OLOF KRARER
In the schools of many lands, including those which speak English, the
Eskimos are studied during the early grades. In my youth I learned many
strange things concerning them. We spoke of Eskimos and of Eskimoland
as if the people were all alike and lived in one place.
The Eskimos are a godsend to the schools. From their simplicity you
can get a parallel to the simplicity of our own remote ancestors and
also a contrast to the multiplicities of civilization. It is easy to
teach and to learn that, while in our land it is sometimes hot and
sometimes cold, there is a district south of us where it is always hot
and another north of us, Eskimoland, where it is always cold. This
impresses upon the child-mind that there is a balance and symmetry in
nature, which has been a favorite doctrine since Greek times.
Heat is life-giving (the school instruction went on); the hot lands
are luxuriant and beautiful. Cold is deadening; the cold lands of the
Eskimos are sterile, bleak, forbidding. Things develop to large size in
heat; cold has a stunting influence. Therefore, trees become smaller
and smaller as you go north until you come to the last cringing shrubs.
Beyond them, in a treeless waste, are the Eskimos, a little people,
themselves stunted by the cold. In their bitter struggle to eke out
the scantiest of livings they cower, wrapped in furs, inside huts of
snow which give them bare shelter from the furious Arctic blizzards. To
keep warm they eat the most warming food, which is fat; so they live on
blubber. They grease their bodies with oil as a further protection from
the cold, and they drink oil. Though we need varied meals, a balanced
ration, the Eskimos are strangely able to live on animal tissues alone
and they eat their meat raw, usually warm from a recently slaughtered
beast or else frozen.
But, marvelous to relate, in spite of all these things, the Eskimos are
a jolly, happy little people. They serve thus a double moral purpose.
The gruesome view of their land and of their life makes us better
contented with ours; we see from their happiness under conditions of
misery that really it isn’t so bad, in comparison, to be poor and
jobless down here. We should all, therefore, be contented and happy.
In view of the large place held by Eskimos in our scheme of child
training, the misfortune is serious that our educators, particularly
the writers of our schoolbooks, have been forced to get their Eskimo
material at second hand from the writings and lectures of explorers.
The situation was made worse in that a good many explorers lacked the
imagination and the literary gifts necessary for making possible the
desired insight into the heart and soul of these present-day survivors
of Stone Age man.
It is a major good fortune that American educators have had opportunity
for close relation with at least one Eskimo, Olof Krarer.
* * * * *
The autumn 1912 I came south after four consecutive years in the
Arctic, making several reports, one of them that among some hundreds
of Eskimos who were not known to have been in touch with Europeans I
had seen ten or more who were as light in complexion and eye color as
if they were anything from one-quarter to three-quarters European. A
reporter changed my statement to convey the impression that I had found
near Coronation Gulf several hundred Eskimos all of whom were blond.
This reporter has since claimed, probably with more right than anybody
else, that he made me famous. Certainly there was a big newspaper
hubbub.
In a barrage of letters to the press there came one from Ithaca, New
York. The writer was a professor of Cornell. He tried to bring into
an acrimonious discussion a quiet, urbane tone. It was not fair, he
contended, to denounce Stefansson as a charlatan for having claimed to
discover a new race of blond people in the Far North, for these people
indubitably exist. But neither was it fair to praise his “discovery”
vociferously, as some were doing, for blond Eskimos were so well known
that they were, for instance, a matter of his own experience and that
of his family. For he and his wife had had the pleasure some years ago
to entertain in their home one of them who had come to Ithaca as a
lecturer. She was a woman named Olof Krarer, small of stature like the
rest of her people, with light hair and with blue eyes of quite the
Scandinavian type. She had made a favorable impression.[17]
The letter from Cornell stirred childhood recollections. I had heard
my mother and the neighbors talk of a strange and pathetic girl who
came with them on the emigrant ship from Iceland in 1876. She must
have been nearing twenty but she was small for a child of ten, a
dwarf. She was vivacious, ambitious, and talked of the opportunities
for distinction and advancement which awaited her in the New World.
Her fellow-immigrants did not know whether to laugh or weep. She was
clever, but her physical handicap seemed more than her gifts could
surmount.
The party of colonists landed in Nova Scotia. After a year in that
province many of them traveled west through the Great Lakes and by
way of the Red River of the North to Lake Winnipeg, where my parents
settled and where I was born.
In 1880 our family moved to Dakota Territory and so did Olof’s, but she
had gone off on her own and was probably in Winnipeg. Some years later
we heard in North Dakota that she was in a circus exhibiting herself as
an Eskimo. The Icelanders (who until recently were proud of being about
the least adulterated Nordics in Europe) were at first scandalized
and inclined to attempt stopping the imposture. On second thought
most if not all of them felt that little harm could be done to their
nationality by the fraud compared to the tragedy it would be for this
handicapped woman to be exposed and deprived of the one thing which
gave her a livelihood and a tolerable life. We know now that she even
won respect and affection--witness the above Cornell testimony and much
shall be hereinafter cited.
There was presently in the Icelandic community in North Dakota a
connected story of Olof Krarer. I do not know whether it was brought
or whether it just grew. No doubt it was partly imagination; equally
without doubt it was partly true.
Our North Dakota version of the story ran that Olof had been waitress
in a hotel. Seeing how small she was, the guests asked about her and
were told, sometimes by herself and sometimes by the hotel people, that
she was an Icelander. The comeback was usually: “How interesting! We
never saw an Eskimo before.” Olof would then explain that Icelanders
were not Eskimos and that their blood was chiefly Norwegian with a
little mixture of Irish.[18] The interest waned. There were plenty of
Norwegians around; the Irish were no rarity. That sort of dwarf was
hardly a seven days’ wonder.
But there were new guests in the hotel daily, new questions about
Olof, and new accents for the tiresome: “How interesting! We never saw
an Eskimo before.” She became bored, annoyed, outraged. Finally she
stopped explaining that Icelanders were not Eskimos and simply flounced
off. The interpretation of that was, poor thing, she was ashamed of
being an Eskimo. Her silence now gave consent.
