Books: Igloo Love

SALAMINA—Rockwell Kent—Ear court, Brace ($3-75)

ARCTIC ADVENTURE—Peter Freuchen— Farrar & Rinehart ($3.50).

IVALU — Peter Freuchen — Furman ($2.50).

With the South Seas, Africa and the Arabian Desert well exploited recently as lands of legends and mystery, the Arctic has now been called upon to serve as the stage for adventurers fleeing the monotonies of modern industrialism. Last week a suspicious reader, surveying a group of current books dealing with life near the North Pole, might have reached the conclusion that some astute press agent was handling publicity for the Eskimos, the Aurora Borealis and other features of those trackless wastes. Although all the books graphically picture the hardships of long winters and extreme cold, all make life in the North glamorous, exciting, heroic. And all three hymn the beauties of ardent and lovely Eskimo women who run wild through Greenland and are crazy about white men.

Salamina is Rockwell Kent’s 336-page record of two winters in Greenland, decorated with small illustrations and with 23 imposing studies, most of them of statuesque native women, who charmed his exile. Beginning on an ominous philosophical note describing the chaos of contemporary society, it quickly turns into a rambling discussion of Greenland natives, customs, scenery. Salamina was Rockwell Kent’s housekeeper. In her late 20’s, she was handsome, determined, the mother of three children. She pursued the artistrelentlessly, carefully tucked him in at night, worried for fear he would freeze, scolded him about her wages, wept readily, was devoted, affectionate, jealous. The artist escaped her long enough to get into an innocent scrape with her rival, Anna, and to enjoy a brief affair with the lovely Pauline, with whom he lived during a stretch of exceptionally cold weather. In the end Salamina married a carpenter.

Arctic Adventure. Peter Freuchen abandoned his career while still a medical student in Denmark, visited North Greenland in 1907, later established a trading post there. Arctic Adventure is principally his story of life with the natives, whose fantastic modesty and equally fantastic generosity delighted him. North Greenland Eskimos considered it impolite to mention their own names, always waited for someone else to identify them. When a host offered his guests food, he first apologized that it was not fit to eat. They believed that human beings could be trusted in all relationships except the sexual, consequently could not understand ideas of faithful marriages. Hunters exchanged wives freely, often committed adultery, but never without asking permission of the husband. Husbands were also amused and puzzled when white sailors sneaked around their igloos, for they considered themselves honored if other men desired their wives. These frigid Puritans, however, roundly condemned women who picked up white sailors without first consulting their husbands.

Peter Freuchen enjoyed a variety of Arctic adventures that ranged from getting his nose frozen to having an iceberg explode beneath him. Between hunts and narrow escapes from death, he found time to marry an Eskimo woman, after his sweetheart in Denmark had thrown him over. She bore him two children, visited Denmark with him. Superficially the most grim of recent Arctic books, Arctic Adventure makes the North seem friendly, the natives good-humored and appealing.

Ivalu. Readers who turn from Arctic Adventure to Ivalu, also written by Peter Freuchen, are likely to experience a startled feeling that they have heard the story before. A novel recounting the love affair of an Eskimo girl and a white man whose white sweetheart has thrown him over, it is obviously based on Peter Freuchen’s autobiography, but is written from the point of view of an Eskimo woman.