Moral compass

Biography brings to vivid life the story of a rugged, inspirational Arctic explorer.

- NIK DIRGA

WANDERLUST: An eccentric explorer, an epic journey, a lost age, by Reid Mitenbuler (HarperCollins, $39.99)

What's an explorer to do after their last mountain has been climbed? That's the question that haunts Wanderlust, Reid Mitenbuler's fine new biography of Danish Arctic explorer Peter Freuchen, whose intrepid career was cut short by a gruesome injury, forcing him to reinvent himself several times over.

Outside of Denmark, Freuchen isn't quite a household name, yet his daring adventures still have the ability to chill readers today. In the 1920s, he explored Greenland, then a Danish colony, and set up a remote trading post among the indigenous Inuit.

Standing nearly 2m tall, hulking and heavily bearded, Freuchen looked like a boy's dream of a polar explorer.

Yet, as Mitenbuler shows, for a man of his background and era, Freuchen was extremely open-minded and eager to learn about other cultures. He married an Inuit woman and raised a family with her. Longhaired and relaxed in photos, he would "eventually inspire a groovier generation of Danes to nickname him 'the greatest hippy in polar history".