Stef: A Biography of Vilhjalmur Stefansson

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

‘Stef,’ Vilhjalmur Stefansson, born in Canada but far more celebrated in the United States for his work in the Arctic, maintained that “if the average American or European university graduate had ten ideas about the north, nine of them would be wrong.” He spent his life discovering and publicizing what he called “the friendly Arctic,” and misapplications and misinterpretations of some of the tenets of his belief — that the Arctic could and would support life — had fatal results.

Stefansson’s connections with the loss in the Arctic ice of the ship Karluk with the subsequent loss of 11 lives; the ill-advised Wrangel Island disaster in which four young men attempted their own version of Arctic survival and died; and the publicity surrounding his encounter with the “Copper Eskimos,” kept him at the storm centre of controversy and often of vilification. He weathered all storms to die full of years and honour, as is recounted in this extremely readable and attractive volume. While adequate attention is paid to the accusations of his detractors, particularly those of Rudolph M. Anderson, the most vehement of all, this scholarly work presents convincing proof of the validity and worth of Stefansson’s work, and proves his championship of the north and its resources to have been prophetic and undervalued.