If you ever wanted to meet the real-life Most Interesting Man In The World, Peter Freuchen might honestly have been your best bet. This week, let’s delve into some more Arctic exploration, and discover why this Danish explorer is unquestionably one of the coolest people to ever walk this earth.

Peter Freuchen

Born: February 2, 1886, Nykøbing Falster, Denmark

Died: September 2, 1957, Anchorage, Alaska

Occupation: Explorer, adventurer, author, political resistance leader, actor, game show winner

As almost all of us know, the Vikings were some fucking fearsome people, sailing, raiding and warring their way all across the north Atlantic; they settled Greenland, kicked the shit out of the English for many centuries, and gave us an awesome pantheon of pagan gods to worship, if that’s your thing. Thus, it’s no surprise that their descendents have continued to be pretty awesome, even into modern history. Let’s talk a little more about the living legend that was Peter Freuchen.

• Peter Freuchen was born in Denmark, and while a smart man, decided that school wasn’t for him after disliking the rigor that comes with studying medicine; he dropped out of school, and in 1906 headed north to Greenland. He spent a ton of time with the native Inuit, learning the language and customs, and later marrying his first wife, Navarana Mequpaluk, in 1911. He had two kids with her; his grandson, Peter Freuchen Ittinuar, became the first Canadian Inuk to be elected as a Member of Parliament, from 1979-1984, representing Nunatsiaq (now Nunavut).
• He stood 6’7″, was around about 300 pounds, and had a gigantic beard to go along with his intimidating stature.

• In 1910, he set out with his good friend and fellow adventure Knud Rasmussen to head extremely far north; they ended up establishing the Thule trading post on Cape York, on the western coast of Greenland. This small trading post grew into a village, and later, a United States Air Force base.

• In 1912, he and Rasmussen set out to prove that the North Pole was not, in fact, separated from Greenland by a river, as previously asserted by Admiral Robert Peary. They headed over six hundred miles north, via dogsled, and almost died multiple times on the trip, but upon their return home to Denmark, with their travels proving them right, the pair were hailed as national heroes. This was the first of seven expeditions north from Thule between 1912 and 1933.
• Freuchen also went on expeditions to South Africa and Siberia during the 1930s as well.
• On subsequent Arctic expeditions, things were not any easier.
  • In 1926, Freuchen got caught in a blizzard, and had to find shelter underneath an overturned dogsled; completely snowed in, he was trapped for more than thirty hours in an air pocket essentially the size of a coffin.
  • With quite literally zero other options to turn to, Freuchen took some of his own frozen shit, fashioned it into a dagger, and clawed his way out of the tiny space to freedom. Seriously.
  • Upon reaching safety, after crawling over the snow for three hours, and with hypothermia setting in, Freuchen amputated his own gangrenous toes by himself. With no anesthesia.
  • Freuchen lost his left leg to frostbite sustained from this expedition, and he had it replaced with a peg leg. This still didn’t stop him from returning to Greenland.
• Freuchen’s first wife died of the Spanish flu pandemic in 1921, and he returned home to Denmark for a while. When back in Denmark, he became a prodigious author, and over the course of his lifetime wrote over thirty books, including a mixture of novels, short stories, and autobiographical accounts of his world travels.
• In 1924, he married his second wife, Magdalene Vang Lauridsen, a wealthy margarine heiress, and they had their own massive estate on a private island. Her parents liked Freuchen so much that made him the editor-in-chief of Ude og Hjemme, a Danish weekly magazine still in print today, which he worked at from 1926 to 1932. He also joined the Social Democrats party during this time in Denmark, and served as a regular contributor to Politiken, a Danish newspaper about politics. While marrying into wealth, his own books still sold extremely well, and so he became wealthy in his own right as a result of his writing.
• In 1933, Freuchen filmed, directed, and acted in a movie, Eskimo (also known as Mala the Magnificent), in Alaska, which was adapted off of a book he wrote himself about live amongst the Inuit. The scenes involving actors cast as Inuit were shot in Inupiat (the language of Alaskan Inuit), and in addition to being the writer, director, and villain of the film, he was also the on-set translator and interpreter for the language used throughout, as it was very close to the language of Greenlandic, in which Freuchen was already fluent.

• When World War II broke out, Freuchen, who was Jewish, was an active leader of Nazi resistance in Denmark. He was later arrested by the Gestapo and later sentenced to death, but escaped prison and fled to Sweden, where he continued to lead Nazi resistance during the war. His work in both Denmark and Sweden, as well as the status he gained thanks to his marriage into a wealthy family, meant he became good friends with many royal families of Scandinavia.
• In 1944, Freuchen’s second marriage ended, and he left Europe for New York, where he married Danish-Jewish fashion designer & illustrator Dagmar Cohn in 1945. They split time between the city and a second home in Noanck, CT; he enjoyed rubbing shoulders with Hollywood producers & stars and American politicians alike. In 1956, he became just the fifth person to win The $64,000 Question, the pre-eminent game show of the era; the topic of the show was “The Seven Seas”. A poor choice, if you were a studio executive looking to hold onto your money… (His appearance on the show starts around 5 minutes into this clip).

• Freuchen died of a heart attack on September 2nd, 1957 while on an expedition in Anchorage, Alaska; he was 71 years old. His ashes were scattered over Thule, Greenland a few days later.

What a life. What a man. His autobiography is entitled The Vagrant Viking, and rarely have I ever heard a book title more perfect than that one.

This is a man who grabbed life by the throat, and choke-slammed it into submission. I’d say he’d have some incredible drinking stories, but since the man never drank… it’s his only knock on him. Regardless, Peter Freuchen is without a doubt one of the biggest badasses to ever live, ever.