Vilhjalmur Stefansson was not simply a reckless adventurer.

He was, in his own way, a genuine advocate for Arctic peoples and for the validity of Arctic Indigenous knowledge.

His “Friendly Arctic” argument was based on his correct observation that Indigenous peoples had proven the Arctic was livable.

He genuinely believed that the adaptive strategies of the Iñupiat and Inuit more broadly demonstrated that European fears of the Arctic were overblown.

Where he went catastrophically wrong was in the implicit assumption that Indigenous knowledge was a simple toolkit — a set of techniques that could be adopted by non-Indigenous people with sufficient motivation, basic equipment, and a willingness to live as the locals lived.