2022 Leif Erikson Exploration History Award
Geoff GreenCanadian expedition leader Geoff Green is awarded the 2022 Leif Erikson Exploration History Award, for his work on polar education and youth engagement. As the founder and president of the award-winning Students on Ice Foundation, Green has dedicated the past three decades on raising awareness and understanding of the Arctic, the Antarctic and places in between. For his work, Green has been awarded as Member of the Order of Canada. He is a fellow at the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and an international fellow at the Explorers Club.
The Leif Erikson Awards are awarded annually in Iceland in three categories; the Leif Erikson Award to an explorer for a lifetime achievement in exploration; Leif Erikson Young Explorer Award to an explorer under the age of 35 for achievements in exploration; and the Leif Erikson Exploration History Award, awarded to a person or an organization that has worked to promote and preserve exploration history, or to educate about exploration, science and environment issues. This year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ll award for both 2021 and 2022.
Previous awardees of our history and education award include exploration historian Dr. Huw Lewis-Jones, the Crew and builders of viking ship Draken Harald Hårfagre, Volcanologist Haraldur Sigurðsson, and writer and publisher Jeff Blumenfeld, who now serves as the chair of the award committee.
The awards are named for the Icelandic explorer Leif Erikson who is considered the first European to land in North America and who, according to the Sagas of Icelanders, established the first Norse settlement at Vinland, tentatively identified with the Norse L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland in modern-day Canada.
Our small museum in Húsavík was founded in 2011 to promote Iceland’s rich connections to the exploration history of the world. From the vikings, to the early polar explorers who trained here around the year 1900, to the Apollo astronauts who trained here in the 1960s, to countless space scientists who visit our country every year, Iceland has played an important role in many of the world’s greatest feats of exploration.