Translation, Adaptation or Amputation? Arctic Explorer-Writer-Anthropologist Peter Freuchen's Little-Known Danish Translation of Moby Dick

This article discusses how the simplification of adaptation can actually empower a translation with a historically and culturally significant function. The study analyses and discusses the fairly unknown first Danish translation of Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick made in 1942. The translation was made by the internationally famous Arctic explorer and writer Peter Freuchen, and his version of the novel has been so drastically cut down to the bare skeleton of the plot that we may speak of amputation rather than adaptation. The result is a so-called real “man’s book”, as is pronounced on the back cover of the book, but what is a man’s book? The aim of this study is to draw attention to an interesting story of translation strategies for a male readership as well as to provide new insight into verbal adaptations classified as interlingual translation