Letter from Joseph-Fidèle Bernard to Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 05 April 1924

The largest city in the United States. The home city of Vilhjalmur Stefansson in the 1920s.

An island off the coast of Siberia, Russia.

Town that the Wrangel Island expedition and relief expedition sailed from.

Born William Stephenson in 1879 in Manitoba, Canada, Stefansson was an explorer, anthropologist, public intellectual, and policy adviser whose life work included several important expeditions to the Arctic. He began planning an expedition to Wrangel Island somewhat secretly beginning in the fall of 1920, hoping to definitively claim Wrangel Island for Canada or Britain. As his active exploring career had already ended, he stayed in Canada while the team went to Wrangel Island. Ill-equipped and inexperienced, all four men hired by Stefansson died in 1923; Ada Blackjack was the sole survivor of the trip. Stefansson had a significant association with Dartmouth College, beginning in the 1920s and 30s when he was an occasional lecturer. In 1947, he moved to Vermont with his wife, working on the Encyclopedia Arctica and becoming an Arctic Consultant to the College. Though the Encyclopedia Arctica project was canceled in 1951, its unpublished chapters and associated materials are now housed in the Rauner Library as part of the Stefansson Collection on Polar Exploration. Stefansson continued teaching and writing at Dartmouth until his death in 1962 in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he is now buried.

Nome, Alaska, businessman. Owned a photography studio with his brothers. Associate of Stefansson.

Captain of the boat, The Teddy Bear. Made a failed attempt in 1922 to reach Wrangel Island.

Associate of Captain Bernard in Ketchikan, Alaska?