Knud Rasmussen
Polar Explorer and Anthropologist · 1879–1933
Who is Knud Rasmussen?
Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen was a Greenlandic-Danish polar explorer and anthropologist, born on 7 June 1879 in Jakobshavn (now Ilulissat), Greenland, the son of a Danish missionary, Christian Rasmussen, and an Inuk-Danish mother, Lovise. He grew up speaking Kalaallisut and learned to hunt and drive dog sleds among the Kalaallit, becoming equally at home in Greenlandic and Danish worlds. In 1910 he and Peter Freuchen founded the Thule Trading Station in North Star Bay, which became the base for a series of seven Thule Expeditions between 1912 and 1933. His best-known achievement, the Fifth Thule Expedition (1921-1924), traced the Northwest Passage by dog sled with companions Arnarulunnguaq and Qaavigarsuaq, covering thousands of miles from Greenland across Arctic Canada and Alaska while recording Inuit language, mythology, and oral tradition in unprecedented depth. He published this material in works including Eskimo Folk-Tales (1921), The People of the Polar North (1908), and Across Arctic America (1927), earning him the title "father of Eskimology." He died in Copenhagen in 1933 after complications from food poisoning contracted during his final expedition.
Sources: Knud Rasmussen, Across Arctic America (1927) · Knud Rasmussen, Eskimo Folk-Tales, trans. W. Worster (1921) · Knud Rasmussen, The People of the Polar North (1908)