THE MIXED LEGACY OF ARCTIC EXPLORER VILHJÁLMUR STEFÁNSSON

Everyone loves a good story, especially tales of adventure featuring a dogged, tenacious and sometimes tragic hero. In our day, thanks to more objective research and unflinching writing, heroes have lost much of their shine. Where we once unquestioningly celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh, there is no denying that he was also a Nazi sympathiser with multiple secret families. In addition to being an author of the Declaration of Independence and the third U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson is now recognised as a major slaveowner. Innovator and industrialist Henry Ford was a virulent antisemite.

While their failings and imperfections are evident and undeniable, we now have an opportunity to recognise our heroes’ essential humanity, and thus better understand and relate to them. The tale of Vilhjálmur Stefánsson, legendary North American explorer of Icelandic heritage, sheds light on both the adventuring spirit of early-20th-century scientists and their shortcomings. These men and women risked life and limb in the search of knowledge, making dramatic discoveries and challenging long-held ‘truths’ in the process, but were unable to see past their prejudices or admit any of their own weaknesses.

“I’m eager to tell you about him. … He’s done a few amazing things and everything about him is striking, starting with his name, which is Vilhjálmur Stefánsson! Quite a mouthful! That first bit sounds like Vil-YAL-mur, but he likes to be called Stef[…] He’s a slightly more refined version of one of those Neanderthals the anthropology chaps dress up in modern clothes to show how much they look like us.” Charles Alcott, 1919, describing in a letter his first impressions of the Arctic explorer Vilhjálmur Stefánsson.

In January 1914, the Canadian Arctic Expedition’s flagship, the HMCS Karluk, was steaming to a rendezvous with the expedition’s other two vessels at Herschel Island in the Beaufort Sea of the Arctic Ocean, five kilometres [3.1 miles] off the northern coast of Canada’s Yukon Territory. World War I had not yet begun, and world powers were vying for territorial claims on uncharted Arctic areas. The expedition was under the leadership of Canadian-American anthropologist Vilhjálmur Stefánsson. The main objective, according to Vilhjálmur, was to explore the “area of a million or so square miles [...] lying between Alaska and the North Pole.” The Canadian government supported the mission financially and was hopeful that the trip would strengthen Canada’s claim of sovereignty over the Arctic islands.

As they neared Herschel Island, the former whaling ship slowed to a crawl as it was caught in rapidly freezing sea ice. Although her bows and sides had recently been sheathed with Australian ironwood, Captain Robert Bartlett had doubted the ship’s fitness for the mission. The Karluk’s engineer agreed, describing the coalpowered engine as “a coffee pot [...] never intended to run more than two days at a time.”

The Karluk had no radio, and the expedition’s other ships were too distant to signal with lights or flares. With food supplies short, expedition leader Vilhjálmur announced he was leaving the ice-bound ship with three men for a ten-day hunting trip to bring back fresh caribou meat. Bearded and well-protected from the extreme cold by his Inuit-made clothes, the 35-year-old Vilhjálmur and his men struck off across the Arctic ice cap.

By the time Vilhjálmur and his team returned, the constricting ice sheet had carried off the fateful ship. It drifted westward for several months, reaching the East Siberian Sea north of the Russian mainland. Disappointed but not entirely surprised, Vilhjálmur realised there was little that could be done to help its erstwhile crew and set about busying himself with the expedition’s scientific objectives. For food, the four men lived off of whatever animals they could shoot with their rifles, mostly seals and polar bears. After 100 days, Vilhjálmur and his team were picked up by one of the other expedition vessels. As soon as he was

resupplied, the undaunted Vilhjálmur headed north again with two companions to continue the mission in search of new lands.

No word had been heard from the Karluk, which was assumed to be drifting with the ice sheet, but Vilhjálmur was confident that Captain Bartlett would lead the crew to safety. He would not learn of the Karluk’s terrible fate until four years later.