One day a local clergyman appeared. He said that the young people of
his church had a mid-week meeting and they would be so interested if
Olof would come down and talk to them informally about the Eskimos.
They would be glad to pay her five dollars.
I go back to what my mother said of the pathetic ambition and
anticipations of the dwarf. I imagine how, perhaps at first through
embarrassment Olof did not correct the minister. When his invitation
came to the five-dollar offer she was already realizing that her chance
had come. She agreed to give the talk.
Combining testimony of the Cornell professor with that of my mother, I
imagine further that Olof went to the town library next day, or to some
bookish friend, and read up on the Eskimos. Then, to the best of her
ability, she improvised a story of an Eskimo childhood and gave it at
the mid-week church meeting. It was accepted and she was on that road
which took her to the lyceum platform and the circus. As we shall see,
it took her to other places, to fame and to a lasting influence upon
American education and thought.
My memories, temporarily revived in 1912 by the Cornell professor’s
letter, had receded vaguely into the background when, in 1922, I had a
secretary, Miss Dorothy Daggett. She came from a week-end one Monday
morning and asked whether a young man whom she had met at the house
party might come and consult me about an extraordinary yarn which he
had picked up in Florida and which he had already sold tentatively to
a magazine. She had urged him not to print without consulting me, for
the story was about an Eskimo and seemed to her spurious. She did not
think that a young man ought to risk publishing that sort of thing at
the beginning of a literary career.
In due course John Schoolcraft arrived and told the following story
which I quote from notes made at the time:
THE STORY OF OLAF CRERAR
as told by
John Schoolcraft
The Eskimo woman, Olaf Crerar, says she was born on the north coast of
Greenland in a village of thirty or forty houses, with an average of
four people in each house. A family of eight children in that country
is equivalent to one of twenty in this. The average family has two or
three.
One day two big white men came into their village, the first big men
they had ever seen and the first whites. The North Greenland Eskimos
are blond themselves, but owing to the smoke in their houses they
didn’t know it. The two big men were Icelanders. After living in the
village about a year, they persuaded Olaf’s father to go on a long
journey with them. He had no idea where he was going but he consented,
and, as is always the case on long hunting trips, he took his family
with him. They started across the ice and it took them something like
three months to make the journey from northern Greenland to northern
Iceland. When they came to the Gulf Stream it was partly open. There
they went from one ice floe to another, like Eliza crossing the Ohio.
They finally got to Iceland.
Olaf was about sixteen when she left Greenland (or perhaps she was
twenty). She stayed in Iceland something like four and a half years.
At the end of that time, all of her family were dead except herself
and her father. They died from the change in climate. There was a
missionary there who took a great interest in her and baptized her
into the (Lutheran) church. Her Eskimo name was Ahbo. The missionary,
in giving her a Christian name, wanted to get one as close to the
Eskimo as possible, so he called her Olaf. I don’t know where she got
her last name, which sounds like Crerar.
Olaf suffered so from the Icelandic climate that the missionary
decided to send her and her father with some friends of his to Canada,
thinking its climate would probably be better for them both than the
Icelandic. He started them off on a boat with a company of Icelanders,
and there may have been some Swedes and Norwegians. They landed at
Quebec.
Olaf was knocked around from pillar to post in the United States and
Canada for awhile, with this funny little father of hers. At that time
she was 40 inches high, 45 inches around the waist, and weighed 136
pounds. Her father was smaller than she.
She told that she had been a nursemaid and implied that she had worked
in hotels. On one occasion she was taken sick in a hotel in St. Paul
and a doctor visited her who had been in Greenland and who knew a few
words of her language.
Then Mr. Slayton of the Slayton Lyceum Bureau ran across her and
thought she would be a good lecturer, so he took her into his home and
together they worked up a lecture. She went around the country for
something like twenty-five years (she is sixty-two now) lecturing. For
the last few years of this time she was not only a lecturer but a sort
of collector for Mr. Slayton. He would give these (lyceum) courses and
she would be the last one on the course and would collect the money
from those who had sponsored the course. The understanding was that at
his death she was to have a home in his house as long as she lived.
She did live with Mrs. Slayton for a number of years.
While in Florida she met the people named Stone who took her back to
Michigan with them--Mr. I. K. Stone, Maple Street, Battle Creek,
Michigan. She is living there now and has been with them two or three
years. She is always telling them how in Greenland people always
tell the truth. It is a great shock to her, she says, to come into a
civilization where they don’t tell the truth. So in the household,
when they aren’t kidding each other, they have the saying, “This is
Greenland.”
Olaf says that the people up in northern Greenland where she was born
continue to grow until they are thirty-five. When mature they are very
small, like herself, and they mature slowly. They don’t marry until
they are twenty-five, and children don’t walk until they are three.
She says that the mothers do not nurse their children at all. As soon
as a baby is born they give him a piece of whale meat and tell him to
carry on. Many life processes there seem greatly slowed down.
However, a person of sixty is very old. They die off rapidly from what
Olaf thought was something like tuberculosis. It was a wasting disease
and usually ended with hemorrhage. She thought it was brought on by
the change in going from the heated hut into the cold air outside.
North Greenland children are born either in the light time or in the
dark time (the well-known six-month day and six-month night). When a
child is born, the mother picks out a certain kind of bone. Since they
live on polar bears, walrus and seals more than anything, it might be
a bone from one of these animals. She has a little bag on the wall and
drops into it a certain distinctive kind of bone for each child, and
as each light time or dark time comes around she drops another bone
of this same sort into the bag. In that way she can keep track of the
children’s ages. The children are forbidden to touch that bag, and if
they do the punishment is severe.
Olaf said these people believed in one big good spirit and one big
bad spirit, and there are also little good spirits and little bad
spirits. The big good one sent the little good ones around, and
similarly with the bad spirit. When a person dies he becomes a good
or bad spirit according to the way he has lived. Asked what was their
standard of good and bad, she replied that if during this sickness,
which evidently came on them all, the man or woman was patient and
unselfish, then he turned into a good spirit. Those who were cross and
complaining turned into bad spirits.
