Hans Peder Steensby

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Hans Peder Steensby

Hans Peder Steensby (born March 25, 1875 in Steensby, parish of Skamby Sogn on the island of Funen , † October 20, 1920 on board the ship Frederik VIII ) was a Danish ethnographer and geographer .

As the son of the small farmer Jens Hansen, he was originally called Hans Peder Jensen , but in 1902 he took the name of his birthplace Steensby . He graduated from the traditional Odense Cathedral School , and in 1900 he received the degree of cand.mag. and worked as a teacher in schools in Copenhagen . After a stay in Berlin, he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in 1905. In 1908 he went on a study trip to Algiers and Tunis , where he studied irrigation and nomadic culture. In 1909 he visited the Eskimos at Cape York in northern Greenland on another trip and in 1911 became professor of geography at the University of Copenhagen. Later, in 1913, another study trip took him to Egypt and the Egyptian Sudan. In his last years Steensby dealt with the Vinland sagas and proposed a new hypothesis for the location of Vinland . He traveled to Canada in 1920 to research this subject and died suddenly on the way back.

He remained unmarried and was buried in Skamby cemetery. A travel scholarship program for geography students, based on his estate, now bears his name, as does one of the great glaciers of northern Greenland.

Works

(Selection)

  • Om Eskimokulturens Oprindelse (On the origin of the Eskimo culture, dissertation, 1905),
  • Foreløbige Betragtninger over Danmarks Raceanthropologi in Meddelelser om Danmarks Anthropologi I, 1907,
  • Nogle ethnografiske Iagttagelser fra en Rejse i Algier og Tunis 1908 in Geografisk Tidsskrift, XIX and XX,
  • Contributions to the Ethnology and Anthropo-Geography of the Polar Eskimos Meddelelser om Grønland, XXXIV 1910,
  • Indledning til det geografiske Studium ved Københavns Universitet (1920),
  • The Norsemen's Route from Greenland to Wineland (1918),
  • Om de danske Øers geografiske Udvikling (1925, published posthumously)

obituary

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Steensby, Hans Peder
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Steensby, HP
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish ethnographer
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Steensby, Fyn
DATE OF DEATH October 20, 1920
Place of death Frederik VIII (ship)