Vilhjalmur Stefansson

Vilhjalmur Stefansson ( _is. Vilhjálmur Stefánsson) (November 3, 1879 – August 26, 1962) was a Canadian Arctic explorer and ethnologist. He was born at Gimli, Manitoba, Canada, of Icelandic descent. He was educated in the universities of North Dakota and of Iowa (A.B., 1903), US. He studied anthropology at the graduate school of Harvard University, and for two years was an instructor there.

Early explorations

In 1904 and 1905, he made archaeological researches in Iceland. He lived with the Eskimos (referred to now in Canada as the Inuit) of the Mackenzie Delta during the winter of 1906-07, returning alone across country via the Porcupine and Yukon rivers. Under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, he and Dr. R. M. Anderson undertook the ethnological survey of the Central Arctic coasts of the shores of North America from 1908-12. In 1910, he discovered a group of previously unknown Eskimos, the blond Eskimos, who had never before seen a white man.

Loss of the "Karluk" and rescue of survivors

During 1913-16 he took command of an expedition to explore the regions west of Parry Archipelago for the Government of Canada. Three ships, the "Karluk", the "Mary Sachs", and the "Alaska" were employed.

Stefansson abandoned his main ship, the "Karluk", when it became stuck in the ice in August/September 1913, leaving the crew with Captain Robert Bartlett of Newfoundland stranded on the frozen Arctic Ocean. The "Karluk" was eventually crushed, and sank on January 11, 1914. Four men made their way to Herald Island, but died there before they could be rescued. The remaining members of the expedition made their way to Wrangel Island where survivors were picked up by the US fishing schooner "King & Winge" and the U.S. revenue cutter "Bear". [Newell, Gordon R., ed., "H.W. McCurdy Maritime History of the Pacific Northwest", at 242, Superior Publishing, Seattle, WA 1966]

Stefansson resumed his explorations by sledge over the Arctic Ocean, here known as the Beaufort Sea, leaving Collinson Point, Alaska in April, 1914. A supporting sledge turned back convert|75|mi|abbr=on offshore, but he and two men continued onward on one sledge, living largely by his rifle on polar game for 96 days until his party reached the "Mary Sachs" in the autumn.

Wrangel Island fiasco

In 1921, he encouraged and planned an expedition for four young men to colonise Wrangel Island north of Siberia, where the eleven survivors of the twenty-two men on the Karluk had lived from January to September 1914. Stefansson had designs for forming an exploration company that would be geared towards individuals interested in touring the Arctic island.

Stefansson originally wanted to claim Wrangel Island for the Canadian government. However due to the dangerous outcome from his initial trip to the island the government refused to assist with the expedition. He then wanted to claim the land for Britain but the British government rejected this claim when it was made by the young men. The raising of the British flag on Wrangel Island, acknowledged Russian territory, caused an international incident.

The four young men, Frederick Maurer, E. Lorne Knight, and Milton Galle from the US, and Allan Crawford of Canada, were ill equipped, both materially and in experience for the trip. All perished on the island or in an attempt to get help from Siberia across the frozen Chukchi Sea. The only survivors were the expedition's cat, Vic, and an Inuk woman named Ada Blackjack who the men had hired as a seamstress in Nome, Alaska, and taken with them.

Blackjack had taught herself survival skills and cared for the last man on the island, E. Lorne Knight, until he died of scurvy. Ada Blackjack was rescued in 1923 after two years on Wrangel Island and Stefansson drew the ire of the public and the families for having sent such ill equipped young men to Wrangel. His reputation was largely destroyed by this disaster and that of the "Karluk".

Discoveries

Stefansson's discoveries included new land and the edge of the continental shelf. His journeys and successes are among the marvels of polar exploration. He extended the discoveries of McClintock. From April 1914 to June 1915 he lived on the ice pack. Stefansson continued his explorations leaving from Herschel Island on August 23, 1915.