If a woman is sick she is put into one corner of the hut and no one
pays any attention to her. If she is given anything, it is given
furtively. In the case of a man he is taken off and put in a hut
by himself. The reason is that sickness is brought about by one of
the bad spirits, and if you favor the sick person you bring the bad
spirit’s attention to yourself.
The language is extremely simple, with a great many words which by
different intonations mean different things. They count up to ten
and have one word which means ten and some more, which may be eleven
or eleven million. The hardest thing for her to do in Iceland and in
this country was to learn to think. The Eskimos talk a little about
the fire and a little about the polar bear and walrus, but have no
abstract ideas. The vocabulary is very small. There is absolutely no
vegetation in North Greenland, with the exception of some seaweed. The
reindeer there, which are very poor and which the people do not use
for food purposes at all, live on fish.
These Eskimos have no steel, and when a man goes on a long trip where
he can’t carry a fire, he makes a fire by striking a stone against a
walrus tusk. He may work hours and hours to get a spark.
When a young man wants to marry, he picks out the girl he is
interested in and stops hunting. He goes to the house of this girl
and gets his food there for some time. If the girl’s parents continue
to make him welcome, he knows he is acceptable. Then he has to get
the girl out of that house into some other house in the village (it
doesn’t matter which one) without being seen. His success constitutes
the wedding ceremony. If he fails, he is punished by death. Failures
occur and the death penalty is actually inflicted.
The facts on Olof put Schoolcraft in a position from which he could
find no escape. His literary conscience would not permit him to use
the story in its original form, after he had found that it was a hoax;
his humanitarian instincts would not allow him to expose the old lady,
who was, after all, harmless in his view compared to the hordes of
charlatans who get by. As long as her friends believed in her she
would have a home, and these were probably her last few as well as
her declining years. Schoolcraft, who needed both money and _kudos_,
gritted his teeth and canceled his bargain with the editor.
You have guessed it. The young and high-minded author received his
reward. Dorothy Daggett is now Mrs. John Schoolcraft.
No more than Schoolcraft could we publish, until Olof Krarer’s death.
But the responsibilities we feel towards that small minority who seek
the facts, dictated eventual publication and therefore the immediate
gathering of testimonies, documents, and explanatory theories.
The first step was to enlist the help of Miss Thorstina Jackson, a
graduate student at Columbia University, whose father, Thorleifur
Joakimsson Jackson, had been historian of the Icelandic colonization in
North America--chiefly Minnesota, North Dakota, Manitoba, Saskatchewan
and Alberta, but also Nova Scotia and Utah. Many of his studies had
been published, but there were others in manuscript. On canvass, these
sources did not yield much directly, but Miss Jackson (now Mrs. Emile
Waters) knew just how to follow up the investigation.
From the various replies to her letters it was possible to establish
Olof’s baptismal name, the names of her parents, her birthplace and
date of birth. For a time we were following the wrong track on these
points, for the first answer to our queries stated that Olof was the
daughter of Jonatan Halldorsson. Jackson’s pioneer sketches did not
list Olof as a child of this family and a later correspondent, G. J.
Hallsson, of Hallson, North Dakota, in a letter dated May 26, 1926,
gave the right clue:
“... I feel certain I know the person you refer to. It must be Olof
Solfadottir, from Langamiri in Hunavatnsysla. This girl was a dwarf in
stature....”
At this time Miss Jackson made a trip to Iceland. While there she
went to the Government library in Reykjavik and obtained from
the _Kirkjubok_ (Book of Church Records) a copy of Olof’s birth
certificate. We quote a translation of the Icelandic document which she
forwarded:
BIRTH CERTIFICATE
_Ólöf Sölvadóttir_
Born 15 February 1858 baptized 17th of the same month.
Parents: Sölvi Sölvason and Solveig Stefánsdóttir, man and wife of
Outer Langamyri.
The above is correct according to the register of Audkul Parish.
Certified
The National Archives, Reykjavik, 13 July, 1926.
(Signed) Hannes Thorsteinsson.
The following year the identification was further confirmed and
documented by B. L. Baldwinson, of 729 Sherbrook Street, Winnipeg,
Manitoba, as will appear.
All the accounts of Olof’s early years in Canada, before she assumed
the character of Miss Krarer the Eskimo, swayer of American educational
destinies, are vague and the details vary, but the general outlines are
similar. As a continuation of the above Hallsson letter, we quote a
version, differing somewhat from my memory of my mother’s:
“... She (Olof) had been living with her father in Winnipeg and left
him in 1880 to live with an English couple. They were then resident
in Winnipeg but I have no doubt they were really traveling players
who had some connection with a large company of actors. I believe
that shortly thereafter they left Winnipeg for the United States, for
(soon) after she got south across the line she was recognized as the
same girl, although she had then already assumed her Eskimo character.
Why she did this, I am unable to explain. I knew her very well and
lived in the same neighborhood. For that reason I would consider it
remarkable if she did anything seriously reprehensible so long as her
conduct was fully governed by her own desires. She seemed to have a
good and firm character and was intelligent above the average.
“According to my understanding, it seems clear that the woman who
adopted her came to be largely in control of whatever she did.”
The most complete and thoroughly documented information came from
Baldwinson, who enclosed with his letter on November 16, 1927, a
statement which we quote in full.
“_Olof Solvadottir_
“Born at Ytri Longumyri in Blondudal in Hunavatnssyslu in Iceland
about the year 1860 or 1861.
“Her father Solvi Sölvason, farmer.
“Her mother Solveig Stefansdottir: his wife.
“Solvi lost his wife in Iceland and remarried there; his second wife
was Soffia Eyjolfsdottir, a widow. They emigrated from Iceland to
Canada in the year 1876 and settled a short distance north of the town
of Gimli in Manitoba and remained there for about 3 years until they
moved to Winnipeg in or about the year 1879, where they resided for a
period of 2 years. They then moved to Hallson in N. Dakota, built a
house and resided there for several years, until they moved to Seattle
in the state of Washington. There they built a house in Ballard and
remained there until their death.
“Olof Solvadottir is a dwarf. She left her family while they lived
in the Gimli district and went to Winnipeg to secure work. There she
joined up with an American traveling tent show and has since been lost
to all her relatives though she is known to be alive and well and in
the care of wealthy benefactors in the United States. Her nearest
relatives are:
(Here followed names and addresses of three brothers and a sister, in
the U.S.A. and Canada, and of a relative in Iceland.)
