Before snow machines, the internet and global warming. One chapter for each month of the year,from Peter Freuchen Danish explorer, author, journalist and anthropologist. A remarkable man, he wrote several books.
“A famous Arctic explorer and an eminent Danish ornithologist have collaborated to produce a most unusual month-by-month account of how life goes on in the Far North. By tracing the exquisitely adjusted, intergrated relationships that hold climate and currents and living creatures, permafrost and plants, in balance, the authors have documented the great design of arctic ecology and shown how profoundly it is tied to the rest of the world.”
“In 1910, Knud Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen established the Thule Trading Station at Cape York (Uummannaq), Greenland, as a trading base. The name Thule was chosen because it was the most northerly trading post in the world, literally the “Ultima Thule“. Thule Trading Station became the home base for a series of seven expeditions, known as the Thule Expeditions, between 1912 and 1933.
The First Thule Expedition (1912, Rasmussen and Freuchen) aimed to test Robert Peary‘s claim that a channel divided Peary Land from Greenland. They proved this was not the case in a remarkable 1,000 km (620 mi) journey across the inland ice that almost killed them. Clements Markham, president of the Royal Geographical Society, called the journey the “finest ever performed by dogs.” Freuchen wrote personal accounts of this journey (and others) in ‘Vagrant Viking’ (1953) and ‘I Sailed with Rasmussen’ (1958). He states in ‘Vagrant Viking’ that only one other dogsled trip across Greenland was ever successful.”