Across Arctic America: Narrative of the Fifth Thule Expedition

Between 1921 and 1924, Knud Rasmussen led a small band of colleagues in a journey of investigation across the top of North America. The full scientific report of that 20,000-mile trek by dog sled from Greenland to Siberia, known to history as the Firth Thule Expedition, fills ten volumes. This single volume, Across Arctic America, is Rasmussen’s own reworking and condensation of his two-volume popular account written in Danish, and gives the essence of his experience of the Arctic and its people.             It was the people who most captivated the Greenland-born Rasmussen, who had become a virtual adopted son to the Eskimos of the far northern district still known by the name of the trading post he established there, Thule. His first four Thule Expeditions extended the limits of the known world in Greenland solely, but Rasmussen’s Fifth Thule Expedition demonstrated the unity of the Eskimo world from the Atlantic Ocean to the Chukchi Sea, proving the people all shared the same basic language and culture. As historian Terrence Cole notes in his introductory biography, “The intellectual and spiritual life of the people themselves were his primary interest, not simply geographical discovery, and thus even when following the tracks of previous explorers, he found uncharted territory. His basic principle was to first earn the trust of the local people by showing understanding and patience: living with the people and not apart from them, sharing their work and their food….” That was how Rasmussen approached the entire Arctic: he did not live apart from it, skimming over its surface like the fame-seeking polar explorers of the time such as Peary and Cook, but immersed himself in it—so successfully that a Canadian Inuit elder once marveled that he was “the first white man [he had ever seen] who was also an Eskimo.”             Of most significance to readers today, though, is that Rasmussen was also a noted writer. He wanted to share not just the observations he made but the feelings he experienced, and so in Across Arctic America offered what fellow arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson described as “not only a work of literary charm but also one of the deepest and soundest interpretations” of Eskimo life ever put into a book.             This volume, published in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the completion of the Fifth Thule Expedition, includes an introduction by Classic Reprint Series editor Terrance Cole and an index.

History

RASMUSSEN, KNUD

World

University of Alaska Press

Excerpt from Greenland by the Polar Sea: The Story of the Thule Expedition From Melville Bay to Cape Morris JesupRasmussen's tribute to the work done by his predecessors in Arctic exploration is most generous and discriminating; he shows that he understood their difficulties, though they were not his in the same way, and what they accomplished he is eager to recognize and admire. They, or such of them as remain, in their turn are glad and ready to say that what he and his com panions have added to the sum of Polar knowledge by their detailed mapping of the coast-lands - the fauna, &#64258;ora, and geological formation of the north-western section of Greenland and its connection with the discoveries of the eastern coasts has set the crown on the labours of those who have toiled before him in the same field, and that his fine achievement has for ever put him in the front rank of Polar explorers.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Greenland by the Polar Sea: The Story of the Thule Expedition From Melville Bay to Cape Morris Jesup (Classic Reprint)

Literature & Fiction

Action & Adventure

Forgotten Books

Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik EskimosAnd it has always been one of my main objects, in the portrayal of primitive culture, to get the natives' own views of life and its problems, their own ideas expressed in their own fashion. This was often quite as important to me as eliciting new elements in their religious and spiritual life.I therefore think it will not be out of place to commence this book with an account of my method of work and the manner in which I first gained the confidence of my Eskimo collaborators.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Excerpt from Observations on the Intellectual Culture of the Caribou EskimosWhile with these people I endeavoured especially to enter into their intellectual life and their religious notions, and in the following I shall describe the results of these studies. But if my statement is to some extent summary and the material is presented in somewhat raw form, it is because this tribe has already been dealt with so thoroughly by birket-smith that my contribution aims merely at revealing certain aspects of this people's intellectual culture which are not included in birket-smith's book.It is true that the Caribou Eskimos in these regions have formerly been visited by such prominent travellers as the Tyrrell brothers and by Hanbury, but as these expeditions had other objects than the study of the people, and particularly as none of them could speak Eskimo. The material we succeeded in procuring will in all essentials be new.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Observations on the Intellectual Culture of the Caribou Eskimos (Classic Reprint)

Greenland by the Polar Sea; The Story of the Thule Expedition from Melville Bay to Cape Morris Jesup

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Greenland by the Polar Sea; the Story of the Thule Expedition From Melville bay to Cape Morris Jesup

Americas

Franklin Classics

Eskimo Folk-tales

Worster, W J. Alexander 1882-1929

The people of the Polar north: a record

The People Of The Polar North: A Record

Arctic & Antarctica

Observations on the intellectual culture of the Caribou Eskimos

AMS Press

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