ABOUT VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON
Polar explorer who challenged many of the conventions about the North Pole.
He spent a winter living with the Inuit people and learning their culture.
Instead of thinking of the North Pole as a frozen wilderness with uncivilized natives, he called it the Polar Mediterranean where three continents joined together.
His parents were Icelandic immigrants to Canada.
Previous arctic explorers like Joseph Rene Bellot ignored the people of the land, but Stefansson studied them.
