Blond Eskimos

Stefansson later referenced Greely's work in his writings, and the term "Blonde Eskimo" came to be applied to sightings of light-haired Inuit from as early as the 17th century.

[5] Greely traced the first sighting of light-haired Arctic natives to 1656 when a Dutch trading vessel travelled west from Greenland across the Davis Strait towards Baffin Island.

[6][7] Greely also published the eyewitness account of the Lutheran missionary Hans Egede who wrote in 1721 of a blonde "quite handsome and white" indigenous tribe he had discovered in Greenland.

[3] British navy officer John Franklin in 1824 also claimed he had come close in contact and even spoken with a "Blonde Eskimo" who had strong European facial features.

[10] As early as 1922, anthropologists investigated Stefansson's claims but could not come up with an answer to explain the high amount of blondeness in Copper Inuit inhabiting southwestern Victoria Island.

A Inuit man in a parka with a mustache looking to his right.
The man in this 1906 lantern slide by the Lomen brothers was described as a "blond Inuit". [ 1 ]