Transcript

1.16.26 · History Hour

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Speaker 1: Hello and welcome. This is Radio Wise History Show and
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I'm your host and reader for today, Joseph Bolt, so
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glad to be with you for this time. And before
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we begin today's program, I just want to remind you
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that RADIOI is listener driven and that means that we
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welcome your comments and suggestions about what we're doing. So
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we really value what you have to say and think,
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and if you have any thoughts about it, call us
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please at eight five nine four two two six three
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nine zero and let us know what they are. Radio
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I is a reading service intended for people who are
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blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult to
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read printed material. I'll cite the sources for my subject
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material as we go along, so let's get started. I
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ran across some articles about the country of Greenland, which
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I didn't know much about and maybe you do. But
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I thought maybe we'd kind of go over a little
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chapter of Greenland's history by speaking about a particular gentleman
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who explored that by the name of Peter Frukin. So
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let me read these articles and see if we can
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learn something. The short list of Peter Frucin's accomplishments include
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escaping an ice cave, armed with his bare hands and
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frozen feces, escaping a death warrant issued by the Third
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Reich Officers, and winning the top prize on the game
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show The sixty four thousand dollars Questions. However, the life
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of adventurer, explorer, author, an anthropologist Peter Frukin can hardly
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be contained on a short list. Frukin's life wasn't exactly
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like a single Hollywood film. It could have been an
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entire franchise. An early expedition to Greenland in his younger
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years ignited a passion for Arctic exploration and a fascination
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with Inuit culture, which eventually inspired his writing and filmmaking.
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By the late nineteen fifties, Frucin had penned more than
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thirty books, starred in a movie that he wrote, gone
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on several major Arctic expeditions, joined the Danish resistance against
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the Nazis, lost the foot to frostbite, and became a
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national celebrity. To say he lived life to the fullest, frankly,
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would be an understatement. Peter Frucin was born on February
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the twentieth, eighteen eighty six, in Nukobing Foster in Denmark.
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His father was a businessman and wanted nothing more than
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a stable life or his son. As Peter was growing up,
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he was always fascinated by sailing and traveling. He would
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often vault class to the sea to listen to stories
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of sailors who had made notable explorations. When Peter reached
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college age, his father enrolled the young Freakin at the
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University of Copenhagen to study medicine. But before long Frukin
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realized that a life outdoors was, or rather indoors, was
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not for him. Where his father needed order and stability,
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Brucan craved exploration and danger. In nineteen o six he
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made his first expedition to Greenland. He and his friend
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Canoed Rasmussen sailed from Denmark as far north as possible
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before leaving their ship and continuing by dog sled for
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over six hundred miles. It was a treacherous journey during
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which Frucin and Rasmussen came across the Inuit people. The
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two explorers were deeply interested in the indigenous culture. They
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stayed with the Inuit for a time, learning their language
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and accompanying them on hunting expedition. The Inuit people hunted
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Walrus's whales, seals, and even at times polar bears. Frucan
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found himself right at home. After all, his impressive six
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foot seven inch stature made him uniquely qualified to handle
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taking down a beast of any size, and before long
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he had made himself a coat out of a polar
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bear that he killed himself. In nineteen ten, Peter Frucin
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and Rasmussen established the Tully Trading Post in northwest Greenland.
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The name came from the term ultima tuli, which, to
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a medieval crytographer, meant a place quote beyond the borders
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of the known world end quote. Shortly after, in nineteen eleven,
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Frukin married an Inuit woman named Mechu Poluk. They had
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two children together, a son and a daughter. Tragically, Mechu
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Paloch died in the Spanish flu epidemic in nineteen twenty one.
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The post meanwhile served as a base for the seven
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subsequent Tuli expeditions that took place between nineteen twelve and
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nineteen thirty three. It was during the fifth of these
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trips Frucan's days of adventure came to an end. Between
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nineteen ten and nineteen twenty four, Frucan lectured visitors to
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Tully on Inuit culture and traveled around Greenland, charting the
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previously unexplored Arctic. In nineteen twelve, he set out on
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the first Touley Expedition to determine whether or not Greenland
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and Perryland, a peninsula on the north of the island,
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were truly connected. He also took part in the Fifth
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Tully Expedition, which began in nineteen twenty one and aimed
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to travel across the Northwest Passage from Canada to Siberia,
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all the while documenting Inuit culture. In his autobiography Vagrant Viking,
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Fruquen wrote of a day in spring of nineteen twenty
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three when he set out on his own to retrieve
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supplies his team had previously dumped. To travel through an
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area of deep snow, He got caught in a storm
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and dug himself a small hole in the snow to
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escape the elements. He fell asleep, and when he woke
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up he'd been covered by a snow drift and was trapped.
