Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen (June 7, 1879–December 21, 1933) was a Greenlandic polar explorer and anthropologist. He has been called the "father of Eskimology"[1] and was the first to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled.[2] He remains well known in Greenland, Denmark and among Canadian Inuit.[3]
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Biography
Rasmussen was born in Jakobshavn,(his brother was Peter Lim) Greenland, the son of a Danish missionary and Inuit mother. He spent his early years in Greenland among the Inuit where he learned from an early age to speak the language, hunt, drive dog sleds and live in harsh Arctic conditions. "My playmates were native Greenlanders; from the earliest boyhood I played and worked with the hunters, so even the hardships of the most strenuous sledge-trips became pleasant routine for me."[4] He was later educated in Lynge, North Zealand, Denmark. Between 1898 and 1900 he pursued an unsuccessful career as an actor and opera singer.[3] He went on his first expedition in 1902–1904, known as "The Literature Expedition", with Jørgen Brønlund, Harald Moltke and Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, to examine Inuit culture. After returning home he went on a lecture circuit and wrote The People of the Polar North (1908), a combination travel journal and scholarly account of Inuit folk-lore. In 1908 he married Dagmar Andersen. In 1910, Rasmussen and friend Peter Freuchen established the Thule Trading Station at Cape York (Uummannaq), Greenland, as a trading base.[3] The name Thule was chosen because it was the most northernly trading post in the world, literally the "Ultima Thule".[4] Thule Trading Station became the home base for a series of seven expeditions, known as the Thule Expeditions, between 1912 and 1933. The First Thule Expedition (1912, Rasmussen and Freuchen) aimed to test Robert Peary's claim that a channel divided Peary Land from Greenland. They proved this was not the case in a remarkable 1,000-km journey across the inland ice that almost killed them.[3] Clements Markham, president of the Royal Geographic Society, called the journey the "finest ever performed by dogs."[5] Freuchen wrote personal accounts of this journey (and others) in Vagrant Viking (1953) and I Sailed with Rasmussen (1958). The Second Thule Expedition (1916-1918) was larger with a team of seven men, which set out to map a little known area of Greenland's north coast. This journey was documented in Rasmussen's account Greenland by the Polar Sea (1921). The trip was beset with two fatalities, the only in Rasmussen's career.[3] The Third Thule Expedition (1919) was depot-laying for Roald Amundsen's polar drift in Maud.[3] The Fourth Thule Expedition (1919-1920) was in east Greenland where Rasmussen spent several months collecting ethnographic data near Angmagssalik.[3] Rasmussen's "greatest achievement"[3] was the massive Fifth Thule Expedition (1921-1924) which was designed to "..attack the great primary problem of the origin of the Eskimo race."[4] A ten volume account (The Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-1924 (1946)) of ethnographic, archaeological and biological data was collected, and many artifacts are still on display in museums in Denmark. The team of seven first went to eastern Arctic Canada where they began collecting specimens, taking interviews and excavations. Rasmussen left the team and traveled for 16 months with two Inuit hunters by dog-sled across North America to Nome, Alaska - he tried to continue to Russia but his visa was refused.[3] He was the first person to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled.[2] His journey is recounted in Across Arctic America (1927), considered today a classic of polar expedition literature.[3] This trip has also been called the "Great Sled Journey" and was dramatized in the Canadian film The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (2006). For the next seven years Rasmussen traveled between Greenland and Denmark giving lectures and writing. In 1931 he went on the Sixth Thule Expedition, designed to consolidate Denmark's claim on a portion of eastern Greenland that was contested by Norway.[3] The Seventh Thule Expedition (1933) was meant to continue to the work of the sixth, but Rasmussen contracted pneumonia after an episode of food poisoning, dying a few weeks later in Copenhagen at the age of 54.
Notes
Bibliography
Primary
- Rasmussen, Knud (1908). The People of the Polar North. Edited by G. Herring.
- Rasmussen, Knud (1921). Greenland by the Polar Sea: The Story of the Thule Expedition from Melville Bay to Cape Morris Jesup. Trans by Asta and Rowland Kenny. Published by W. Heinemann.
- Rasmussen, Knud (1927). Across Arctic America: Narrative of the Fifth Thule Expedition.
- Rasmussen, Knud (author), Cole, Terrence (introduction, editor). Across Arctic America: Narrative of the Fifth Thule Expedition. University of Alaska Press; Reprint edition (February 1999). ISBN 0912006935 (hard) ISBN 0912006943 (paper).
- Rasmussen, Knud (1946-52). The Fifth Thule Expedition, 10 volumes. Published posthumously by fellow expeditioners.
Secondary
- Cruwys, Elizabeth (2003). "Rasmussen, Knud (1879-1933)", in Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia, volume 3. ISBN 1579582478
- Malaurie, Jean (1982). The Last Kings of Thule: With the Polar Eskimos, as They Face Their Destiny, trans. Adrienne Folk.
- Markham, Clements R. (1921). The Lands of Silence: A History of Arctic and Antarctic Exploration. Cambridge University Press.
Online
- Rasmussen, Knud (collector), Worster, W. (editor, translator). Eskimo Folk Tales. London: Gylglendal, etc. 1921. Scanned, illustrated at Internet Archive
- Rasmussen, Knud. Across Arctic Anerica: Narrative of the Fifth Thule Expedition. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1927. Scanned, illustrated, at Internet Archive.
External links
- Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen, biography by Sam Alley. Minnesota State University.
- Knud Rasmussen College, Greenland.
- Knud Rasmussens House, Denmark
- Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen at Find A Grave
