Description

The first full-scale biography of the visionary explorer and ethnographer who opened up the culture, the language, and the life of the Arctic.

Knud Rasmussen stands among those famous for revealing hitherto impenetrable worlds-T. E. Lawrence and Wilfred Thesiger in the Middle East, and Richard Burton in Africa. Part Danish and part Greenlandic, Rasmussen is renowned not only for his bravery, joyous sense of adventure and the beauty of his writing, but also for his priceless collection and interpretation of Inuit songs, stories and mythology.

As comfortable in bear-skin pants under the northern lights as in a tuxedo at the theatre in Copenhagen, Rasmussen undertook some of the most astounding feats of endurance in the annals of polar exploration. He travelled without the elaborate preparations and large teams employed by other explorers, surviving with only a few Inuit assistants and by living off the land.

Rasmussen's crowning achievement, made famous as the Fifth Thule Expedition, was a three-year, 20,000 mile odyssey by dog sled from Greenland to Alaska to reveal the common origins of all circumpolar peoples. Lovers of extreme adventure, remote cultures, and timeless legend will relish this gripping biography by the writer who has been called "Canada's Simon Winchester."