User:TSventon/sandbox/Pipaluk Freuchen

Pipaluk Freuchen (15 March 1918 – 8 April 1999) was a Danish-Greenlandic-Swedish writer, best known for her children's book Ivik, den faderløse, which is also known by its English title Eskimo Boy. She was also the daughter of the explorer Peter Freuchen.

Early life
Pipaluk Jette Tukuminguaq Kasaluk Palika Freuchen was born on 15 March 1918 in Uummannaq, Greenland. Her father was the Danish Arctic explorer and adventurer, Peter Freuchen; her mother, Navarana Mequpaluk, a Greenlandic Inuit woman, who he married in 1911. They had two children, Mequsaq (born 1915) and Pipaluk. In a 1945 article in the journal Vestkusten, Freuchen recalled living a traditional Inuit lifestyle. In 1919 the family moved to Denmark, but returned to Greenland two years later, leaving Pipaluk with her father's parents in Denmark. Her mother died in 1921 from influenza. Freuchen was brought up as part of the Lauridsen family after her father married Magdalene Lauridsen in 1924. Peter Freuchen wrote about their lives together in Arctic Adventure: My Life in the Frozen North (1935). In 1944 Freuchen and her father fled from Nazi occupied Denmark to Sweden.

Career
Freuchen's best known work is Ivik: den faderløse, which was written in Danish and has been translated into several languages, including English as Eskimo Boy,  and German as Ivik der Vaterlose. It was published in Sweden as part of the Robinson Series for children aged nine to eleven by specialist children's publisher B. Wahlströms. In the book, Ivik's father is killed by a walrus on a hunting trip and he has to save his family from starvation. Ivik ultimately ends up killing a polar bear. The book was praised for its "unrelenting realism". The Lexington Herald described it as "permeated with the spirit of Eskimo culture" and admired Freuchen's use of the present tense as a narrative tool. In 1953 The Sketch recommended it as a gift for "any child who likes to know how the other half of the world lives". The Manchester Guardian described the book as "a little masterpiece of writing". It was illustrated by Freuchen's step-cousin Ingred Vang Nyman, who had illustrated Freuchen's story Julafton bland eskimåer (Christmas Eve among Eskimos) for Dagens Nyheter in 1944.

Freuchen died on 8 April 1999.

Personal life
Freuchen married Bengt Häger, a Swedish choreographer and academic, with whom she had a daughter, who they named Navarana.

Books

 * Ivik, den faderløse (Geber Förlag, 1945)
 * Inaluk (Almqvist & Wiksell/Geber Förlag, 1955)
 * Bogen om Peter Freuchen (Fremad Förlag, 1958)