Across Arctic America: Narrative of the Fifth Thule Expedition

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Between 1921 and 1924, Knud Rasmussen led a small band of colleagues in a journey of investigation across the top of North America. The full scientific report of that 20,000-mile trek by dog sled from Greenland to Siberia, known to history as the Fifth Thule Expedition, fills ten volumes. This single volume, Across Arctic America, is Rasmussen's own reworking and condensation of his two-volume popular account written in Danish, and gives the essence of his experience of the Arctic and its people. It was the people who most captivated the Greenland-born Rasmussen, who had become a virtual adopted son to the Eskimos of the far northern district still known by the name of the trading post he established there, Thule. Of most significance to readers today though, is that Rasmussen was also a noted writer. He wanted to share not just the observations he made but the feelings he experienced, and so in Across Arctic American offered what fellow arctic explorer Villijahmur Stefansson described as "not only a work of literary charm but also one of the deepest and soundest interpretations" of Eskimo life ever put into a book.

FROM THE CRITICS

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