Lorenz Peter Elfred Freuchen was born in 1886, in the town of Nykøbing Falster, in Denmark as the son of a businessman. When he got old enough, he went to medical school at the University of Copenhagen, but soon realized that it wasn’t the life for him.

Writing in his autobiography The Vagrant Viking, the first victims of his badassery were his instructors at school. Knowing that his place was out in the world, he quit and joined up with an Arctic Expedition.