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He had no tools with which to free himself, and
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the snow above him had frozen into ice, so he
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couldn't simply use his hands. Then he remembered how dog
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fecees freezes solid in the snow and had an idea.
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He's quoted as saying, I moved my bowels, and from
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the excrement I managed to fashion a chisel like instrument,
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which I left to freeze. At last, I decided to
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try my chisel, and it worked very gently, very slowly.
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I worked at the hole, but his harrowing journey was
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not yet over. When Frukin finally returned to camp, after
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crawling for three hours, he found that his left foot
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was frostbitten, a feeling that he described as the most
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agonizing of pains. When his toes became gangliness, he decided
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to do something about it. He wrote in Vagrant Viking quote,
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I got hold of a pair of pincers, fitted the
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jaws around one of my toes, and hit the handle
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with a heavy hammer. Perhaps one could get used to
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cutting off toes, but there were not enough of them
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to get sufficient practice. End quote. Although he'd removed his toes,
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his foot continued to cause him pain, and he ultimately
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had to have it amputated and a wooden leg put
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in its place. After this, he returned to Denmark, where
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he became involved in a different type of adventure altogether.
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In Denmark, Frukin joined the Social Democrats movement. He also
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became a regular contributor to Politiquan, a political newspaper. He
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also got involved in the film industry as a writer
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and consultant for films related to the Arctic. One of
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these movies, Eskimo Mala the Magnificent, was based on Frukin's writings,
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and he even appeared in it as a ship captain. Notably,
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Eskimo was the first feature film to be shot in
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a native American language, and it went on to win
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an Oscar for Best Film Editing. In nineteen thirty eight,
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Frucin one in, wanting to share his passion for adventure,
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founded the Adventurers Club of Denmark, an organization that still
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exists today. Of course, the onset of World War II
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one year later meant that exploring the world would have
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to wait. Frukin was ready to fight back against the Nazis.
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He was also actively involved with the Danish resistance movement
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and fought against the Nazi occupation of Denmark. In fact,
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he was so boldly anti Nazi that he was arrested
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by the Gestapo. However, he ultimately escaped and fled to Sweden.
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After the war, he moved to the United States with
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his third wife, designer Dagmar Khan. From the US, the
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explorer continued to take an interest in Greenland, which was
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formal decolonized in nineteen fifty three, but remained part of
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the Danish Kingdom under a rule which was still quite
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colonial in practice, if not formally in the meantime. However,
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the location of Frucan's old trading post, Tully, was to
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be the site of one of the darker chapters of
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Danish colonial history in Greenland, namely the forcible removal of
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people of Umanak to Connach one hundred and thirty kilometers
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north to make way for the American Tully Air Base.
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In nineteen ninety nine, the Danish government issued an official
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apology for the forced relocation. While living in the United States,
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Frucin continued his writing, and in nineteen fifty six he
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won the top prize on the American TV quiz show
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The sixty four thousand Dollars Question, thanks to his extensive
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knowledge of the world's oceans. In nineteen fifty seven, radio
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and t V producer Lowell Thomas asked Frucin to travel
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to Tully and the North Pole with two other former
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Arctic explorers for a TV series. He accepted gladly, but
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never completed the trip. On their way, the participants and
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crew stopped over in Anchorage, Alaska, where Frukin died of
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a heart attack on September the second, nineteen fifty seven,
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at the age of seventy one. His ashes were scattered
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on Mount Dundas in Greenland, fulfilling his final wish to
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permanently rest in the place that had come to define
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his extraordinary life. Oh by the way, remember that we
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read that Frucin had founded the Adventurer's Club of Denmark.
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Well to this day, the initiation ceremony for any new
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member of that club features a knocking sound said to
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be coming from Frukin's wooden leg. Sources for that story
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came from the website Historydefine dot net. The Extraordinary Life
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of Explorer Peter Frukin written by Miranda Leer with no
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date and All That's Interesting dot com. The Remarkable life
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of Peterfrucin, from his dangerous Greenland expeditions to his fight
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against the Nazis. This was written by Katie Serena and
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edited by Kara Johnson in May of twenty twenty five,
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and Arctic Relations dot info entitled Peter Frukin, the Colonial
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Adventure and his Legacy written by Eben b Jornsen, a
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PhD in history from the University of Copenhagen. She is
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the curator at the Steinsfort Cold War Museum in Denmark.
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The next article I like to read comes from the
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website history dot com. Why did the Vikings Disappear from Greenland?
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And This was written by Jesse Greenspan and last updated
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was May of twenty twenty five. For several centuries, Viking
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settlers eked out a living on Greenland, tending pasture land,
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hunting walruses, and constructing stone buildings that still stand today.
