Introduction

Vilhjalmur Stefansson dragging a seal back to camp. This picture was the cover photo for Stefansson’s book, “The Friendly Arctic,” published in 1921.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson

 “More than anyone else, perhaps, Vilhjalmur Stefansson both mapped and defined the Arctic in Western discourse, paving the way for authentic accounts of Inuit society, more informed and less ethnocentric than those previously available”.  Gisli Pálsson, Stefansson biographer, http://www.thearctic.is/articles/topics/legacystefansson/enska/index.htm

Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879-1962) played an important role in Arctic history and affairs as an explorer, anthropologist, public intellectual, and policy adviser who brought the Arctic to the popular imagination as one of the last “Heroic Age” explorers of the North. He had key roles in three important Arctic expeditions: Anglo-American Polar Expedition 1906-1908; Stefansson-Anderson Expedition 1908-1912; and the Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913-1916. A sought after lecturer, Stefansson traveled the world and published numerous books (e.g., “My Life with the Eskimo” 1913, “The Friendly Arctic: The Story of Five Years in the Polar Regions” 1921, “The Northward Course of Empire” 1922) and popular press articles recounting his expeditions and projecting a vision for the future importance of the Arctic.  Through his writings and international status, he became both an influential and controversial figure in Arctic history.

Stefansson had a long association with Dartmouth College giving occasional lectures here in the 1920s and 30s. In 1946, Stefansson was handed perhaps his greatest challenge and opportunity for legacy. He was contracted by the US Office of Naval Research to lead a project to assemble the most complete work on the Arctic, the Encyclopedia Arctica. In 1947, Stefansson with his wife and assistant Evelyn, moved to Vermont and became an Arctic Consultant to the College. Stefansson supported by Evelyn drew together a team of experts from around the Arctic to contribute chapters to the opus. The team labored on the Encyclopedia Arctica for five years before it was canceled in 1951. The unpublished chapters, correspondence and reference materials amassed during the project became part of Dartmouth’s Stefansson Collection on Polar Exploration, housed in the Rauner Library.  Now digitized and available on line, the Encyclopedia Arctica is a treasure of information on the Arctic environment, peoples, and politics in the critical period leading up to the Cold War. Stefansson continued his writing and teaching at Dartmouth following the demise of this grand project.  He died in Hanover, New Hampshire in 1962 where he is buried.

This virtual exhibit is a learning collaboration between the Rauner Special Collections Library at Dartmouth College and “Pole to Pole,” an environmental studies course taught by Professor Ross Virginia. The course examines environmental issues in the polar regions – including climate change, natural resource extraction, and indigenous rights – through the complementary lenses of science, policy, and history. The Rauner Library houses the entirety of the Stefansson Collection on Polar Exploration, including the Encyclopedia Arctica. The Stefansson Collection, one of the richest bodies of printed materials, journals, newspaper clippings, and photographs related to the polar regions, served as the foundation for the course project.

In Fall 2017, 52 Dartmouth undergraduate students, working in small groups, constructed this exhibit on the Encyclopedia Arctica, including its inspiration, content and ultimate demise. With the assistance of Rauner Library staff, students selected items from or about the Encyclopedia, wrote informative labels, and worked together to structure the exhibit into sections. The resulting exhibit explores how Stefansson’s expeditions to the Arctic formed the basis of the Encyclopedia, its role in promoting Arctic development and influencing geopolitics, and the ultimate failure of its publication. Although the text presented here has been edited for formatting, this website is the work of Dartmouth undergraduate students.

 

Acknowledgements

This project would not have been possible without the expert guidance and individual student mentoring provided by Dr. Jay Satterfield (Special Collections Librarian), Morgan Swan (Special Collections Education and Outreach Librarian), and Julia Logan (Assistant Archivist for Acquisitions). Fiona Jevon (Graduate Teaching Assistant) spent many hours working with students and the research groups to find sources, focus concepts, and work on presentations. She created this website with the assistance of Angela Spickard (Research Associate in Environmental Studies) and Reyn Hutten (Dartmouth Class of 2021). This project was part of Environmental Studies 15, Environmental Issues of the Earth’s Cold Regions, taught in Fall term 2017.