Later career

Stefansson was an extremely well-known explorer in his lifetime. Late in life, through his affiliation with Dartmouth College (he was Director of Polar Studies), he became a major figure in the establishment of the US Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) in Hanover, New Hampshire. CRREL-supported research, often conducted in winter on the forbidding summit of Mount Washington, has been key to developing matériel and doctrine to support alpine conflict.

Stefansson joined The Explorers Club in 1908, four years after its founding. He later served as Club President twice: 1919-1922 and 1937-1939. In the all-male Club the Board made quite a splash under Stefansson's reign when it put forth an amendment to its Bylaws that read (Minutes, Jan. 4, 1938), "A Woman's Roll of Honor shall be instituted to which the Board of Directors may name women of the United States and Canada in recognition of the noteworthy achievements and writings in the field of the Club's interests, primarily exploration." Perhaps to comfort fellow members, the article added, "This Woman's Roll of Honor shall be quite outside the Club's organisation but shall correspond in dignity to the Honorary Class of (male) members within it."

While living in New York City, Stefansson was one of the regulars at Romany Marie's Greenwich Village cafés.Robert Shulman. "Romany Marie: The Queen of Greenwich Village" (pp. 93, 110-112). Louisville: Butler Books, 2006. ISBN 1-88453-274-8. ] During the years when he and novelist Fannie Hurst were having an affair, Gísli Pálsson. "Travelling Passions: The Hidden Life Of Vilhjalmur Stefansson" (pp. 187, 190, 251-252). Lebanon, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 2005. ISBN 1-58465-510-0. ] they met there when he was in town. Many years later, in 1941, he met his future wife Evelyn Schwartz Baird at Romany Marie's; Stefansson and Baird married soon after.cite web |url= http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,931998,00.html |title= Milestones |work= TIME |date= December 22 1941 |quote= Marriage revealed: Explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 62; and Mrs. Evelyn Schwartz Baird, 28, his secretary; in Wellsville, Tenn. ]

Legacy

Stefansson's personal papers and collection of Arctic artifacts are maintained and available to the public at the Dartmouth College Library.

Stefansson is frequently quoted as saying that "adventure is a sign of incompetence."

On May 28, 1986, the United States Postal Service issued a 22 cent postage stamp in his honour. [Scott catalogue # 2222.]

Political affiliations

In the 1930s, pro-Soviet movements were created whose main aim was to provide support for the Soviet project to establish a Jewish socialist republic in the Birobidzhan region in the far east of the USSR. One of the organisations prominent in this campaign was the American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidjan, or Ambijan, formed in 1934. A tireless proponent of settlement in Birobidzhan, Stefansson appeared at countless Ambijan meetings, dinners, and rallies,and proved an invaluable resource. Ambijan produced a 50-page Year Book at the end of 1936, full of testimonials and letters of support. Among these was one from Stefansson, who was now also listed as a member of Ambijan's Board of Directors and Governors: "The Birobidjan project seems to me to offer a most statesmanlike contribution to the problem of the rehabilitation of eastern and central European Jewry," he wrote.

Ambijan's national conference in New York, November 25-26, 1944, pledged to raise $1 million to support refugees in Stalingrad and Birobidzhan. Prominent guests and speakers included New York Congressman Emanuel Celler, Senator Elbert D. Thomas of Utah, and Soviet ambassador Andrei Gromyko. A public dinner, attended by the delegates and their guests, was hosted by Vilhjalmur and spouse Evelyn Stefansson. Vilhjalmur was selected as one of two vice-presidents of the organisation.

But with the growing anti-Russian feeling in the country after World War II, "exposés" of Stefansson began to appear in the press. In August 1951, he was denounced as a Communist before a Senate Internal Security subcommittee by Louis F. Budenz, a Communist-turned-Catholic. Perhaps Stefansson himself had by then had some second thoughts about Ambijan, for his posthumously published autobiography made no mention of his work on its behalf. Nor, for that matter, did his otherwise very complete obituary in "The New York Times" of August 27, 1962. [Henry Srebrnik, "The Radical 'Second Life' of Vilhjalmur Stefansson," "Arctic: Journal of the Arctic Institute of North America" 51, 1, 1998: 58-60.]

