Travelling passions

Canadian writer Rudy Wiebe once said of the Arctic explorer and anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879-1962) that “Stefansson is so fascinating a character that he must be avoided; the whale which was his life would swallow any storyteller”. Anthropologist Gisli Palsson, who has recently published Travelling Passions: The Hidden Life of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, will give a lecture about Stefansson's life and work.

Stefansson’s radical philosophy stemmed from his willingness to depend on, and learn from the Inuit while living amongst them during his northern explorations. Unlike contemporary heroes of the extreme north, Stefansson did not travel around or across the arctic regions; he travelled into their cultures and environments. His legacy is closely connected with human-environmental relations, the sustainable use of natural resources and the survival of northern communities, now under threat due to rapid social and environmental change.

Stefansson coined the phrase the “friendly Arctic” to describe his philosophy about the Arctic: that we should learn from the descendants of generations who had lived in the north for hundreds of years, who had transmitted knowledge from one generation to the next, and who had adapted to the environment. As a popularizer of the North, he hoped that his large newspaper readership and his radio listeners would come to a new appreciation of the potential of the northern regions.

Stefansson's extensive scientific expeditions into the unexplored regions of Northern Canada constitute impressive achievements in the fields of both exploration and research, and include numerous elements of the societies and natural environment of the north. Between 1906 and 1918 Stefansson spent a total of ten winters and seven summers travelling through the northern regions. With his companions, he travelled on foot and by dog sledge, covering a distance of approximately 32,000 kilometres, often in extreme conditions.

The lecture is jointly sponsored by the Scott Polar Research Institute and the Stefansson Arctic Institute.

This lecture is open to the public.