Peter Freuchen (full name - Lorenz Peter Elfred Freuchen, February 20, 1886 – September 2, 1957) was a Danish explorer, author, journalist and anthropologist. He is notable for his role in Arctic exploration, making his first expedition in 1906 to Greenland. He and his friend Knud Rasmussen sailed from Denmark as far north as possible before leaving their ship and continuing by dogsled for over 600 miles.

In 1910, Freuchen and Rasmussen established a trading post, in Cape York, calling it Thule. The name came from the term “Ultima Thule,” which meant a place “beyond the borders of the known world”. Thule served as a base for 7 expeditions, known as the "Thule Expeditions", between 1912 and 1933.

One of the expeditions, was to test a theory if a channel divided Greenland and Peary Land. During the trip, which Freuchen describes in his autobiography “Vagrant Viking”, the crew got caught in a blizzard. Freuchen attempted to take cover under a dogsled, but ultimately found himself completely buried in snow that quickly turned to ice. At the time, he hadn’t been carrying his usual assortment of daggers and spears, so he was forced to improvise and fashioned a dagger out of his own faeces and dug himself out of the snow cave (“ Vagrant Viking”, page 179). When he returned to camp, and found that his toes had become gangrenous and his leg had been taken over by frostbite, he amputated the gangrenous toes himself ( without anaesthesia) and had his leg replaced with a peg.

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