Ole Olufsen

Who was Ole Olufsen?

Ole Olufsen was a Danish military officer and explorer. He made several notable expeditions in the 1890s to the Emirate of Bukhara, including the Pamir Mountains. He also served as Secretary of the Royal Danish Geographical Society. Olufsen was a proponent of the idea that the people's of the Pamirs retained traits of Avestan culture, a notion borrowed from the works of Wilhelm Geiger and Karoly Jeno Ujfalvy de Mezo-Kovesd, and that the region was still populated by adherents of Zoroastrianism. During his 1898-99 expeditions to the Pamirs, Olufsen was accompanied by Danish botanist Ove Paulsen.