IN EXPLORATION AND IN WAR

After a few weeks stuck in the ice, the crew of the Karluk knew that the chance of rescue was minute. To their terror, the incapacitated Karluk was carried ever farther North and gradually crushed by the remorseless ice, leaving the desperate crew shipwrecked on an unstable ice sheet. After several weeks in two rough shelters on the ice, the Captain began organising efforts to reach the nearest land mass, Wrangel Island, estimated to be some 60 km [37 mi] away. It turned out to be 130 km [81 mi].

The 17 crew members who made it there were constantly short of food and troubled by internal dissent. Six of the 17 who reached the island died before rescue finally arrived, in September 1914, including one crew member possibly murdered for stealing food. The group arrived in Nome, Alaska, in mid-September to an enthusiastic welcome from the locals. Captain Bartlett went on to receive honours from the Royal Geographic Society for his “outstanding bravery” but was censured by the Canadian commission for taking the Karluk into ice. Privately, Bartlett was very critical of Vilhjálmur, but he never directly criticised him or anyone else.

Speaking about the expedition years later, Vilhjálmur said, “In 1914, the ship Karluk was lost, along with the lives of eleven men. Four men separated from the expedition and were never heard from again. I wasn’t there and didn’t know about it until four years later. [...] I grieve for these men, but that’s how it is in war, and in many other professions.”

GO WITH THE FLOE

Of the 25 crew and expedition staff aboard the Karluk after the departure of Vilhjálmur and his men, only 14 survived. Many criticised Vilhjálmur, the expedition leader, for lack of proper planning and preparation and for leaving the helpless crew on the doomed ship. Still, the teams’ geographical accomplishments were widely praised. Vilhjálmur’s team were the first Europeans to see several islands in the Arctic Archipelago, including Meighen Island, Brock Island, and Mackenzie King Island. Vilhjálmur claimed that his team was the first and only ever to set foot on Borden Island, located at a latitude of 78°. He suggested that these distant islands could one day flourish as mining towns, bringing great wealth to Canada.

Vilhjálmur and his team were the first people known to survive living on drifting ice sheets, the largest of which was 40 km [25 mi] in diameter. With dog sledges and all their critical gear, he and his team would hop from one ice sheet to the next, sometimes riding the ocean currents opposite their intended direction. For this reason, their 1,000 km [621 mi] journey across the Beaufort Sea lasted 97 days, including a week’s delay at the edge of an ice sheet and a backward drift of 35 km [22 mi]. Vilhjálmur stayed in the Arctic for the next four years, travelling thousands of kilometres more and only returning to his cluttered Greenwich Village apartment in New York City after a near-fatal bout of illness in 1918.

CATTLE HERDER TO ARCTIC ANTHROPOLOGIST

Vilhjálmur Stefánsson (November 3, 1879 – August 26, 1962) was born in Manitoba,

Canada, in the Icelandic settlement of Arnes on the shore of Lake Winnipeg. Growing up in the Icelandic community of Mountain, North Dakota, Vilhjálmur learned English at school, proving himself an eager student. In his late teens, he worked as a herder of cattle and horses, developing skills in hunting, camping, and survival in a cold climate. He kept the cattle on the prairie through the winter, spending the season more or less alone with the animals. Later, he wrote that the scenery on Banks Island in the Arctic reminded him of the open prairies of North Dakota. “An Arctic blizzard,” he said, “wasn’t any more fearsome than the North Dakota variety.”

In 1906, when he was 27, Harvard University recommended Vilhjálmur as an anthropologist for the Anglo-American Polar Expedition. When the explorers failed to make their rendezvous with him on the Arctic coast, he used the trip as a training mission. He sought out mentors among the Inuit, studied their language, and honed his cold-weather survival skills. In his own words, “living with them was much better from an ethnological point of view than merely living amongst them, as other white men had done.” Vilhjálmur rose to the challenge of immersion, learning their native language fluently, which would be of great advantage in ensuing expeditions.

