Background

Helge Ingstad was born on December 30, 1899, in Meråker, Norway.

Ingstad was the son of a former city engineer in Tromsø, factory manager in Kopperå, Olav Ingstad and his wife Olga Marie Qvam from Tromsø. Helge was the brother of the costume historian Gunvor Ingstad Trætberg and the diplomat Kaare Ingstad.

Education

Helge Ingstad with his family moved to Bærum in 1902 and on to Bergen in 1905. In 1911, Ingstad started as a pupil in the middle school at Bergen Cathedral School, and later he attended high school at the same school. After graduating with a Master of Laws in 1922, he first practiced as a magistrate and later a lawyer Levanger.

Career

In 1925 Helge Ingstad stopped the practice as a lawyer. From February to October 1926, he stayed in France. Following a briefcase practice in Levanger, the attraction to outdoor life became stronger than the safe legal work and in 1926 Ingstad went to Arctic Canada, where he lived for four years as a fur hunter. There he got to know the local indigenous people and how to survive in the Arctic. His book about the experiences, Pelsjegerliv (1931), was a great success and his further life and career was based on the lessons of these years in the wilderness. Upon returning home, he quickly won fame for his debut book "Pelsjegerliv among Northern Canada Indians" (1931).

With his background as a lawyer and his experience of life in the Arctic, Ingstad was the foremost candidate to hold the position of Governor of Eirik Raudes Land in Northeast Greenland. This area between 71 ° 30'N and 75 ° 40'N was occupied by Norway from June 27, 1931, to April 5, 1933. At that time, the judgment of the International Court of Justice in The Hague and Denmark was recognized sovereignty throughout Greenland (see Greenland case).

It is common to say that Ingstad was also a governor of Svalbard during the period from July 28, 1933, to September 1, 1935, but his position was as an acting clerk in Svalbard during this first period of the administration of the archipelago, when the governor himself remained largely on the mainland. Governor Johannes Gerckens Bassøe was also a county governor in Troms. Life on Svalbard by boat in the summer and dog sledding in winter suited Ingstad very well. Both his stay in Svalbard and just before in Greenland resulted in best-selling books. In the summer of 1947, he retained for a short period as a governor.

In 1936-1938 Ingstad made a research trip to the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico to study the American indigenous people (apache), and from 1949 to 1950 he visited the Nunamiut people in Brooks Range, Alaska (see Inuit). His recording of Nunamiuten's songs and folk tales from this period is an important simultaneous documentation of this culture.

During the April - May 1940 campaign, Ingstad received assignments from the Red Cross and later also from the Ministry of the Interior in connection with securing supplies to the civilian population, especially in Northern Norway. He was honored by the Norwegian Red Cross for his efforts.

Ingstad was a legal advisor to the court in Lillehammer in connection with the post-war land settlement.

In 1941 Ingstad married the later archaeologist Anne Stine Moe and together they further developed Ingstad's interest in the fate of the Norse Vikings after the landfall there, and for their voyages to America. In 1953, the Norse settlement residences in western Greenland studied, and these studies, together with a Swedish reinterpretation of ' Vinland ' as 'grasslands', led Ingstad on an exploration trip with his daughter Benedikte to look for possible Norse settlements in the Canadian East Coast.

From 1961 to 1968, Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad conducted a series of excavations of an area on the northern tip of Newfoundland, with archaeologist Anne Stine as the excavation leader. Here they were able to demonstrate the site of a Norse settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows. By archaeological assessments and a number of C-14 dates, the age of the tufts could be estimated to be around 1000, and the married couple Ingstad thus provided scientific confirmation of the saga's account of the Vikings' voyages to America half a millennium before Columbus. Not least, discoveries of typical Norse objects - a ring needle, a spinning wheel, and a lamp - were striking evidence. Yet they had to resist the skepticism and distrust of other scientists before it was accepted that the place had been a Norse settlement. L'Anse aux Meadows is now on UNESCO's World Heritage List.

He wrote extensively about his experiences and reflections in such books as "Pelsjegerliv blant Nord-Kcinadas Indianere" (1931; The Land of Feast and Famine, 1933), "Landet under leidarstjernen" (1959; Land Under the Pole Star, 1966), and "The Quest for America," which he wrote with Geoffrey Ashe and others.

Achievements

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  Ingstad was the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1964 Franklin L. Burr Award from the National Geographic Society and the 1968 Wahlberg Award from the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography.
  
  He was an honorary member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. He also held honorary doctorates at the University of Oslo, Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada, and at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav (in 1991; previously Knight 1st class in 1965, and Commander in 1970), Knight of the Order of Vasa, and he was presented with the Norwegian Red Cross Badge of Honour for his efforts in Finnmark during World War II. He received a lifetime government grant from the Norwegian government from 1970. He was the subject of a 1981 National Film Board of Canada (NFB) documentary The Man Who Discovered America, and subsequently appeared along with his wife in the 1984 NFB film, The Vinland Mystery. In 1986, he was presented Arts Council Norway's honor award. HNoMS Helge Ingstad, the fourth of the five Fridtjof Nansen-class frigates of the Royal Norwegian Navy was named after Helge Ingstad.
  
  In Alaska, Ingstad has the 1461-meter-high Ingstad Mountain in the Brooks chain named after it. The name was suggested by representatives of the Nunamiut tribe in gratitude to what the Norwegian had done. It was officially approved by the US Board on Geographic Names on April 17, 2006. In Canada, Ingstad has named the river Ingstad Creek, which flows into the Snowdrift River. Asteroid 8993 Ingstad is also named after him.
  
  The inner main-belt asteroid 8993 Ingstad, discovered by Danish astronomer Richard Martin West at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile in 1980, was named in his memory. The official naming citation was published by the MPC on 24 June 2002.
  
  There is a bust by Anne Stine and Helge Ingstad standing at the entrance to L'Anse aux Meadows World Heritage Site on Newfoundland, Canada.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Apache Indians: In Search of the Missing Tribe

    (The Apache Indians tells the story of the Norwegian explo...)

    1939
  • The Viking Discovery of America

    (Provides an account of the seven expeditions the authors ...)

    1991
  • The Land of Feast and Famine

    (The young Norwegian was Helge Ingstad, now famous for his...)

    1992
  • Nunamuit: Among Alaska's Inland Eskimos

    (A special commemorative edition of a classic text by one ...)

    1954
  • Westward to Vinland

    (This book is a popular account of Viking building sites a...)

    1969
  • The Land Under the Pole Star 1959
  • East of the Great Glacier 1937

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "Ingstad is a good witness ... His writing is lively and he shows great skill in keeping his reader with him." Dorothy Harley Eber, author of When The Whalers Were Up North.

Connections

Helge Ingstad was married to Anne Stine Ingstad (11 February 1918 - 6 November 1997), who was a Norwegian archaeologist.

Father:

Olav Ingstad

Mother:

Olga Marie Qvam

Spouse:

Anne Stine Ingstad

Daughter:

Benedicte Ingstad

Benedicte Ingstad (born October 19, 1943) is professor emerita of medical anthropology at the University of Oslo.

Sister:

Gunvor Ingstad Trætteberg

Gunvor Ingstad Trætberg (born 2 May 1897, died 1 December 1975 ) was a Norwegian ethnologist and costume historian.

Brother:

Kaare Ingstad

References

• A Grand Adventure: The Lives of Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad and Their Discovery of a Viking Settlement in North America
  2017
• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vol. 194
  2010
• Great Norwegian Encyclopedia