Knud Rasmussen

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Knud Rasmussen

Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen (born June 7, 1879 in Ilulissat , West Greenland , † December 21, 1933 in Copenhagen , Denmark ) was a Greenland-Danish polar explorer , ethnologist and author .

life and work

Knud Rasmussen's birth house, Ilulissat, Greenland
Knud Rasmussen's house in Hundested on Zealand
Knud Rasmussen and Adolphus Greely
Rasmussen with his two companions, Mrs. Amarulunguaq and Quvigarssuaq Knud Miteq, after returning from the 5th Thule expedition, 1924

Rasmussen was the son of the missionary and linguist Christian Rasmussen (1846-1918) and his wife Sofie Louise Rasmussen (1842-1917), née Fleischer, a Greenlandic woman with Norwegian and Inuit ancestry. Even as a young boy he was an excellent dog sled driver by Greenlandic standards . A well-known quote from him is: "Give me snow, give me dogs, and you can keep the rest". His Greenlandic nickname was Kunũnguaĸ ("little knud ").

Some members of the Danish Greenland Expedition 1902/1904 (from left to right: Harald Moltke, Knud Rasmussen, Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, Alfred Bertelsen)

From 1891 he attended the Latin and Realschule in Nørrebro , a district of Copenhagen. He then studied for a few semesters at the University of Copenhagen , took the Philosophicum , but could not decide on a subject. In 1901 he went to Stockholm as a correspondent to report on the Nordic Games , and then traveled through Lapland and Northern Norway .

From 1902–1904 he took part in the literary expedition to Northwest Greenland with his friend, the painter and draftsman Harald Moltke . This was under the direction of Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen , with whom Rasmussen had already visited Iceland in 1900 . The main objective of the expedition was to record the songs and legends of the Inughuit . In the following years Rasmussen came to Greenland again and again, sometimes on official matters.

On November 11, 1908, Knud Rasmussen married Dagmar Theresa Andersen (1882–1965).

In 1909 he co-founded the first mission station in North Greenland with Gustav Olsen . In 1910, together with Olsen and his partner Peter Freuchen, he founded the Thule trading and research station , which was the starting point for his expeditions. Rasmussen put the profit from the trading station into his expeditions and the establishment of a local infrastructure with a shop, hospital, free medical care and a church. In the no-man's-land under international law and jurisprudence , Rasmussen had the highest authority, which he however used in favor of the Inughuit.

K. Rasmusson from 1930

Rasmussen carried out seven expeditions (the so-called " Thule Expeditions ") to northern Greenland and the arctic regions of Canada and Alaska between 1912 and 1933 . In addition to geographical research, the aim was primarily to research and preserve the Eskimo culture , the language ( Inuktitut ), the sagas and stories. On the 1st Thule expedition he crossed the Greenland Ice Sheet twice , discovered Adam Biering Land and traces of earlier settlement on the Independence Fjord . The second Thule expedition took him to the fjords of the north coast of Greenland. Of particular importance was the 5th Thule expedition from 1921 to 1924, which served the aim of clarifying the origin of the Eskimos. The expedition first set up camp on an island in eastern Arctic Canada and visited the Inuit settlements in the greater area. In the spring of 1923, Rasmussen, accompanied by two Inuit, began the longest dog sledding trip in the history of Arctic research, which took him along the north coast of the North American mainland to Nome in Alaska within 16 months .

Knud Rasmussen wrote film history on his last expedition, during which the feature film Palos Brautfahrt , which shows the traditional life of the Eskimos, was made. Rasmussen had written the script and selected the leading actors. He was the patron of the Arnold Fanck film " SOS Eisberg " (with Ernst Udet and Leni Riefenstahl ), which was the first feature film to show the special beauty of Greenland's ice landscapes.

In October 1933, Rasmussen fell ill with meat poisoning in East Greenland and died on December 21 in a Copenhagen hospital.

Thule Air Base has been located in the immediate vicinity of Thule since 1951 . In 1953 the inhabitants were forcibly relocated under pressure from the Americans. Rasmussen's house was dismantled into its individual parts and brought to Qaanaaq in 1986 , where it was rebuilt and has since served as a local museum ( Thule Museum ). Today the Ilulissat Museum is located in Rasmussen's birthplace in Ilulissat, and it is a particular reminder of this most famous of all Greenlanders. Other memorabilia can be found in the Thule Museum in Qaanaaq. Knud Rasmussen's last expedition ship, the Kivioq , built in 1933 , is now privately owned by Jutta Carstensen and Uwe Käding and lies in the port of Aabenraa in southern Denmark.

Honors

Knud Rasmussen has been honored worldwide for his scientific work. He was a Knight of the Danish Order of Danebro , Commander of the Norwegian Order of Saint Olav , Commander of the Finnish Order of the White Rose , Knight of the Swedish Order of the North Star and holder of the Danish Medal of Merit in Gold. He was a member of numerous scientific societies, such as the Geographical Societies of Norway, Sweden , Italy and the United States , as well as the Explorers Club and the Higher Scientific Society in Lund ( Vetenskapssocieteten i Lund ).

The University of Copenhagen (1925) and the Scottish University of St Andrews (1927) awarded Rasmussen an honorary doctorate . The Danish National Museum , which owes him 16,000 items in its collection, has a Knud Rasmussen Hall. Streets around the world are named after Knud Rasmussen. B. in Greifswald , Güstrow , Ingolstadt , Lübeck , Rostock , Vienna and Wilhelmshaven .

A number of geographical objects are named after Knud Rasmussen . These include Knud-Rasmussen-Land , Cape Knud Rasmussen , the Knud-Rasmussen Mountains , the Knud-Rasmussen Glacier and the Knud-Rasmussen-Nunatak in Greenland and the Rasmussen Basin in the Canadian Arctic. The Rasmussen Peninsula in Antarctica bears his name.

Publications

Rasmussen was important as a writer. Some of his books are

Rasmussen translated in 1915 the first Greenlandic novel Sinnattugaq of Mathias Storch , entitled En Grønlænders Drøm ( A Greenlandic dream ) into Danish.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Fry: Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen. 1999, p. 3123.
  2. ↑ Jean Malaurie: Myth of the North Pole. 200 years of expedition history. 2003, p. 261 ( limited preview in Google book search).

Web links

Commons : Knud Rasmussen  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Knud Rasmussen  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Rasmussen, Knud
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rasmussen, Knud Johan Victor (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish polar explorer, ethnologist and book author
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Ilulissat , West Greenland
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 1933
Place of death Copenhagen