Peter Freuchen

Lorenz Peter Elfred Freuchen was born on February 20, 1886, in Nykøbing Falster. Abandoning medical school, he joined Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen's 1906 Greenland expedition and developed an enduring devotion to the High North and the Polar Inuit.

In 1910, Freuchen and Knud Rasmussen established the Thule Trading Station at Cape York, Greenland, serving as its governor for a decade and participating in epic dog-sledge crossings of the Greenland ice sheet. Standing 6 feet 7 inches tall with a wooden leg after surviving an Arctic blizzard, Freuchen wrote best-selling memoirs like Vagrant Viking and won the Oscar-winning film adaptation of his novel Eskimo.