Canadian explorer, born at Arnes, MB, on the 3rd of November 1879, of Icelandic parentage. He was educated at the universities of North Dakota and Iowa, and afterwards at Harvard. He became a newspaper reporter, but later was appointed to an instructorship of anthropology at Harvard, and became deeply interested in the problems of the Arctic regions. He made a private expedition to Iceland in 1904, and the following year returned with a Harvard archæological expedition. He visited the Eskimo of northern Alaska (1906–7), and in 1908 started on a four years’ expedition to the Arctic shores of Canada under the auspices of the Geological Survey of Canada and the American Museum of Natural History, with interesting results. In 1913 Stefánsson was appointed commander of the Canadian Arctic expedition which sailed from Victoria, BC, in June of that year to explore the northern shores of Canada and Alaska. In 1914, with two companions, he crossed Beaufort Sea on the moving ice from Martin Point, AK, to the northwestern corner of Banks I.; in 1915 he visited the sea west of Prince Patrick I. and discovered more land to the north; and in 1916 discovered land west of Axel Heiberg Island. The following year he travelled, again over moving ice, as far as lat. 80° 30′ N. and long. 112° W. The expedition returned to Canada in 1918. Stefánsson published My Life with the Eskimo (1913), The Friendly Arctic (1921) and an anthropological report on the expedition of 1908–12, besides many articles in scientific journals. He received many honours from learned societies.