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Sometime in the fifteenth century, however, their civilization collapsed and
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all the Vikings either died or fled. Those researchers that
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pieced together numerous clues about their disappearance, including sea level rise, drought,
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a cooling, climate disease, environmental degradation, conflicts with the Inuit,
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and economic disruption. No one yet really knows exactly why
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it all happened. A continuous Viking presence on Greenland first
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dates to around a d. Nine eighty five, when, according
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to the medieval Icelandic sagas, Eric the Red landed there
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at the head of a large fleet after he was
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temporarily banished from Iceland for killing two men in a
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neighborly feud. Covered by a vast ice sheet, most of Greenland,
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named by Eric in a possibly disingenuous attempt to lure
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over many settlers, was uninhabitable, yet, where lush meadows existed
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largely inside sheltered fiords. The Vikings, also known as the Noors,
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established two outposts, an eastern settlement at the southern Tipothy
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Island and a smaller western settlement about two hundred and
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forty miles away. In addition to raising goats, sheep and
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some cows, the Nors hunted seals, caribou, walrus, and other prey,
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and built houses and churches out of sod and stone. Eventually,
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the eastern settlement grew to include some five hundred farm
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sites clustered around twelve major churches, explains Marissa Berrigrine, a
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graduate student of Earth and Planetary sciences at Harvard University
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and the lead author of an April twenty twenty three
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paper on the Viking Collapse. Even so, the settlements were
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never very populous. Researchers once thought that at their peak,
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roughly five thousand Norris resided on Greenland, but more recent
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estimates have cut that figured in nearly in half. At
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any rate, the civilization was in decline by the late
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thirteen hundreds, when the Western settlement apparently winked out. The
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Eastern settlement held on a bit longer, as indicated by
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a wedding recorded by scribes that took place there in
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fourteen o eight, but by around fourteen fifty, archaeological evidence
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suggests everyone it either died or sailed off. Their fate
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remained unknown outside of England until seventeen twenty one, when
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arriving missionaries found no Vikings, only their ruins. Ever since,
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the scholars have pondered their mysterious demise, which, akin to
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the collapse of the Maya or Anastasi, has prompted myriad theories.
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The climate, for one thing, likely played a role. At
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first the Norse occupied Greenland during the so called medieval
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warm period, when pastureland would have been in relative abundance,
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conditions were really favorable Boragine sys Also the European market
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for walrus ivory crashed, replaced in part by higher quality
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elephant ivory from Africa. Suddenly the Norris had little of
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value to trade with Mainland Europe, a particular blow since
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the search for more walruses following the exterirpation of Iceland's
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walas population. They have been what led them to Greenland
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in the first place. In the old days, we used
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to think that this was about some Arctic farmers dabbling
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in walace hunting, says Thomas McGovern, a professor of anthropology
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at Hunter College in New York City who has been
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studying Greenland Norris for nearly a half a century. But
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he goes on to say, but that's just about backwards.
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They were commercial walrus hunters, supporting themselves with some agriculture.
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McGovern points out that they risk weeks long sailing trips
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across hundreds of miles of treacherous seas to reach the
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walrus hunting grounds, even during the height of their farm's
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growing season. Already struggling to maintain ties with Mainland Europe,
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the Black Death of the mid thirteen hundred sealed their isolation.
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It's unknown whether the plague reached Greenland, but had certainly
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devastated the Norris's benefactors in Norway, which, as McGovern notes,
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basically collapsed as a country. Norway is their main connection,
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mc govern said, and the port of Bergen is where
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the Greenland ships would come and go from. Cut off
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economically and with the climate worsening, the Norse may have
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furthermore suffered from the self inflicted wound of environmental degradation.
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Some researchers have posited that overgrazing led to soil erosion,
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and that deforestation of Greenland's scant trees hindered their ability
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to repair or build ships or burn firewood. Also, skirmishes
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between the Inuit and the Vikings and Norris artifacts have
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been found at Inuit sites. Nonetheless, it remains entirely uncertain
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as to what extent the Inuit contributed to the Viking's demise.
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Recent research has added two more potential pieces to the
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Norse puzzle. Persistent drought, which would have decimated hay production,
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and the sea level rise of up to ten feet, which,
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as Borigin's paper explains, would have uninvaded dozens of square miles,
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including much of the productive farmland near the Fiords, we
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haven't got it all figured out, but we've come a
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long way. McGovern says of the Nor's disappearance. He adds
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that our own society might want to heed some of
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the lessons the Norris learned the hard way, particularly with
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regard to say, climate change and sea level rise. As
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mcgomerin points out, you can do a lot of things
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right and still die. Well, that about does it. To
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day for Radio Eyzed History Show, I'm your host Joseph Bolt,
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and I'm thank you so much for listening to me
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to day, and I'll be back with another chapter of
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Radio Eye History. Until then, Happy trails.