Low-carbohydrate diet of meat and fish

Stefansson is also a figure of considerable interest in dietary circles, especially those with an interest in very low-carbohydrate diets. Stefansson documented the fact that most Inuit lived on a diet of about 90% meat and fish, often going 6-9 months a year on nothing but meat and fish--essentially, a no-carbohydrate diet. He found that he and his fellow European-descent explorers were also perfectly healthy on such a diet. When medical authorities questioned him on this, he and a fellow explorer agreed to undertake a study under the auspices of the Journal of the American Medical Association to demonstrate that they could eat a 100% meat diet in a closely-observed laboratory setting for the first several weeks, with paid observers for the rest of an entire year. The results were published in the Journal of the AMA, and both men were perfectly healthy on such a diet, without vitamin supplementation or anything else in their diet except meat.Lieb, Clarence W.: "The Effects on Human Beings of a Twelve Months' Exclusive Meat Diet," Journal of the American Medical Association, July 6, 1929.] However, hunters like the Inuit, who traditionally obtain most of their dietary energy from wild animals and therefore eat a low-carbohydrate diet,cite journal |author=Ho KJ, Mikkelson B, Lewis LA, Feldman SA, Taylor CB. |title=Alaskan arctic Eskimo: responses to a customary high fat diet |journal=Am J Clin Nutr |volume=25 |issue=8 |pages=737–45 |year=1972 Aug |pmid=5046723 |doi= |url=http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/citation/25/8/737] seem to have a high mortality from stroke.cite journal |author=Bjerregaard P, Young TK, Hegele RA |title=Low incidence of cardiovascular disease among the Inuit--what is the evidence? |journal=Atherosclerosis |volume=166 |issue=2 |pages=351–7 |year=2003 Feb |pmid=12535749 |doi=10.1016/S0021-9150(02)00364-7 |url=]

ee also

*Paleolithic diet
*William Banting

References

Literature

* Vilhjalmur Stefansson: "My Life with the Eskimo"; The Macmillan Company, New York, 1912
* Vilhjalmur Stefansson: "Stefánsson-Anderson Expedition, 1909-12"; Anthropological Papers, AMNH, vol. XIV., New York, 1914
* Vilhjalmur Stefansson: "Not by Bread Alone"; The Macmillan Company, New York, 1946
* Vilhjalmur Stefansson: "Discovery - the autobiography of Vilhjalmur Stefansson"; McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1964
* Vilhjalmur Stefansson: "Cancer: Disease of civilization? An anthropological and historical study"; Hill and Wang, Inc., New York, 1960
* William R. Hunt: "Stef: A Biography of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Canadian Arctic explorer"; University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver, 1986, ISBN 077480247-2
* Jennifer Niven: "The Ice Master: The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the Karluk", Hyperion Books, 2000
* Jennifer Niven: "Ada Blackjack: A True Story Of Survival In The Arctic", Hyperion Books, 2003 ISBN 078688746X
* Gísli Pálsson: "Writing on Ice: The Ethnographic Notebooks of Vilhjalmur Stefansson"; Dartmouth College Press, University Press of New England, Hanover, 2001, ISBN 158465119-9
* Gísli Pálsson: "The legacy of Vilhjálmur Stefansson", the Stefansson Arctic Institute (and individual authors), 2000
*Vilhjalmur Stefansson (ed.): "Great Adventures and Explorations"; The Dial Press, 1947
* Richard Diubaldo: "Stefansson and the Canadian Arctic"; McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal, 1978.

External links

* [http://www.biblelife.org/stefansson1.htm "Adventures in Diet", Harper's Monthly Magazine, November 1935]
* [http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/stefansson.html Biography of Vilhjalmur Stefansson]
* [http://www.enchantedlearning.com/explorers/page/s/stefansson.shtml Stefansson on enchantedlearning.com]