Jørgen Meldgaard (1927-2007)

[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. Jørgen had long been fascinated with Inuit art, and in 1959 he published the Danish version of Eskimo Sculpture-another aspect of his versatile working with Inuit culture. For his achievements up to that point, he was awarded the Loubat prize of the Royal Swedish Academy for History in Stockholm. In 1959 the then 32-year-old Jørgen took up a position as curator of Eskimo collections at the Department of Ethnography. During the following almost four decades, he concentrated on museum tasks, exhibitions, consultancy for the new Greenland Museum in Nuuk, planning new fieldwork in Greenland, and from the introduction of Home Rule in 1979, repatriation of objects to the independent museum in Greenland. Last, but not least, his long and admired experience made him an appreciated adviser for upcoming students in the Arctic field.