Jørgen Meldgaard (1927–2007)

When Jørgen Meldgaard passed away on 9 March 2007, an era in Danish Arctic research ended.Ten years earlier he had retired from his position at the National Museum of Denmark after almost 40 years as a curator and half a century in the service of Eskimology.As the last person in a unique line of Danish Arctic scholars, Meldgaard succeeded through his work in continuing a research tradition that includes Therkel Mathiassen (1892-1967), Kaj Birket-Smith (1893-1977), Erik Holtved (1899-1981), Helge Larsen (1905-84), and Eigil Knuth (1903-96).Their pioneering work in Arctic cultural history and Eskimo archaeology was carried out for the National Museum of Denmark.Jørgen was born on 7 March 1927 in Skive, a town in Jutland, but he grew up on the island of Funen.Like Hans Christian Andersen, who also came from Funen, Jørgen led a life that resembled a fairy tale.In 1945 he came fresh from high school to Copenhagen to study prehistoric archaeology and was soon introduced to the multifarious activities of the Department of Ethnography.After five years of German occupation, the museum was at last able to resume its research in the Arctic.Eigil Knuth had conceived the plans for the Danish Peary Land Expedition, and the first team traveled north in 1947.Knuth was looking for employees for the following summer's archaeological investigations, and many years later Jørgen told us what happened: "As a young archaeology student, I was sitting in the reading room one day with some fellow students, when P.V. Glob, who was then the curator, came rushing in, shouting "Who wants to go to Greenland?Raise your hand!"And I was the first to raise my hand.I literally jumped on board the old ship Godthåb, which for four weeks thumped across the Atlantic with sails and steam through storms, and struggled through the ice.I ended up in the northernmost part of Northeast Greenland-and was deeply fascinated.After this first expedition I was stuck with Arctic archaeology" (Damsgård, 1997:10).Together with Hans-Georg Bandi, he spent the summer in the northeast where they emphasized the cultural ties between the north of Greenland and the Dorset and Thule cultures in the Smith Sound region and Arctic Canada.During his studies in prehistoric archaeology, Jørgen had the opportunity to participate in the National Museum's expedition to the Norse settlements in southwestern Greenland in 1949.This expedition revealed another topic of research to this young student, one which would later turn into a major interest.But Helge Larsen had noticed Jørgen's skills and invited him to join a 1950 expedition to Alaska as his assistant.The excavations of the Trail Creek caves were to be completed that summer, and the Ipiutak culture men's house at Deering was also excavated.At the museum, Jørgen was given the task of describing a donation of 182 stone objects from the village of Saqqaq in Disko Bay, and he concluded that the material represented a Pre-Thule Palaeo-Eskimo culture that was closely

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