“This information is given by Magnus Bjornson, 11 McDonald St.,
Winnipeg, who is a foster brother to Olof since she lost her mother
in Iceland, and also by her brother at Westbourne as to names and
addresses of her brothers and sisters. The two photos herewith
enclosed are taken from photos the property of Magnus Bjornson.”
The accompanying letter from Baldwinson said in part:
“... Magnus Bjornson, Olof’s foster brother ... ran into Olof in a
circus a few years after she had begun to exhibit herself. She then
pretended not to recognize him, which he said suited him well enough,
for he did not want to be the cause of her getting into trouble about
her (pretended) nationality.”
An earlier letter from Baldwinson contained an explanatory note on some
photographs which were enclosed.
“I have also secured two pictures of her, one by herself, the other
with the man that she is said to have been married to--both of them
are wearing wedding rings.”
This photograph shows the figures of equal stature. The body
proportions are those of dwarfs.
Following these inquiries my activities in the Olof Krarer case were
long suspended. And then, in Utica, New York (1932), I met Miss Frances
A. Finch who, as a child, had known Olof Krarer in Florida. She told me
something of her childhood recollections of this interesting character,
and later confirmed them by a letter which I quote in part, dated from
Skaneateles, New York, November 27, 1932:
“As you requested, I have gone into the question at home, but I think
that the enclosed material (photographs) is all I have that would be
of interest to you....
“Print No. 1 is the one I mentioned as having been taken during the
winter of 1917-1918. I was ten years old at the time. Miss Krarer and
I are standing on the same step. I presume I was of average height,
for now, at the age of twenty-five, I am about five feet two and a
half inches tall. (The picture shows the girl of ten considerably
taller than the old “Eskimo.”)
“Miss Krarer was about fifty-eight years old when these pictures were
taken, and print No. 2 shows Miss Olaf with a bouquet presented her at
that year’s celebration of her birthday....
“... The woman with whom Miss Krarer lived was Mrs. (H. P.?)
Slayton.... Although Mrs. Slayton was considered the owner of
the Seven Gables Apartments, rumor had it that Olaf Krarer had a
substantial interest. I’ve been unable to verify the location of the
Seven Gables Apartments, pictured in print No. 3, except that it
stands at a corner of Williams Park in St. Petersburg, Florida.”[19]
In November, 1934, my friend, Miss Gretchen Switzer, of Columbia
University, told me that she was about to visit St. Petersburg. For
reasons two or three paragraphs ahead, she was interested in the case
of Olof Krarer. She followed up the information given by Miss Finch.
In St. Petersburg she was able to verify the name and address of Mrs.
Slayton (Mrs. W. P. Slayton) and the location of the Seven Gables
Apartments. She also talked with the clerk of the Princess Martha
Hotel, H. B. Boardman (now of The New Hotel Delaware, Ocean City, New
Jersey) who said that Olof was known there only as Olof the Eskimo. To
the best of his knowledge she had gone to Battle Creek and at that
time (1934) was in Chicago.[20]
Some years ago I became interested in the similarity between the
Krarer tradition and the views about Eskimos held in Teachers College,
Columbia University. I asked Miss Switzer, then a member of the New
College staff of Teachers College, where she had obtained her ideas
and it seemed she could trace a number of them to having studied in
the lower grades a book published by Rand McNally and Company, _Eskimo
Stories_ (copyright 1902). A check showed that the author, Mary Estella
E. Smith, of the Jenner School, Chicago, had for the last paragraph of
its introduction, dated June 14, 1902:
“The author acknowledges her appreciation of the valuable suggestions
made by Miss Olof Krarer, who read the book in manuscript, and whose
interesting autobiography appears at the close of the volume under the
title, ‘The Story of a Real Eskimo.’”
A little earlier in the introduction Miss Smith says that
“... various books have been consulted and drawn upon for basic
material, but special acknowledgment is due ‘My Arctic Journal,’ by
Josephine D. Peary, and ‘The Children of the Cold,’ by Frederick
Schwatka.”
Clearly Miss Smith did get a considerable part of her material from
the dry-as-dust fact school, and perhaps three-quarters of her book
would be in humdrum correspondence with things as they physically are.
But some of the more entertaining portions, likeliest to cling to the
mind of a learner, are seemingly based on the “valuable suggestions
made by Miss Olof Krarer.” Though perhaps small in quantity, beside the
contributions by Mrs. Peary and Lieutenant Schwatka, the Krarer section
of the schoolbook was bound to impress itself, for the author says to
the teacher at the head of the Krarer autobiography, _The Story of a
Real Eskimo_, that “this story should be read to the children before
they begin reading the book.”
We quote portions of _The Story of a Real Eskimo_:
“I was born on the east coast of Greenland, the least known to
civilization, about one thousand miles north and a little west
of Iceland. I am the youngest of eight children. As nearly as I
can remember,[21] my father’s house was on a low plain near the
seashore....
“Our house was built of snow....
“... Outside of the door was a long, narrow passageway, just high
enough for one of us little Eskimo people to stand up straight in.
That would be about high enough for a child eight years old in this
country; and it was only wide enough for one person to go through at
a time. If one wanted to go out and another wanted to come in at the
same time one would have to back out of the passageway and let the
other go first....
“Our fireplace was in the center of the house. The bottom was a large
flat stone with other stones piled about the edge to keep the fire
from getting into the room. When we wanted to build a fire we would
put some dried meat and bones on the stone; then a little dry moss was
put in, and then my father would take a flint and a whale’s tooth and
strike fire upon the moss. Sometimes it took a long time to make it
burn. After the fire started he would put some blubber upon it....
“... Our food is eaten raw and frozen. We have only the salt ocean
water, and if we had soft, fresh water we would not dare to use it,
for it would be like poison to our flesh with the thermometer 80° or
90° below zero. So, when we eat, we take a piece of raw meat in one
hand and a chunk of blubber in the other, and take a bite of each
until it is eaten. Then we carefully rub the grease and fat all over
our hands and face, and feel fine afterwards. My people have long
hair, made dark by the smoke and grease.
