Blond Eskimos - Early History of Sightings

Early History of Sightings

The first sighting of blonde haired Arctic natives Greely traced to 1656, when a Dutch trading vessel traveled west from Greenland across the Davis Strait towards Baffin Island. Nicholas Tunes the captain of the vessel claimed sighting two distinct races, the first being the brownish skinned Inuit, but the second a tall fair skinned people. Greely also published the eye-witness 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.

Later sightings include William Edward Parry, who wrote of native inhabitants across Qikiqtaaluk Region, Canada, as having physical features of Europeans (e.g. blonde hair and light complexions) and later Captain Graah of the Danish Royal Navy, who in 1821 reported eskimos he met with "complexions scarcely less fair then that of Danish peasantry". 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. Greenlandic polar explorer Knud Rasmussen in 1903 further claimed to have found blonde haired eskimos "of a different race" in Greenland and parts of Canada.