Jørn Riel was born in Denmark in 1931. As part of the Lauge Koch expedition in 1950, he lived in Greenland for 16 years. From the jumble of the ice and the aurora borealis, he will bring back a good twenty books, that is to say about half of his work to date.
The Arctic side of Jørn Riel's writings (dedicated partly to Paul-Emile Victor, whom he met on Ella Island, partly to Nugarssunguaq, Jørn Riel's Greenlandic granddaughter) is made up of first by the series of arctic gossip, a series of short fictions always having as heroes – or magnificent anti-heroes – the last trappers of north-east Greenland, lost talkers, junk writer, short-sighted shooter, counter philosopher in front of an undrinkable twist-guts. One of his works was adapted to film as Before Tomorrow (Le Jour avant le lendemain).
In 2010, he received the Grand Prix from the Danish Academy for his entire work.
