Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, 1879-1962

Vilhjalmur Stefansson was born on November 3, 1879 in Arnes, Manitoba, Canada. He attended the University of North Dakota from 1897-1902. He was voted the best orator in 1900, and also worked for the school newspaper. In 1930 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, only the third such degree awarded. He then transferred to the University of Iowa and graduated in 1903 with a degree from the School of Liberal Arts. He next enrolled at Harvard, graduating with a Master of Arts degree in 1906. Stefansson lived among the Eskimos from 1906-1907, along with Canadian zoologist Rudolph Anderson, Stefansson launched a major research expedition to the Canadian Northwest from 1908 to 1912. The team carried out ethnological and zoological studies among the Mackenzie and Copper Eskimo of the Coronation Gulf. He retired from active exploration in 1919, and focused on studying, writing and lecturing about the Arctic. He wrote more than 20 books and over 400 articles during his life. He assembled the Stefansson Collection, printed materials, manuscripts and photographs related to both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. During World War II, Stefansson studied the defense of Alaska, and wrote reports and manuals for the armed forces. In 1947, he began a position as Arctic consultant at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire. In 1951, the collection was transferred to Dartmouth. Vilhjalmur Stefansson died from complications of a stroke on August 26, 1962 in Hanover.

Author and Arctic explorer.

Canadian explorer of the arctic.

Arctic explorer.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson was born November 3, 1879, in the Icelandic community of Arnes, in Manitoba, Canada. His family moved to North Dakota when he was one year old. After being expelled from the University of North Dakota for challenging the authority of his professors, Stefansson enrolled at the University of Iowa, and earned his Bachelor of Philosophy degree in June 1903. From 1903 to 1904, Stefansson studied at the Harvard Divinity School. During 1906, he joined the Anglo-American polar expedition, and lived with Inuit people, adapting their lifestyle. Stefansson joined UI colleague Rudolph Anderson in an Arctic mission from 1908 to 1912. During this mission, Stefansson took an Inuit wife, Fannie Pannigabluk, and their son, Alex, was born in 1910. Anthropologist and explorer Stefansson is noted for discovering the "Blond Eskimo" in 1910. Stefansson received an honorary doctorate at the University of Iowa, June 6, 1922, and an honorary law degree at the University of North Dakota in 1930. In the early 1950s, Stefansson and his second wife, Evelyn, were investigated for their Communist sentiments, and for their associations with radicals Emma Goldman and John Reed in New York, where Stefansson lived. Vilhjalmur Stefansson died August 26, 1962, in Hanover, New Hampshire. ]

Vilhjalmur Stefansson (b. November 3, 1879, Gimli, Manitoba, Canada-d. August 1962), Canadian Arctic explorer.

Vilhjamur Stefansson was a Canadian-born explorer and ethnologist who studied the language and culture of the Inuit and Eskimo. He led several expeditions of exploration and of ethnological and archaeological investigation in the Arctic. In 1921, he went for a second time with a small party of Inuit settlers in a speculative attempt to claim Wrangel Island for Canada. In 1926, the Soviet Union ejected the survivors of Stefansson's Inuit squatters and established the settlement that survives to this day on the island. Stefansson died in 1962.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson was born on 3 November 1879 in Manitoba, Canada, to Icelandic parents, who moved the family to North Dakota in 1881. He was educated at the State Universities of North Dakota and Iowa before proceeding to Harvard University in 1903 to study theology, later changing his study to anthropology the following year. He became a teaching fellow after two summers of field-work in Iceland between 1904 and 1905, and his knowledge of Icelandic literature led him to publish a paper on Norse colonization of Greenland. In 1906, Stefansson was invited to conduct a study of the Eskimo of the lower Mackenzie River on the U.S. Anthropological Expedition, 1906-1907, giving him his introduction to the people whose customs and way of life were to become a major study. His narrative of the expedition was published in Hunters of the Great North .

Stefansson returned north with Rudolph Martin Anderson on the U.S. Canadian Scientific Expedition (Stefansson-Anderson Arctic expedition), 1908-1912, sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History and the Geological Survey of Canada to study the Eskimos and natural history of Coronation Gulf, Victoria Island, and Banks Island. During these travels, he made a detailed study of the Copper Eskimo, later publishing My life with the Eskimo in 1913. On his return, he began to plan a more ambitious and extended expedition to the Arctic archipelago. Obtaining the backing of the Canadian government, Stefansson led the Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-1918, organized to carry out a wide variety of geographical exploration and scientific work in the western Canadian Arctic. The expedition was divided into two parties, the Northern Division, under his command, and the Southern Division, led by Rudolph Martin Anderson. The expedition ship of the Northern Division, Karluk, under Captain Robert Bartlett, was originally assigned the role of establishing a base for Stefansson and the scientists on the northwestern fringe of the Canadian Arctic archipelago. However, after transporting Stefansson to Alaska, Karluk became beset in the ice and sank on 11 January 1914, the survivors later rescued in September 1914. Stefansson subsequently had to conduct the work of the Northern Division without either the ship or his scientific staff. He supported himself and his companions on long and difficult sledge journeys by hunting and fishing, dispelling the myth of a lifeless polar sea and proving that living off the land was possible in the Arctic. His account of the expedition The Friendly Arctic was published in 1921.

After this expedition, Stefansson returned to New York to concentrate on a career of lecturing, writing and consulting. Between 1919 and 1920, he promoted a scheme to introduce reindeer on a commercial scale to Baffin Island, although this venture proved unsuccessful. He gave up exploration after the Ostrov Vrangelya [Wrangell Island] expedition of 1921-1923, which he had organized and supported, resulted in the deaths of four expedition members. Continuing to take a strong interest in the development of the polar regions, he was an early proponent of a road to Alaska, an idea that ultimately led to the Alaska Highway. His personal research library grew to become one of the largest collections of polar literature in the world and became a special collection in the Dartmouth College Library at Hanover, New Hampshire in 1951. His wife, Evelyn, became the first librarian of the collection and Stefansson was appointed consultant to the College's polar studies programme. He died on 26 August 1962 in Hanover, New Hampshire, shortly after completing the manuscript of his autobiography Discovery .