A DIET OF FISH AND FRESHWATER

Between 1906 and 1918 Vilhjálmur travelled some 32,000 km [19,900 mi] on foot and explored some 160,000 sq km [62,000 sq mi] of bleak and ever-perilous Arctic land and ice. He made three trips, spending about ten years in the far North. Enduring frequent ice and snow storms, Vilhjálmur often had to eke out a meagre existence in the darkness and isolation with the ever-looming threat of starvation. Describing one expedition, Vilhjálmur wrote: “For four and a half months I lived literally on nothing but fish and freshwater, and occasionally some polar bear blubber. At the end of these four and a half months, I was as healthy as I’d ever been before, enjoying every meal.”

When asked why he had never gone to the North Pole, Vilhjálmur would relish in comparing himself to other well-known polar explorers, such as Norwegian Roald Amundsen, American Robert Peary, and the Anglo-Irish Ernest Shackleton, by replying smugly; “I’m a scientist, not a tourist.” To those who viewed his accomplishments with wonder, Vilhjálmur would gently admonish: “Having an adventure shows that someone is incompetent, that something has gone wrong. An adventure is interesting enough in retrospect, especially to the person who didn’t have it.”

LEARNING FROM THE LOCALS

In an interview late in his career, Vilhjálmur wrestled with the fundamental question asked of explorers: why go at all? His answer: “From the point of view of an anthropologist I was primarily interested in the people who lived in the far North, their language, culture, religion and so on. And then, my interests gradually shifted into geographic channels. I became interested in discovering new lands.”

He listed the skills of Inuit hunting as essential for Arctic explorers, stating that “training a good hunter should take as much time as training a surgeon.” Once a potential explorer has proved himself as a true hunter, food need not be a major concern. “We managed to get more than 100 pounds of food for every bullet we fired. We mostly ate seal, caribou and muskox meat. Six pounds of ammunition would feed three men and six dogs for two years.” While many might baulk at a diet of mostly meat, Vilhjálmur was resolute; “Better food than wolf steak doesn’t exist.”

In 1927-28, when he was 36, he and a companion from one of his Arctic trips lived on nothing but meat and water for a year (under close medical supervision). Vilhjálmur was proud to report that specialists had afterwards deemed him fit and in perfect health. As for equipment, Vilhjálmur says, “Rifles, cameras, pencils and writing paper and, most importantly,

really good field glasses [binoculars]. Apart from that you don’t need anything.” As for the key to becoming well-adapted to the Arctic: “A healthy body and cheerful disposition.” Adding, with a grin, “It’s not hard to be cheerful once you’ve adapted to living up there.”

Vilhjálmur was convinced that by learning the ways of the Inuit, anyone could successfully adapt to living in the Arctic. “You must learn the way of the animals, just as you learn the ways of the Eskimos.” Vilhjálmur did not believe that Inuit were physiologically better suited to Arctic conditions, saying that “... physiological adaptation to living in the Arctic [...] is negligible. But there’s great room for mental adaptation. [...] And you’ll need good clothing and good health. The Eskimos invented the best clothing that man has ever had in the North. And the best houses are the Eskimo houses.”

Many have suggested quotations such as these demonstrate that Vilhjálmur was ahead of his time in his admiration and respect for the Inuit and their way of life. He once lamented: “It is a great weakness that we go to the Eskimos to teach them rather than to learn from them.” Despite his public opinions, his treatment of Inuit was far from perfect.

A SUICIDE MISSION

In 1921, after retiring from Arctic exploration, a 42-year-old Vilhjálmur promoted the settlement of Wrangel Island off the northern coast of Siberia, a bit of frozen land roughly the size of Crete, and the last known habitat of woolly mammoths. His ambitious plan was to transform the desolate, uninhabited place into a thriving British colony. Although Wrangel Island was generally recognised as Soviet-Russian territory, the idea garnered attention and promises of financial support. Both the risks to the colonists’ well-being and the danger of creating an international territorial incident were largely ignored by Vilhjálmur.

According to his plan, four ill-equipped and inexperienced young men and an Iñupiat woman, Ada Blackjack (née Delutuk), were sent to Wrangel Island to set up a base camp, raise the Union Jack, and formally colonise the place. The experiment predictably ended after two years of utter tragedy. Three of the men died as they struggled to hike across 1,000 kilometres [621 mi] of ice to the mainland.

