the life of a man who went from Arctic explorer to WWII resistance fighter to game show winner!
There are some nonfiction books I would recommend to “Fiction-only” readers, but this would not be one of them. It did drag in areas and it definitely read like a biography, but for all those fellow history readers out there this is a good one!

[Alice Ewing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Someday they’re going to let me visit the Arctic too…

Very interesting guy and cool book. Well written and very detailed. It does read like a biography, (as in, you can’t get so caught up in the story that you forget you’re reading nonfiction) but that’s what it is!

Got sent a free book to review from a Goodreads giveaway!

[alexis! · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5!

just another reason why the carlos museum bookstore is my favorite place ever

i'm not one for biographies but this was really interesting! the book got seriously bogged down in the second half, but there was a lot to learn here

[Alicja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Część poświęcona Grenlandii była zdecydowanie bardziej wciągająca niż relacje z Danii czy USA, co wynika prawdopodobnie z faktu, że Grenlandia jest dla mnie bardziej egzotyczna, a moja wiedza o Europie i Stanach Zjednoczonych w tamtym okresie jest szersza. Wspaniale byłoby móc zobaczyć Freuchena na jednym z jego charyzmatycznych wykładów podróżniczych!

[Austin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man, that was a good one