True Grit Award – Peter Freuchen is the standard by which we judge what a “Gritty Man” is.
How a Gritty Man forges a knife from his frozen feces to save his life…
If there was anyone who deserves the “True Grit Award” it’s… Peter Freuchen.
He is the standard by which we judge what is a “Gritty Man”!
Peter Freuchen was a 6’ 7” Danish explorer who spent many years in the Artic on expeditions, hunting walruses, polar bears and wolves.
He was an author, wrote and starred in an Oscar winning movie and became a millionaire.
He was so full grit he even amputated his own toes and forged a knife from his frozen feces to save his life!
Lorenz Peter Elfred Freuchen was born in 1886, in the town of Nykøbing Falster, in Denmark as the son of a businessman.
He signed on with an expedition in 1906, at the age of 20 with his friend Knud Rasmussen, where they sailed as far as they could north and then traveled over 600 miles across the barren wasteland, just to check it out.
He spent a decade living among the Inuit and became the first expert on them and their culture. He married an Inuit woman and had two children. After many years of being married, his wife died from the Spanish Flu.
His most gritty story was in 1926 when he was in the northern part of Greenland and got caught in a blizzard.
He took shelter beneath his dog sled, the snow was so intense it overtook him and froze him in place.
The ice and snow was so tightly packed around him that his beard was frozen to the ice. If he were to turn his head, he would have ripped off parts of his face.
After 30 hours of trying to dig his way out, he had a brilliant idea which only a gritty man would have.
He dropped a duce and let it freeze… he created a knife from his frozen feces to hack his way out.
He spent hours hacking his frozen body from the tundra. Once he was free, his toes and legs were so badly damaged from the cold he could not walk.
He had to crawl 3 hours back to base camp in a blizzard.
Once at base camp, his toes developed gangrene… he had no choice but to cut off his own toes… with a pair of pliers, a hammer and without any anesthesia.
Yep, gritty as hell!
Due to the severity of his injuries they had to amputate part of his leg. He had to have a peg leg to get around but that didn’t slow him down…
He started “The Adventurers Club” in Denmark in 1938. Where gritty men would sit around and tell heroic stories around a fireplace sipping on whisky and smoking cigars.
World War II broke out and shortly after that, he joined the Danish resistance.
He helped refugees escape, he sabotaged Nazi operations and was such a pain in ass to the Nazis… they put him on their kill list and he was captured and imprisoned.
Of course… he escaped because that’s what a Gritty Man does.
He moved to Sweden and continued being a pain in the ass to the Nazi’s until the end of the war.
In 1945, after the war, he moved to New York City and married fashion illustrator Dagmar Cohn who worked for Vogue.
Vogue did an article on Peter and Dagmar in the magazine and he wore his coat made from a polar bear, which he had wrestled and killed on one of his many expeditions in Greenland.
He joined the New York Explorer’s Club, shared his stories with the other members and wrote many books about his adventures.
In August of 1957, at the age of 71, Peter passed away from a heart attack.
His ashes were spread over the famous table-shaped Mount Dundas outside of Thule, Greenland.
He rests there as the gritty standard bearer for all men.
The Gritty Man Club gives an award to a man that shows true grit, perseverance, lives a life of adventure and success… the “True Grit Award” is in honor of men who have grit.
If you’re wondering what does “gritty mean,” take a look at Peter Freuchen.
To read more about Peter Freuchen, here’s a great book written by the “Mister Gritty” which I highly recommend.
It’s one of my personal favorites; click the link to get more information… Arctic Adventure: My Life in the Frozen North.
