"Stefansson...tells how he became an explorer...how he learned to hunt seal and caribou, what the Eskimo are like and how they live." -Bellingham Herald, Jan. 31, 1923
"Describes...how the Eskimos live, hunt, ...build a snow house,...fish through ice,...hunt seals, caribou and polar bears." -Ottawa Citizen, April 28, 1923
"Tells the remarkable story of his first trip down the Mackenzie...the reader realizes what indomitable pluck must have been required." -Harvard Alumni Bulletin (1922)
"By renowned explorer...was written following his third lengthy trek into the wastelands inhabited primarily by Eskimos, polar bears, caribou and seals." -Abilene Reporter, Nov. 4, 1990

Why did Vilhjalmur Stefansson choose to make so many expeditions to the arctic where he would live for months at a time with the Eskimo, hunting polar bears and caribou? What valuable unknown wilderness skills did Stefansson acquire from the Eskimo before modern civilization had contact with them?

In 1922, arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879 – 1962) would write of his time spent hunting with the Eskimo, in his book "Hunters of the Great North."

Stefansson of North Dakota, was an arctic explorer and ethnologist. Because of his studies of the Eskimos, his discoveries of land, the application of new ideas and new methods of exploration, Stefansson was considered the foremost polar explorer of his day, and one of the few great explorers of all time.

During a period of three or four years Mr. Stefansson has produced a creditable list of books about the Arctic. In some respects his service in publishing the results of his Northern studies has differed from that of earlier explorers. He has challenged our preconceptions about the Arctic. "Hunters of the Great North" gives details of Northern life such as have doubtless come within the experience of all Arctic explorers, but which are new to the average American reader. In short, it is an elementary text-book of the Arctic.

Stefansson lived among the Eskimos of the Mackenzie River, studying their language and adopting their mode of life, and spending ten winters and thirteen summers in the polar regions. Among Stefannson's most famous discovery was that of a race of blond Eskimo on Coronation Gulf.

Stefansson writes:

"In the present book I have tried by means of diaries and memory to go back to the vivid impressions of my first year among the Eskimos for the story of what I saw and heard."

In describing his confrontation with a polar bear, Stefansson writes:

"I heard behind me a noise like the spitting of a cat or the hiss of a goose. I looked back and saw, about twenty feet away and almost above me, a polar bear. I had overestimated the bear's distance from shore, and had passed the spot where he lay. From his eye and attitude, as well as the story his trail told afterward there was no doubting his intentions: the hiss was merely his way of saying, "Watch me do it!" Or at least that is how I interpreted it; possibly the motive was chivalry, and the hiss was his way of saying Garde!"

About the author:

Vilhjalmur Stefansson was born November 3, 1879, and died August 26, 1962. He was an Icelandic American Arctic explorer and ethnologist. He was born in Manitoba, Canada, and died at the age of 82.
Stefansson organized and directed the Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913–1916 to explore the regions west of Parry Archipelago for the Government of Canada. Three ships, the Karluk, the Mary Sachs, and the Alaska were employed.

Stefansson resumed his explorations by sledge over the Arctic Ocean (known locally as the Beaufort Sea), leaving Collinson Point, Alaska in April, 1914. A supporting sledge turned back 75 mi offshore, but he and two men continued onward on one sledge, living largely by his rifle on polar game for 96 days until his party reached the Mary Sachs in the autumn. Stefansson continued exploring until 1918.