The Angling Nudist

Anyone who has spent some time either in our reading room or following our blog will recognize the name Viljhalmur Stefansson. Stefansson was a Canadian explorer born to Icelandic immigrants in 1879. After numerous Arctic expeditions, he became a renowned lecturer and advocate for the Arctic. Stefansson was a lecturer at Dartmouth from 1947 until his death in 1962, and the college acquired his significant collection of polar exploration materials in 1952.

Among the many collections we acquired was a 96-box collection containing Stefansson's personal and professional correspondence over a 67-year period. We are always finding new gems within these boxes, and this week turned up another winner. On May 28 of 1935, Stefansson received an unsolicited request from Henry S. Huntington, the brother of an acquaintance. In it, Huntington says that he would like to come over and talk with Stefansson about "the Eskimos from the 'nudist' angle". After a period of profound silence, Stefansson eventually responded to Huntington on June 14th, admitting that the idea of  "Eskimos from the nudist angle" had "somewhat startled" him and was likely the reason that he had taken so long to reply.

Huntington was a Yale graduate and Presbyterian minister who in 1933 had co-founded The Burgoyne Trail in Otis, Massachusetts, one of the country's first nudist colonies. His promotion of the lifestyle was firmly based in its health benefits and its ability to free people from obsessing about sex. When he met later with Stefansson in July, it was with an eye toward recruiting the charismatic public speaker to give a presentation at the International Nudists Conference in August of the same year.
However, despite Huntington's well-meaning intentions, the potential for negative PR was too great a risk for Stefansson. The explorer responded tersely to a series of initially unanswered letters from Huntington by saying that he had decided against participating "on the principle that there is no point in getting eaten by lions except for what you think is a supreme cause." Subsequent letters from Huntington are marked in pencil with "No Ans", suggesting that for Stefansson the conversation was over.

To hunt for similar gold nuggets with Stefansson's correspondence, request a box online from MSS-196 and then come to Rauner to start digging.