Vilhjalmur Stefansson

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Vilhjalmur Stefansson (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). He studied anthropology at the graduate school of Harvard University, and for two years was an instructor there.

[edit] Explorations

In 1904 and 1905, he made archæological researches in Iceland. He lived with the Eskimos of 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. He discovered a group of previously unknown Eskimos, the blond Eskimos, who had never before seen a white man in 1910.

From 1913-16, for the Government of Canada, he took command of an expedition to explore the regions west of Parry Archipelago. Three ships, the Karluk, the Mary Sachs, and the Alaska were employed. His main ship, the Karluk, was beset in ice, crushed, and sunk on January 11, 1914, with the loss of some men who disappeared in making their way to Herald Island. Stefánsson was not aboard the Karluk when it sank. He 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 75 miles (121 km) 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.

His discoveries included new land and the edge of the continental shelf. Stefansson's journey 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. Stefánsson continued his explorations, leaving from Herschel Island on August 23, 1915.

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 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 zero-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.

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

Stefansson is also famous for saying that "adventure is a sign of incompetence."

[edit] Literature

• My Life with the Eskimos, (New York, 1912)
• Stefánsson-Anderson Expedition, 1909-12, (Anthropological Papers, American Museum of Natural History, New York, 1914)
• Cancer: Disease of civilization? An anthropological and historical study, (Hill and Wang, 1960)