STEFANSSON, Vilhjalmur, Arctic explorer: b. Ames, Manitoba, Canada, 3 Nov. 1879. He received his education at the State University of North Dakota and the State University of Iowa. In 1903-04 he studied at the Harvard Divinity School, and in 1904-06 at the Harvard Graduate School. His early years were spent on a farm; in 1893-96 he was a cow-boy; at different times he was employed as school teacher, life insurance agent, organ izer of secret society lodges, public lecturer, reporter on the Boston Evening Transcript, city editor of the Plaindealer, Grand Forks, N. D., and assistant instructor in anthropology at Harvard University. In 1904 he undertook a private expedition to Iceland and in 1905 undertook an archeological expedition to Ice land for Harvard University. In he made an ethnological expedition to the Eskimo of the mouth of the Mackenzie River and north ern Alaska for the universities of Harvard and Toronto. He undertook a second Arctic expedition under the auspices of the Ameri can Museum of Natural History and the Geo logical Survey of Canada, accompanied by Dr. Rudolph M. Anderson, zoologist, in 1908-12; made investigations and collections in geog raphy, geology, ethnology, archaeology, zoology, botany, etc., reported so-called blond Eskimo found on both sides of Dolphin and Union straits and Coronation Gulf and visited several tribes whose ancestors had never and who them selves had never seen a white man. Stefinsson
was commander of the Canadian Arctic expedi tion which sailed from Victoria, British Colum bia, in June 1913, for four years of exploration north of Canada and Alaska. With two com panions he crossed Beaufort Sea on moving ice from Martin Point, Alaska, to the northwest cor ner of Banks Island. With three companions he explored the sea west of Prince Patrick Island to the north of which he discovered a new land in 1915. In September 1915 he left Cape Bathurst with the schooner Polar Bear, out fitted for two years' further exploration of land already discovered, and seas to the west and north. He returned in 1918, and in the same year was awarded the Charles P. Daly medal of the American Geographical Society. V. Stefinsson has published 'Arctic Search' (1913) ; Life with the Eskimo' (19143; and many scientific articles in journals of an thropology, folklore, philology, geography; also popular articles on literature of Iceland in Poet-Lore and on the Eskimo and Arctic travel, chiefly in Harper's Magazine after 1906.