Olof Krarer – The Little Esquimaux Lady, Part 1

If there was anything at all positive that resulted a century ago from the exhibition of Inuit in their native costumes on American and British stages at the hands of sometimes-sympathetic explorers and often-ruthless showmen, it was that the viewing public at least came to have an understanding of how Inuit appeared in their Arctic dress, though they were divorced from their proper geographic surroundings.

And so it is all the more amazing that a non-Inuk could make a living exhibiting as an Inuk person in the United States in the years after real Inuit like Tookoolito (Hannah) and Ipiirvik (Joe) had left the American stage.

A cabinet card of Olof Krarer dressed in “Esquimaux” costume. (Image from the Kenn Harper collection)

Even more amazing is that one non-Inuk who did so was not shy about appearing in what she claimed was native costume, in prominent venues, apparently unfazed by the possibility of being “outed,” and brazenly telling her outlandish story to all who would listen.

She was a most unlikely candidate for Inuit stardom. For not only was she not Inuk, she was Icelandic — and the typical Icelander’s features differ from Inuit features as day from night. Moreover, she was a dwarf, standing only three-foot-four.

Her stage name was Olof Krarer and she billed herself as “The Little Esquimaux Lady.”

Her promotional pictures carried the legend that she was only 40 inches tall and weighed 120 pounds.

The story she provided to the public was outrageous. But she signed up with one of the best-known lecture circuits in the U.S. and the public listened to her tales, believed them, and fell for them hook, line and sinker, for almost 40 years.

Her story was that she had been born on the northern coast of Greenland in a community of 30 or 40 houses.

“One day,” she claimed, “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,” she stated, implausibly, “but owing to the smoke in their houses they didn’t know it.”

The two big men were Icelanders. After living in the village for about a year, they persuaded Olof’s father to go on a long journey with them.

They took the entire family to Iceland. There, she claimed, all her family died except her father. They met a missionary, who baptized her Olof, although her real name, she said, was Abbo.

In her story, she described emigrating from Iceland to Canada, her subsequent move to the United States, and her fortuitous meeting with Mr. Slayton of the Slayton Lyceum Bureau.

The lyceum movement, providing lectures, dramatic performances, instruction and debate, contributed significantly to the education of adult Americans in the 19th century.

Olof Krarer in a studio portrait. (Image from the Kenn Harper collection)

Lyceum lectures and performances were commercial in nature and a good lecturer could do extremely well. They travelled from city to city and town to town, entertaining and informing the public.

In her standard lecture, Olof Krarer, the “Esquimaux Lady,” described the way families in her fantasized version of Greenland kept track of their children’s ages: “North Greenland children are born either in the light time or in the dark time. 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 her bag. In that way she can keep track of the children’s ages.”

The Inuit language, she claimed, was extremely simple.

“The hardest thing for her to do in Iceland and in the United States,” she said, “was to learn to think.”

She went on to explain: “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… The reindeer there, which are very poor and which the people do not use for food purposes at all, live on fish.”

Olof Krarer continued to spin these outlandish tales for decades, and got away with it.

Next column – The truth about the fraudulent “Esquimaux Lady.”

Taissumani is an occasional column that recalls events of historical interest. Kenn Harper is a historian and writer who lived in the Arctic for more than 50 years. He is the author of “Minik: The New York Eskimo” and “Thou Shalt Do No Murder,” among other books. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.