STEFANSSON, VILHJALMUR ( g -79- ), Arctic plorer, was born on Nov. 3, 1879, at Arnes, Manitoba, Canada, of Icelandic parents. He graduated from the University of Iowa and later studied theology and anthropology for three years at Harvard university. After two archaeological voyages to Iceland in 1904 and 1905 he turned to Arctic research and had by 1928 spent altogether 1 o winters and 13 summers in scientific work north of the polar circle. In 1906-07 he was ethnologist of the Leffingwell-Mikkelsen expedition on the north coast of Alaska and at the mouth of Mackenzie river; in 1908-12 he com manded an expedition on which he discovered certain Eskimo groups and visited others who had not seen a white man for half a century. From 1913 to 1918 he commanded an arctic expedition under the auspices of the Canadian Government. During more than five years continuously north of the Arctic Circle (the longest Arctic expedition on record) he explored vast regions north of Canada and Alaska, sometimes sledging for months over moving ice, accompanied by two or three companions and living exclu sively by hunting. He discovered between 1915 and 1917 the islands now known as Borden, Brock, Meighen and Lougheed, and several smaller islands. In 1918 his then second in command, Storker Storkerson, taking charge while Stefannson was ill with typhoid fever, explored by sledge, with four companions, the Beaufort sea north of Alaska. They were absent from shore
about eight months, during six of which they were encamped, and lived by hunting, on a floe more than five miles in diameter while it drifted with them 450m. over a previously unexplored ocean from mi. to 3m. deep. They found an abundance of seals every where, had therefore plenty of food and fuel, suffered no hard ships, and reported on their return that they felt sure they could have spent several years on this floe safely. This confirmed the conclusions of all the previous sledge journeys of the expedition over the moving ocean ice—that seal life, and therefore probably other water life, does not necessarily decrease, as was previously believed, farther north in the Arctic. Stefansson has laid great stress on the economic value of the Arctic regions, chiefly as meat supplying countries through the cultivation of the domestic rein deer and the domestication of the ovibos or musk-ox. In 1924 Stefansson visited the Macdonnell ranges of central Australia.