Apart from a cat the men had brought with them, the only survivor was Ada, who cared for the last struggling man until his death from scurvy. Then she endured eight months on Wrangel Island alone. Her account of the tragedy was widely covered, and her condemnation of Vilhjalmur’s organisational talents contrasted sharply with his own portrayal of himself in his 1921 book The Friendly Arctic. The Wrangel Island tragedy following just a few years after the Karluk catastrophe severely tainted Vilhjálmur’s reputation. For the rest of his career, his mixed identity as a scientist and showman was a repeated point of attack.

REJECTED FAMILY

In 1908, when Vilhjálmur was 29 years old, he was introduced to an Inuit seamstress named Fanny Pannigabluk and hired her on the spot to accompany him on his next expedition. During his second trip to the Arctic, Vilhjálmur and Pannigabluk became intimate. Although Vilhjálmur’s journals make it plain that “Pan,” as he called her, was critical to his physical survival and the success of his anthropological research, in his published writings, she is referred to merely as his seamstress and cook, albeit an accomplished assistant. The couple had a son, Alex, in 1909 and the family remained together for the next three years of the trip.

In 1915 Vilhjálmur was reunited with Pan and Alex. He developed a relationship with his son, teaching him to speak, read, and write English. At the end of his Arctic sojourning, Vilhjálmur allegedly wanted to take his 9-year-old son back to New York City, but Fanny was against it. It was the one argument she won. “He would have starved if it weren’t for me,” Fanny is reported to have said following Vilhjálmur’s departure in 1918. Vilhjálmur, on the other hand, drew on his memories of Alex for a series of children’s books that he co-wrote in the 1920s, notably Kak,

the Copper Eskimo, about the relationship between an Inuit boy and an explorer.

After Vilhjálmur left the Arctic for the last time in 1918, he completely ignored Fanny and Alex, and later in life was seen destroying documents pertaining to his Inuit family. There are indications that Vilhjálmur paid regular invoices for Pan’s account at the Hudson Bay Company store, but otherwise, he cut all contact. Vilhjálmur’s Inuit descendants consider the couple to have been married, pointing out that Vilhjálmur did not marry again until after Pan died in 1940. Along with an uneasy sense of pride, some resentment remained among his grandchildren that the famous explorer abandoned his wife and son when he was just nine years old. Alex Stefánsson, who gave Vilhjálmur Stefánsson six grandchildren that his father would never meet, died in 1966 at the age of 56.

WORDS VERSUS ACTIONS

As an explorer, Vilhjálmur was highly successful, becoming the first European to see and map several land masses. His contribution to Inuit ethnography and anthropological field methods should not be overlooked. He was one of the few anthropologists who pioneered the model of participant observation, and he spent his life as a cheerleader for the North. Vilhjálmur’s message was that the Arctic was not a peripheral frozen wasteland populated by savages, but the centre of the Earth, where America, Europe, and Asia meet. He published some 24 books and more than 400 articles on his travels and observations. He collected all manner of documents and books about the Arctic, amassing a collection of some 100,000 items, later incorporated into Dartmouth University’s library, by far the most comprehensive collection of the time.

In his diaries and publications, Vilhjálmur presents himself as the heroic image of a masculine hunter and explorer, engaged in perilous excursions in the wild, Arctic domain of dangerous animals and exotic “natives.” This portrayal is based on fact, but ignores his egocentric inclinations. Vilhjálmur’s success as an explorer, and his own dramatic accounts of them, “have tended to obscure the fact that he was primarily an anthropologist,” as one of his biographers points out.

In his very first book, Vilhjálmur challenges the prejudice that Inuit are in any way inferior to white people. “A land may be said to be discovered for the first time when a European, presumably an Englishman, sets foot on it.” He challenged the stereotype of the “Eskimo” as a primitive, inferior race, instead presenting them as models of successful adaptation and, notably, for those who strive to live in the Arctic, teachers from whom we have much to learn. This open-mindedness did not extend to acknowledging his Inuit family, however. While his legacy is ultimately controversial, it retains the power to challenge us.