Born in the province of Jutland (Denmark), on the 2nd of January 1850, and reached this country on January 1st 1890.

After four years spent in the province of Buenos Aires, he went to Santa Cruz in the company of Mr. Charles Siewert, the surveyor appointed by the National Government to survey and allocate the 400 leagues of the Grünbein concession.

The work lasted for several years and gave Mr. Mortensen the opportunity of knowing the territory inch by inch, and of studying the characteristics of its lands. He very soon realized that those lands, worked in a suitable way, should give a return which would compensate, over and above, for the sacrifices implied by the task of settling them and of living in a region which was only beginning to lose its desert character, owing to the efforts of the pioneers who had settle there quite recently.

His contract with Mr. Siewert having terminated, Mr. Mortensen obtained on lease from the Government of the Nation, a lot of land on the south bank of the Santa Cruz River, with the purpose of devoting it to sheep-breeding.

After having suffered the reverses inseparable from all new undertaking, Mr. Mortensen, by dint of activity and tenacity, succeeded in laying down the farm he longed to possess, and in 1907, settled down there finally. Apart from his rural activities, Mr. Rodolfo [Adolphus in the original] Mortensen discharged the functions of the consulates of Denmark and Norway at Rio Gallegos, besides being one of the members who worked hardest for the constitution and later development of the Rural Association of the said port.