Blond Eskimos

Blonde Eskimos or Blond Eskimos is a term first applied in accounts of sightings of, and encounters with, light-haired Inuit (then known as "Eskimo") peoples of Northern Canada from the early 20th century, particularly around the Coronation Gulf between mainland Canada and Victoria Island. Sightings of light-haired natives of the Arctic have been mentioned in written accounts as far back as the 17th century.

Etymology

Christian Klengenberg is credited with having introduced the term "Blonde Eskimo" to Vilhjalmur Stefansson just before Stefansson's visit to the Inuit inhabiting southwestern Victoria Island, in 1910. Stefansson, however, preferred the term "Copper Inuit". Adolphus Greely first compiled the sightings recorded in earlier literature of blonde or fair-haired Arctic natives, and in 1912 published them in the National Geographic Magazine, in an article entitled "The Origin of Stefansson's Blonde Eskimo". Newspapers subsequently popularised the term "Blonde Eskimo", which caught more readers' attention despite Stefansson's preference for "Copper Inuit". Stefansson later referenced Greely's work in his writings, and the term "Blonde Eskimo" came to be applied to sightings of light-haired Inuit from as early as the 17th century.

Early history of sightings

Greely traced the first sighting of light-haired Arctic natives to 1656 when a Dutch trading vessel travelled west from Greenland across the Davis Strait towards Baffin Island. Nicholas Tunes, the captain of the vessel, claimed to have sighted two distinct races, the first being the brownish-skinned Inuit, but the second being a tall, fair-skinned people. Greely also published the eyewitness account of the Lutheran missionary Hans Egede who wrote in 1721 of a blonde "quite handsome and white" indigenous tribe he had discovered in Greenland.