“There was no chance to play and romp inside the snow house. We
just had to sit still with our arms folded. It was in this way that
my arms came to have such a different shape from people’s arms in
this country. Where their muscle is large and strong, I have but
very little; and instead of that, I have a large bunch of muscle on
the upper side of my arms, and they are crooked so that I can never
straighten them.
“Sometimes we used to get very tired in the dark snow house and then
we would try a little amusement. Two of us would sit down on the fur
carpet, and looking into each other’s faces, guess who was the best
looking. We had to guess at it, for we had no looking-glass in which
to see our faces.
“The one whose face shone the most with the grease was called the
prettiest. If at any time we grew tired of it all, and ventured to
jump about and to play, we were in danger of being punished. When a
child was naughty, mother would place a bone on the fire, leaving it
there until it was hot enough for the grease to boil out. Then she
would slap it on the child. She was not particular where she burned
her child, except that she was careful not to touch the face....
“But it was not always so that we had to stay in the snow house. Once
in a while father would come in and say it was not so cold as usual,
and then we would have a chance to look around outside the snow house.
We never took long walks. There were some steep, jagged rocks in sight
of our village, and during the long daytime enough of the snow would
melt off to leave the rocks bare in a few places....
“Now, in order that you may understand our way of living better,
I will explain that we have six months night in Greenland, and
during that time nothing is seen of the sun.... Before and after the
night-time there was about a month of twilight....
“In the long day we had the hardest time, for then the sun shone out
so brightly that we would be made snow-blind if we ventured far from
home. The day was four months long, and if we did not have food enough
stored away in an ice cave to last us through, we would be in great
danger of starving.
“... My father’s name was Krauker, my name was Oluar. On arriving in
Iceland I was baptized Olof Krarer.
“One thing had a great deal of interest for us all. When the sun shone
out at the beginning of the daytime, it marked the first of the year,
as New Year’s day marks the beginning of the year in this country.
Then our parents would take out the sacks, each one of the family
having one of their own. In each sack was a piece of bone for every
first time that person had seen the sun. When ten bones were gathered,
they would tie them into a bundle, for they had not words to count
more than ten. In such a land was I born, in such a home was I brought
up. In such pleasures I rejoiced until there were about fifteen bones
in my sack.
“Then something happened which changed my whole life. Six tall men
came to our village. They proved to be Iceland whalers who had been
shipwrecked in a storm and who finally reached Greenland. When they
returned to Iceland my father’s family went with them....
“Eskimos have no idea of a book.... They think, in their ignorance,
they are the only people, and are consequently contented and happy.
“June 16, 1902.
“Olof Krarer.”
By her own account Miss Krarer had been born an Eskimo in Greenland;
those who claim to be her relatives state she was born an Icelander
in Iceland. Both countries, and the sea between them, are hazy to the
average reader and so a few remarks may be worth while.
Iceland is the largest country now inhabited by Europeans which had no
aborigines when discovered. It is, too, the largest in the northern
hemisphere of those islands which do not show, archeologically or
historically, any evidence of pre-white human occupation.
The Irish discovered Iceland around or before A. D. 795; the Norsemen
first visited the country around 850 and say they found ahead of them
no people except the Irish. These things, so far as we know, are
undisputed.
The part of Greenland, where Olof claimed to have been born around
1860, “a thousand miles north and a little west of Iceland,” can never
have been inhabited during the last several thousand years, since that
distance takes you far into the interior, up on the inland ice where,
so far as we understand it, neither humans nor the animals upon which
hunters depend can have lived since prior to that Ice Age which,
millenniums back, gave the land its present cap of snow.
Be liberal with Olof and place her family on the seacoast of Greenland
north and a little east from central Iceland. We then have a district
that is believed by anthropologists and explorers not to have been
inhabited by Eskimos at or anywhere near the time when Olof was born.
If you wanted to be extremely generous, you might connect her story
up with the few Eskimos seen by Clavering, near what is now Shannon
Island, in 1823. Shannon is, true enough, some 500 miles south of
Olof’s claimed birthplace, but then it is also 500 miles north of where
her alleged family claim she was born. That is kind of fifty-fifty.
The Clavering people were, by his account and that of Sabine,
apparently just ordinary Eskimos, looking more or less as if they were
Chinese. Olof tells that her Eskimo relatives were blond, but then she
mentions that they did not know they were blond, they were so blackened
with the smoke from their lamps. Most travelers have explained that
Eskimos trim their lamps so carefully that they rarely smoke--but, if
we start out to be generous, why haggle over a few smudges of lampblack?
Except Olof’s there is no account of Icelanders going to eastern or
northeastern Greenland near the time she says, nor ever any time for
many decades before and after. So far as known, Europeans never visited
northeastern Greenland (1000 miles north of Iceland) until after Miss
Krarer became a prominent lecturer. Those Europeans were Danes, not
Icelanders.
Olof seems to be the only person who has claimed that the sea was ever
so frozen, or so filled with ice, between Greenland and Iceland that
people could walk across in the manner described by her, or in any
manner.
I know of one Eskimo having been in Virginia; I cannot find testimony,
except Miss Krarer’s, that any Eskimo ever was in Iceland. Just
possibly at some time during the Middle Ages some Icelander may have
brought an Eskimo from Greenland, but, if so, there is no account of
it. There is one account of a medieval Icelander who did see Eskimos
on the southern east coast of Greenland, but the narrative explicitly
states that when he sailed from there he left the Eskimos behind.
Iceland is among the countries which do not feel, or at least did not
until very recently, any such need for Eskimos in their system of
education as we feel in ours. You can see through authorities such
as Professor Ellsworth Huntington of Yale, in his _The Character of
Races_, that they are comparatively a learned people, so you would
expect book knowledge of the Eskimos which Olof might have picked
up. But other writers, for instance, Bayard Taylor in his _Egypt
and Iceland in the Year 1874_, have pointed out that the Icelandic
learning, next after dealing with their own antiquities, is heavily
preoccupied with Greece, Rome, and the Mediterranean countries
generally. The Icelanders tend to be classicists in their schooling and
reading.
