author
Erland Nordenskiöld
1877–1932
A Swedish explorer and ethnologist, he became one of the most important early scholars of Indigenous cultures in South America. His journeys, museum work, and teaching helped bring that knowledge to a much wider audience.
1 Audiobook
Indianerleben : El gran Chaco (Südamerika)
by Erland Nordenskiöld
About the author
Born in Stockholm on July 19, 1877, Erland Nordenskiöld came from a family known for scientific exploration, but he built a reputation very much his own. He first trained in the natural sciences before turning to ethnography and archaeology, eventually focusing on the peoples and prehistory of South America.
Through expeditions in regions including Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, and Argentina, he gathered material that shaped major studies of Indigenous life, cultural exchange, and archaeology. He was especially associated with careful fieldwork and with linking what he learned on expeditions to museum collections and scholarly research.
Later in his career, he worked in Gothenburg, where he led ethnographic museum work and served as professor of American and comparative ethnology at the University of Gothenburg. He died on July 5, 1932, but his work remained influential in Scandinavian anthropology and in the study of South American Indigenous cultures.