1879–1933
Knud Rasmussen, full name Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen, Greenlandic name Kunuunnguaq
Knud Rasmussen · 格陵兰
1879–1933, Greenlandic–Danish polar explorer and anthropologist, known as the "father of Eskimo studies".
Born on 7 June 1879 in Jakobshavn (now Ilulissat), his father was a Danish missionary and his mother of Inuit–Danish descent; as a child he learned Greenlandic, hunting, and dog sledding among the Kalaallit people; in 1902–1904 he took part in the Danish Literary Expedition studying Inuit culture, and in 1908 published *The People of the Polar North*; in 1910 he founded the Thule trading station at Cape York, using it as a base for seven Thule expeditions, and in the Fifth Thule Expedition of 1921–1924 became the first European to cross the Northwest Passage by dog sled; he died in Copenhagen in 1933.
People & stories
Places in their life
Born in Ilulissat; places of activity Thule (Cape York) and the Greenland Arctic region.
People
Cultural significance
He recorded Arctic culture in the Inuit people's own language and way of life, leaving a large body of folk tales and ethnographic material, and is an important figure in Greenland's modern cultural identity.