It was, therefore, in one way unfortunate that Olof, when she came
to formulate the accounts of her Greenland childhood, had little
groundwork derivable from her Icelandic education or from the knowledge
of her friends and family. But in another way it was fortunate that she
had to pick up her ideas in America. For this made it simple to fit
herself to traditional beliefs, avoiding conflict with her hearers.
So in Miss Krarer’s account, as in the view previously common, the
Eskimos are (for instance) a small people, they grease themselves with
oil, they all live in snow houses, and they suffer long periods of
uninterrupted darkness followed by long periods of uninterrupted light.
The Krarer version of Arctic lore does introduce a few novelties, as,
for instance, where she says that:
“... we have six months night in Greenland.... Before and after the
night-time there was about a month of twilight.... The day was four
months long.”
That replaced the six-month day and six-month night. After all, she had
to contribute something novel or there could have been little advantage
in getting knowledge for American textbooks and supplementary readers
straight from a real Eskimo.
There is an almost tragic contrast between the Krarer division of
daylight and darkness and the one which has recently forced its way
into American school teaching, disturbing its symmetry. Like Miss
Krarer’s, this view attacks the even division between light and dark
but (and here is the tragedy) where Miss Krarer arrived at a darkness
period much longer than the daylight, the astronomers who are bothering
the schools claim a daylight period much longer than the darkness.
Their ratio is practically the same as hers, only reversed.
What a triumph it would have been for the little Eskimo had she only
reversed the naming of her four-month and eight-month periods! The
astronomers, right enough, are talking for the mathematical North Pole
and Miss Krarer for a point only a thousand miles north of Iceland;
but that discrepancy would not have been so hard to explain away.
After all, Miss Krarer was born at a time when many geographers still
believed Greenland extended to and beyond the North Pole, and she might
so easily have been mistaken as to whether she was born one thousand or
sixteen hundred miles north of Iceland.
As mentioned, it was the opinion among the Icelanders in North Dakota
that Olof Solvadottir, the normally blond and blue-eyed Nordic
dwarf, born in Iceland, had been induced by “the English couple” who
adopted her to take the character of the Eskimo Olof Krarer, born in
northeastern Greenland. The first the Icelanders knew of her changed
status was when they discovered her as a freak in a circus. According
to my mother’s version of how Olof came to assume the Eskimo character,
she went straight from waiting on table in a hotel to lecturing on a
lyceum circuit--there was no mention of an intervening circus career.
But there was a circus period, that seems clear. Perhaps the sequence
was small-time lecturing, circus, big-time lecturing.
At any rate, there is no reason to doubt the testimony which connects
Olof with a foremost bureau of lyceum’s heyday.
Some of the leaders in the modern celebrity business are old stagers
from the lyceum and Chautauqua days. Among these are O. B. Stephenson,
head of the long successful Emerson Lyceum Bureau, Orchestra Building,
South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, and the veteran field worker and at
present independent bureau manager, William H. Stout, Bluff Road
37, Greenwood, Indiana. From them and others we piece together the
following:
At the crest of the lyceum and Chautauqua business one of the most
successful organizations was the Slayton Lyceum Bureau, dating back
also well among the pioneers. They ranked almost if not quite with
such great institutions as the Redpath Bureau and produced some very
successful managers who later branched out for themselves, as for
instance, Charles L. Wagner, who was secretary for the Slaytons, a
dominant figure with them at that time, and who is now a New York
leader in concert management, with offices at 511 Fifth Avenue. It
seems clear that the Slaytons had nothing to do with Olof’s change of
state but received her as a full-fledged Eskimo from those earlier
patrons who may have been influential in changing her, or who at any
rate may have been with her at the time she changed and thus familiar
with the stages of the transformation.
The story of Miss Krarer’s entry into and success in the big-time
lyceum field is succinctly given by W. P. Slayton, son of the founder
of the bureau, who writes from the Hotel Lorraine, Chicago, June 30,
1936:
“As I recall, my Father, Henry L. Slayton, made a trip to Minnesota to
meet Miss Krarer with a view of making a contract for her appearance
under the management of the Slayton Lyceum Bureau. At that time she
was lecturing on Greenland with bookings arranged by a personal
manager. This was back in the Eighties, I believe.
“She was glad to come under our management and we booked her for the
next thirty years or until her eyesight failed and she had to give
up platform work. She filled over 2500 lecture engagements for us, of
which over eighty were delivered in Philadelphia alone.
“The last two years of her life were spent at the Old Peoples Baptist
Home in Maywood, Ill. She must have been over seventy years old. Her
height forty inches. A very interesting personality on the platform
and she had a host of friends all over the country.”
From the time, then, when Henry L. Slayton discovered her, Miss Krarer
was one of their chief and successful attractions. She was on the road
pretty well constantly, lectured in schools, universities, churches,
auditoriums, and under summer Chautauqua tents. Wherever she went she
appears to have made a favorable impression personally and to have
conveyed vividly her picture of that northeastern Greenland where she
said she had been born an Eskimo.
We have further proof of Miss Krarer’s success on the lyceum and
Chautauqua platforms from S. Russell Bridges, one of the leaders in the
lyceum field and now head of the Alkahest Lyceum Bureau of Atlanta,
Georgia. He writes under date of July 31, 1936:
“Yes, I remember the little Eskimo lady, Miss Krarer, whom we had on
one of our Chautauqua circuits, as I recall, in the summer of 1911.
Then the following winter she came down and filled a few lyceum
engagements. She was an excellent attraction who always made good with
her audiences, and besides, she was a good box office feature.
“... I recall trying to meet her when she first came down from Chicago
to begin her tour for us but I missed her at the station and followed
her on to the hotel where they had refused to give her a room until I
arrived and identified her....
“Another incident I recall is that she and William Jennings Bryan
appeared on our Chautauqua at Newnan, Georgia, the same date, he in
the morning and she in the afternoon, but they were both leaving at
the same time and when the train pulled in at the depot, I took her
baggage and went ahead and Mr. Bryan was following but when I got on
the platform of the train, she was trying to reach the step but could
not quite make it. Finally Bryan picked her up and put her up on the
platform as you would a child.”
