Peter Freuchen: The Most Ridiculous, Badass Explorer You’ve Never Heard Of
In the grand tradition of over-the-top adventurers who defied both death and common sense, few figures stand as tall—literally and metaphorically—as Peter Freuchen. This 6’7” Danish explorer, author, filmmaker, Nazi-resistor, and peg-legged legend lived a life so absurdly daring that if you saw it in a Hollywood movie, you’d dismiss it as completely unrealistic. He wore a polar bear (which he'd killed himself) fur coat that made him look like a villain from a Viking opera, rode a dogsled across Greenland for fun, killed a wolf with his bare hands, and once escaped an icy tomb using nothing but a knife he fashioned out of his own frozen shit.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Freuchen with his third wife. His coat is made from the fur of a polar bear that he killed himself.
The Man Who Walked Away From Civilisation (Literally)
Lorenc Peter Elfred Freuchen was born in Denmark in February 1886, and like most great adventurers, he quickly realised that civilised life was not for him. He studied medicine at the University of Copenhagen, one of the best schools in Denmark, but order and structure didn’t suit him. He was a massive troublemaker, constantly pushing boundaries. In his brilliantly titled autobiography, The Vagrant Viking, he casually mentioned that “the first victims of my hunter’s instincts were my early instructors.” Not exactly the kind of student destined for a quiet life as a doctor.
Instead, he buggered off and decided to explore the world’s most extreme environments. At 20, he joined forces with fellow explorer Knud Rasmussen, sailing as far north as humanly possible. But merely arriving in the Arctic wasn’t enough—Freuchen needed to conquer it. He and Rasmussen hopped onto a dogsled and proceeded to travel 600 miles across the frozen wastes of Greenland, for no other reason than curiosity. There were no maps. No satellite phones. Just two guys, a bunch of dogs, and the kind of reckless enthusiasm that would make modern survivalists weep.
During this trip, they met the Inuit, whose intelligence and resilience fascinated Freuchen. He didn’t just observe them—he fully integrated into their way of life. He learned their language, traded with them, adopted their hunting methods, and lived among them. In a series of hunting expeditions, he speared walruses, hunted whales, tracked wolves, and faced off against polar bears. At one point, he literally killed a wolf with his bare hands—because what else was he going to do, not win? If it had fur, Freuchen probably wrestled it. He even married an Inuit woman and had two children, giving them names that looked like someone angrily pounded a keyboard. (One of them, Mequsaq Avataq Igimaqssusuktoranguapaluk, went on to have a grandson who became the first Inuit member of Canadian Parliament, so clearly the survival instincts ran strong.)
That looks pretty cold
The Blizzard, the Poop Knife, and the Pliers Incident
Freuchen didn’t just visit Greenland—he thrived there. He returned in 1910 and set up a remote trading post called Thule, a name used in medieval cartography to describe lands beyond the known world. Thule was no place for the weak. The average temperature was -12°F, and winter meant a seemingly endless night of freezing darkness. There was no proper heating, no modern clothing, just furs, leather, and wool to keep warm. The cold was so intense that his breath froze to the inside of his cabin, forming a layer of ice so thick that the room kept shrinking.
And yet, Freuchen didn’t just survive—he made history. In 1912, on the First Thule Expedition, he set out to prove to the world that Greenland wasn’t separated from the North Pole by a river (yes, that was an actual debate at the time). This mission involved travelling 1,000 kilometres across the frozen ice cap, a feat that nearly killed both him and Rasmussen. They returned as national heroes, but Freuchen wasn’t done tempting fate.
Then came the incident—the one that cements his place as an Arctic legend. Trapped in a vicious blizzard, Freuchen found himself buried alive beneath a thick sheet of snow. The ice was packed so tightly around him that he couldn’t move. He was quite literally frozen in place, and as hours turned into thirty hours, his situation became increasingly dire. At this point, most men would have succumbed to frostbite and despair. But Peter Freuchen was not most men.
He realised he had one tool left: his own frozen faeces. With the same ingenuity that allowed early humans to invent fire, Freuchen molded his own shit into a knife and used it to carve himself out of the ice. That’s right—he shanked an avalanche with a frozen turd and crawled for three hours back to base.
As if that wasn’t enough, when he finally reached camp, he realised his toes had turned gangrenous. And because nothing about this man’s life was normal, he took a pair of pliers and amputated his own toes—without anaesthesia. Later, when his leg was amputated entirely, he just shrugged and carried on with a peg leg.
The Nazi-Punching, Oscar-Winning Years
After losing his wife to the Spanish Flu in 1921, Freuchen returned to Denmark, where he started writing for Politiken (a newspaper that still exists today). He wrote nearly 30 books, mostly on Inuit culture, Arctic survival, and what we can assume were the manliest adventure stories ever.
In 1933, one of his books was adapted into a Hollywood film called Eskimo. This wasn’t just any film—it was the first ever feature-length movie in the Inuit language. Freuchen wrote the story, translated the dialogue, helped the film crew survive, and even played the villain. The film won an Academy Award for Best Film Editing, and during its premiere, Freuchen casually picked up Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, spun her around, and laughed in her face.
His usual strategy for dealing with anti-Semitism involved standing up to his full 6’7” height, looking the offender dead in the eye, and declaring, “I’m Jewish. What are you going to do about it?” (For the record, he wasn’t actually Jewish, but it was a surefire way to pick a fight with the worst people imaginable.) But his disdain for Nazis didn’t end there. When the Germans took over Denmark, Freuchen was part of the Danish Resistance. He hid refugees, subverted Nazi operations, and pissed off Hitler so hard that the Germans arrested him and sentenced him to death. But if an Arctic blizzard couldn’t kill Peter Freuchen, the Third Reich sure as hell wasn’t going to. He escaped, fled to Sweden, and continued undermining the Nazis until the war ended.
The $64,000 Explorer
Even in his later years, Freuchen was as unstoppable as ever. He moved to New York City, married Dagmar Cohn, a Vogue fashion illustrator, and joined the New York Explorer’s Club, where his portrait still hangs today. He made friends with Mae West, bench-pressed Jean Harlow at a party, and in 1956, became the fifth person ever to win The $64,000 Question. The category? The Seven Seas. Big mistake—Freuchen knew everything.
He died of a heart attack in 1957, just three days after completing his final book. His ashes were scattered over Thule, Greenland—the land he loved, conquered, and quite literally carved his way through.
The Peter Freuchen Legend Lives On
Freuchen’s life reads like a collection of tall tales, except they’re all completely true. He strangled wolves, cut off his own toes, escaped the Nazis, and outsmarted nature at every turn. He wasn’t just an explorer—he was a force of nature himself. If ever there was a man too ridiculous for history to forget, it was Peter Freuchen.
