Christian Leden

Christian Leden was a Norwegian ethnomusicologist and explorer who was the first person to record film in the northern Arctic. He studied musicology in Berlin and became interested in the music of the Inuit people in Greenland. He received funding from the Danish Carlsberg Foundation to travel to Greenland and study Inuit music with the polar scientist Knud Rasmussen. He also traveled to Canada, where he collected large amounts of music, crafts, film, and photographs from various Inuit groups. He learned an Inuit language and cataloged his collection with each item's Inuktitut name and function. He wrote a book about his research that was published in German in 1927. He also worked to preserve Norwegian folk music and traveled to South America, including Easter Island, where he recorded some songs. He lost his life's work twice, once during World War II and once when his suitcase was stolen. He died in Berlin in 1957.