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Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879 - 1962) was an Icelandic Arctic explorer and ethnologist.
Stefansson was an extremely well-known explorer in his lifetime. There are many good articles about his life on the Internet. They generally fail to mention that, through his professorship at Dartmouth College, he became a major figure in the establishment of the US Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) in Hanover, NH. CRREL supported research, often conducted in winter on the forbidding summit of Mount Washington, has been key to developing materiel and doctrine to support alpine conflict.
Stefansson's personal papers and collection of arctic artifacts are maintained and available to the public in a special room in Dartmouth College Library.
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