Blond Eskimos

Blond Eskimos is a term first applied to sightings and encounters of light haired indigenous peoples of the Arctic Circle region from the early 20th century, particularly around the Coronation Gulf between mainland Canada and Victoria Island. Sightings of light haired natives of the Arctic however stretch back to written accounts from the 17th century.

Christian Klengenberg is first credited to have introduced the term "Blonde Eskimo" to Vilhjalmur Stefansson just before Stefansson's visit to the Inuit inhabiting southwestern Victoria Island, Canada, in 1910. Stefansson, though, preferred the term Copper Inuit.Adolphus Greely in 1912 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 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" became applied to sightings of light haired Eskimos from as early as the 17th century.

Greely traced the first sighting of blonde-haired Arctic natives to 1656 when a Dutch trading vessel traveled west from Greenland across the Davis Strait towards Baffin Island. Nicholas Tunes, the captain of the vessel, claimed sighting two distinct races, the first being the brownis- 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.

Later sightings include those made by William Edward Parry, who wrote of native inhabitants across the Qikiqtaaluk Region, Canada, as having physical features of Europeans (e.g. blonde hair and light complexions) and later Captain Graah of the Danish Royal Navy, who in 1821 reported Eskimos he met with "complexions scarcely less fair then that of Danish peasantry". British navy officer John Franklin in 1824 also claimed he had come close in contact and even spoken with a "Blonde Eskimo" who had strong European facial features. Greenlandic polar explorer Knud Rasmussen in 1903 further claimed to have found blonde-haired Eskimos "of a different race" in Greenland and parts of Canada.

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