Helge Ingstad
Helge Ingstad was originally a lawyer by profession. Always an outdoorsman, he decided to leave his successful law practice and went to Canada as a trapper. When he returned to Norway, he wrote the bestseller Pelsjegerliv, which was published in English under the title of The Land of Feast and Famine. He was the governor of Erik the Red's Land in Greenland (1932–33), at that time annexed by Norway. When it was decided that Greenland should belong to Denmark, Norwegian government summoned him to the position as governor of Svalbard. During his Svalbard years, he wrote books from his stays in Greenland and at Svalbard. He went on an expedition to Mexico in 1937, hunting for a lost apache tribe, and stayed among the Nunamiut in Alaska and wrote about his expeditions and experiences. In 1941 he married Anne Stine Moe, an archeologist.
Through his stays in Greenland and Svalbard, Ingstad developed a strong interest in the Vikings' daring expeditions across the oceans. This became the starting point for his scientific work in Greenland and Newfoundland, where he and his wife in 1960 discovered what proved to be a Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, in the north of Newfoundland, Canada. They were able to prove that the settlement dated to around the year AD 1000, 500 years before Columbus reached America.
Helge Ingstad was an honorary member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and he held honorary doctorates at the University of Oslo, Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada, and at St. Olaf College, Minnesota, USA.