Dates

• Existence: 1879-1962

Biography

Much of this biographical note was drawn from Lynn Gordon Hughes' article, located online at the following Unitarian Universalist Historical Society Web page http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/vilhjalmurstefansson.html   Vilhjalmur E. 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.

Citation:

Author: Denise Anderson, June 2007

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