Olof Krarer

Born in Iceland in 1858, Ólöf Krarer moved to the United States when she was still young. According to the University of Michigan Press, she was a dwarf and first found work in circus performance before creating a new public identity for herself as an Inuit woman from Greenland.

That invented persona made her famous. She toured widely as “Olof the Eskimo Lady,” giving thousands of lectures across the United States about life in the Arctic. Later research has shown that much of what she claimed about Greenland and Inuit culture was fabricated, but audiences of the time were fascinated by her act and accepted it.

Krarer died in 1935. Her story has drawn attention not just because of the deception, but because it reveals something about immigrant life, popular entertainment, and the limited choices available to a disabled woman trying to earn a living in America at the turn of the century.