Ernst Håkan Kranck (1898-1989)

• Published in: ARCTIC
• Main Author: Dunbar, Max
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Arctic Institute of North America 1989
• Subjects: Biographies; Kranck; Ernst Håkan; 1898-1989; Expeditions; Geology; Geologists; Canadian Arctic; Axel Heiberg Island; Nunavut; Baffin Island; Labrador; Hudson Bay region; Labrador waters; Lapland; Russian Federation; Arctic; Newfoundland; Patagonia; Hudson Bay; Baffin Bay; Canada; Hudson; Tuva; Lappland; Heiberg; Rock Lake; Arctic Institute of North America; Baffin; The Arctic Institute; Siberia
• Online Access: https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/arctic/article/view/64737

Ernst Håkan Kranck, professor of geology at McGill University from 1948 to 1969, who died in late May 1989 at the age of 90, was a man whose achievements outran his public recognition because of his innate modesty. . McGill University invited him to come to Canada as visiting professor in 1948, and McGill managed to hold on to him until his retirement in 1969. . Håkan Kranck's record of field expeditions is impressive. His first was as a 19-year-old student member of an expedition to Urjanchai on the boundary between Siberia and Mongolia (now called the Tannu-Tuva Republic). That was in 1917, and the expedition became as much a study of the Russian 1917 revolution as of the geology of the region. In 1979 he published an account of that trip, entitled Den Stora Urjanchai-Expeditionen 1917, which deserves, even for its humour alone, to be translated into English. . Next came field work in Lappland to investigate iron ores. . His Canadian field work began in 1925, a geological mapping at Steep Rock Lake, Ontario. In 1928-29 he was working in Patagonia, on an expedition sponsored by the Geographical Society of Finland, . In 1934 he was on field work in Scotland. In 1937 he was a member of the Tanner Finnish Expedition to Labrador and was again in Labrador in 1939. . After many field trips to Lappland and Finland between 1941 and 1944, and similar work in Switzerland (1945-46), he came back to northern Canada in 1947 to work along the east coast of Hudson Bay in freight canoes, on a grant from the Arctic Institute of North America. [Following expeditions led him to return to Labrador, Baffin Bay, and northern Newfoundland.] . During this very active life, Håkan Kranck produced three books and numerous scientific papers; he also made many friends, most of whom he outlived.