The way in which Olof Krarer was presented to the public, the character
of her service, and the impression she made upon her audiences, we try
to show more concretely by quotations from a statement about her made
by the Slayton Lyceum Bureau (then of Steinway Hall, Chicago). The
document we have was likely printed in 1902 or 1903, according to an
informant who was in touch with Miss Krarer then. It is, therefore, of
about the period when The Little Eskimo was collaborating with Chicago
educators and publishers along those lines which, through _Eskimo
Stories_ and otherwise, have had so profound an influence upon American
schools. The statement runs:
“MISS OLOF KRARER has become one of the best known lecturers that ever
appeared on the lyceum platform. She does not appear as a freak or a
curiosity, but on her merits. The Bureau always guarantees that she
will give entire satisfaction to any audience, however critical. Large
sums of money have been made from her lectures by churches, charity
organizations and lyceums. Many a church debt has been raised and a
weak lecture course freed from debt by the receipts from one of her
lectures.
“For several years after the arrival of Miss Krarer in the United
States it was very difficult for her to live through the summer
months; she has, on the other hand, taken long rides during our
coldest days in winter, with only her ordinary apparel, without the
slightest discomfort, while those accompanying her were nearly frozen
to death.
“The simple story of her life, as she tells it, is more interesting
than a fairy tale. At the close of her lecture anyone in the audience
is at liberty to ask her any proper questions concerning her life and
native country. Some of the ablest legal talent in this country have
taken advantage of this privilege, but Miss Krarer is always equal
to every occasion and emergency. The Bureau, in her behalf, takes
this occasion to thank the many hundreds of people and the press of
the country for the uniform kindness and attention received at their
hands. During the past Miss Krarer has delivered more lectures than
her strength would really permit, and for that reason it will be
necessary in the future to limit the number of her engagements, but
first applications will receive most favorable dates.”
That the general claims of managers were no empty sales talk is borne
out by the specific statement that Miss Krarer had already (as of about
1902) lectured 85 times in Philadelphia, 16 times in New York, 14 times
in Chicago, 6 times in Baltimore, 5 times in Jersey City, Cleveland,
and Aurora (Ill.), and 3 times in Albany, N. Y., Syracuse, N. Y.,
Detroit, Mt. Pleasant, Ia., St. Louis, Cortland, N. Y., Toledo, O.,
Orange, N. J., Newark, N. J., and Dayton, O.
Before the close of her career she lectured several more years; a
corrected tally would give her more appearances in these cities than
here listed.
The direct statement of the Slaytons is well supported by
representative newspapers from the Atlantic coast to beyond the
Mississippi. We quote them as they are quoted in the (1902?) booking
circular of “Miss Olof Krarer, Esquimau”:
“Newark (N.J.) _Evening News_: An appreciative audience greeted Miss
Olof Krarer, the Esquimau lecturer, at the Irvington rink last night.
She is a pleasant-faced little woman, only three feet five inches
in height and weighing 120 pounds, who left Greenland with a party
of Icelanders and was educated by missionaries in Iceland. She told
many interesting things about East Greenland, of which so little is
known. In her native land, she said, ... There is only one social
distinction--the man who owns a flint for making fire is looked
upon as a big gun, but he is bound by custom to loan it freely and
without remuneration. Water--that is, fresh water--is unknown.... The
women of her country, she said, lived a life of pathetic idleness
and helplessness, with no housework, no washing, no fancy work, no
amusement and no cooking. All meat is eaten raw, and this is the sole
food. The main occupation of the men was hunting ... this being done
mainly in the twilight period, lasting four months of the year. The
remainder of the year is made up of four months of perpetual night,
lighted by stars and moon, and four months of daylight. The latter
is the hardest time for the Esquimaux, as large numbers of them are
afflicted with snow-blindness, caused by the dazzling effect of the
sun on the ice and snow.
“The only record of time kept by these primitive people is by means of
a bone bag--one bone dropped into a fur bag on the day on which the
sun is first seen each year.... Miss Krarer says her people ... are
becoming more stunted in growth and shorter-lived every generation....”
“Holyoke (Mass.) Paper: Last night a large audience assembled in the
city hall and listened to Miss Olof Krarer’s talk on ‘Greenland, or
Life in the Frozen North.’ Since her visit to this city two years ago
Miss Krarer has increased her knowledge of English and entertained her
audience finely. The lecture was the same as that given by her when
she lectured under the auspices of the Scientific Association. Last
evening, at the close of her lecture, Miss Krarer appeared in northern
costume, a genuine polar bear skin from its natural state, which she
had taken great pains to secure.... Miss Krarer still finds this
climate trying, and during the summer months seeks the coolest spot
she can find.... Tomorrow she speaks in Westfield, next in Warren.
Almost every night she is engaged and business increases every season.”
“West Chester (Pa.) _Republic_: Olof Krarer fairly captivated her
audiences at the Normal yesterday afternoon and last evening. The
story of the life of the inhabitants of Greenland became doubly
entertaining when related in the quaint broken English of this bright
and witty little native of that frozen land. The Normal School course
of lectures thus inaugurated promises to be exceedingly popular and
will no doubt have a large patronage.”
“Manchester (Iowa) _Union_: The lecture on Greenland by Miss Olof
Krarer at the city hall last evening in aid of the Orphans’ Home was
one of the most interesting and instructive lectures ever heard in
this city.”
“Vicksburg (Miss.) _Daily Commercial Herald_: Miss Olof Krarer’s
pictures of life from a Greenlander’s standpoint afforded a very large
audience at the opera house, last night, a unique experience, of which
not the least entertaining feature was the personality of the speaker.
She is scarcely taller than a ten-year-old girl, a neat, trim, plump
little woman, with very bright eyes and a countenance that has nothing
unfamiliar in its appearance, such a one as might be seen anywhere
in the United States and in no respect Mongolian or Indian.... Hers
is a plain, unvarnished story, that of a sensible, educated woman,
depicting the terrible conditions of life around the North Pole. It
was deeply interesting, however, and the audience frequently applauded
her. She sang ... an Esquimaux love-song, which would no doubt impress
a damsel of the frozen coast as something too altogether lovely. The
lecture was given under the auspices of the Circle of the Silver
Cross, King’s Daughters, and was a financial success.”
