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Posted 10/21/02, by James Donnelly
Ólafur Ragner Grímsson, President of Iceland
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Public lecture Friday, Nov. 1
Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, President of Iceland, will deliver the Stefansson Memorial Lecture in Moore Hall's Filene Auditorium at 4 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 1. His talk will explore the connection between Dartmouth, Iceland and Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson. This event is free and open to the public. Grímsson's visit also marks the opening of the Friendly Arctic exhibit at the Montshire Museum which runs Nov. 2 through Dec. 8. The exhibit is a collaborative project between The Stefansson Arctic Institute in Akureyri, Iceland, and Dartmouth.
"I am delighted that President Grímsson is visiting the campus," said President James Wright. "Dartmouth is extremely proud of the Stefansson Collection, and we are honored that someone of his distinction will deliver the Stefansson lecture this year."
Philip Cronenwett, Special Collections Librarian, noted, "This year the Stefansson lecture highlights the cooperation between Dartmouth and the Stefansson Arctic Institute. Our extensive arctic collection sheds a great deal of light on the history of arctic exploration, in which Stefansson was a key figure."
Grímsson, 59, a former chairman of the People's Alliance Party, was elected President of the Republic of Iceland in 1996 and reelected to a second four-year term in 2000. He is the fifth President in the 58-year history of Iceland and holds a doctorate in political science. He was a professor at the University of Iceland and later a Member of Althingi, the Icelandic legislative assembly, and has served as Minister of Finance.
Established in 2000, The Stefansson Memorial Lecture is sponsored by Evelyn Stefansson Nef and the government of Iceland and honors Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the noted arctic explorer and ethnologist. Stefansson was born in 1879 in the Icelandic community of Gimli in Manitoba, Canada. He traveled extensively in the arctic on foot and by dog sled between 1906 and 1918, covering a distance of about 20,000 miles before returning to United States and settling as an author and a lecturer. Steffansson lectured at Dartmouth in the 1930s and 1940s and in 1951 was appointed as Arctic Consultant for the College. In 1952, through a gift from the Stefanssons and Albert Bradley '15, Dartmouth's library acquired much of his library, including thousands of books and prints, as part of the Stefansson Collection on Polar Exploration.
The Friendly Arctic exhibition, on display at the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, Vt., features displays and interactive exhibits which tell the story of everyday life among the Inuit people and charts Stefansson's own travels in the arctic. The Montshire is a hands-on museum offering dozens of exhibits relating to the natural and physical sciences, ecology, and technology.
- James Donnelly
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