“Brooklyn (N.Y.) _Daily Eagle_: The hall of the Young Men’s Christian
Association was well filled last evening by an audience gathered
to hear the lecture of Miss Olof Krarer, an Esquimau lady from the
eastern shores of Greenland, her subject being ‘Greenland, or Life in
the Frozen North.’ Miss Krarer is the only Esquimau lady in the United
States and her lecture was unusually interesting....”
“Detroit (Mich.) _Free Press_: The speaker’s platform at Y.M.C.A.
hall last evening presented a very Arctic appearance, covered with
polar bear skins and white draperies, with a silver fox skin mounted
over the speaker’s stand. This was done to be in consonance with the
character of the evening’s entertainment, a lecture on the Esquimaux
of Greenland, by Miss Olof Krarer, a native of that hypoborean
region.... She was decidedly short, being only 3 feet 4 inches in
height, and weighing 100 pounds. Otherwise her appearance did not
vary strikingly from that of many a German maid, met with daily in
Detroit....”
“Sioux City (Iowa) _Journal_: At the Y.M.C.A. auditorium last night
Miss Olof Krarer, the Esquimau woman, lectured on the customs of her
people. The audience was intensely interested in the lecture.”
“Mount Pleasant (Iowa) _Free Press_: As a psychological study, the
little lady from Greenland, who gave her second lecture in this city
last Thursday evening, is probably unexcelled on this continent; and
as a study in heredity or the influence of vocation and environment
for successive generations upon the body she is equally so.... Miss
Krarer’s person bears corroborative testimony to the claim of her
being a native of Greenland, whose racial developments are as marked
and as universal as color in Caucasia or Africa; and the indices of
nationality in every unmixed people on earth.... But it is Miss Krarer
as an intelligent and agreeable lady that is most interesting. The
evolution from the national, natal condition of absolute non-exertion,
into the consciousness of being a responsible, immortal, spiritual
being; gracious in self-reliance, dignified in self-respect and potent
in an intelligent, conscious, self-hood; attractive in demeanor, and
gracious and punctilious in every point of social relations, she is
certainly the most interesting personality to the student of mind that
it is possible to find on this continent. The school people who failed
to see and hear this speaker failed to see and hear a most suggestive
object lesson in psychical development under the Christian idea of the
nature of God and man. It is through Mr. Fred Hope that Miss Krarer
was engaged to come to Mt. Pleasant. Having heard her in Washington,
D.C., and knowing the interest she awakened in her audiences in that
city, he induced the people of the Christian church to bring her here.
Should she ever come again, let those who did not hear her upon this
occasion be sure to do so.”
Thus through half a century, nearly forty years of which were active,
did Olof Krarer, blond Nordic dwarf who may never have seen an Eskimo
in her life, continue to entertain and impress those who saw her and
those who read about her. It does not appear from other sources, any
more than it does from press comments, that her authenticity as an
Eskimo was questioned by her friends, her managers, her audiences or
her readers. On this we summarize representative testimony.
Obviously a great and careful house like the Rand McNally Company
would not have accepted Olof Krarer as a collaborator on one of their
schoolbooks had they not at the time believed her to be what their book
says and implies, an Eskimo born in an Eskimo country. If possible, it
is still more clear that Miss Mary E. E. Smith and her fellow educators
were convinced of Miss Krarer’s authenticity. Plainly the confidence
of the educational world in Miss Krarer is still maintained for, as
mentioned above, what is usually considered the foremost school of
education in America, Teachers College of Columbia University, has on
its staff teachers who until recently developed no suspicion either
of Miss Krarer or of those views which at least some of them realized
came from _Eskimo Stories_. Strongest proof of all that the faith still
remains is the gratifying continued sale of _Eskimo Stories_, which
employees of the Rand McNally Company report as late as July, 1936.
The testimony is the same from the lyceum fraternity. Not perhaps quite
so meticulously careful as professional educators and the publishers of
educational books, they nevertheless tried to maintain a high standard
for their “attractions.” Remember, those were the William Jennings
Bryan and uplift days, when gate receipts were more likely to drop
than they are now if lecturers or their management fell below ethical
standards.
In a rather careful profession, then, the Slayton Lyceum Bureau stood
high and in considerable part through the very influence of Miss
Krarer. The Redpath Bureau, as well known in the lyceum world, has been
at the very top in every requirement. I have a letter from Miss Amy M.
Weiskopf, who was in close association when the Redpaths bought out
the Slaytons, and who is with the Redpath organization still, or with
its head, Mr. Harry P. Harrison. She says that she never doubted Miss
Krarer’s authenticity and that she never heard doubts of it.
An old friend of mine of high standing in the lyceum world and still
active, is the aforementioned William H. Stout. He heard Miss Krarer
lecture before the University of Indiana, had no doubts of her
authenticity himself, and heard none expressed.
Those who knew her respected and liked Olof Krarer. Through charm of
personality she confirmed the interest of the country, and particularly
of the schools, in that frozen wonderland of the remote north where
live those unique people, the Eskimos.
Olof died in 1935, but during the season 1936-37 teachers all over
the United States are carrying on her work through continuing into
its fourth decade of usefulness the book _Eskimo Stories_, which she
read in manuscript, on which she “made valuable suggestions” and which
contains her “interesting autobiography.” The teachers who use the book
are no doubt being careful to follow the author’s directions that Miss
Krarer’s autobiography, _The Story of a Real Eskimo_, which we quoted,
_ante_, should be read to the children before they begin reading the
book.
Olof Krarer belonged to three cultural agencies that have had their
ups and downs, the Chautauqua, the lyceum, and the circus. Chautauqua
has faded; the lyceum is emerging slowly (we hear) from a temporary
eclipse by the radio; the circus does pretty well, what with “Jumbo.”
But a greater cultural agency, the schools, in which Miss Krarer took
her place 34 years ago, has never suffered eclipse. The teachers go
marching on. In their ranks marches the forty-inch spirit of that good
trouper, Olof the Eskimo.