Erland Erlandson

Erland Erlandson (c. 1790 – 1875) was a Danish carpenter and sailor who, after becoming a British prisoner of war during the Napoleonic Wars, joined the Hudson's Bay Company in British North America. Despite his poor English, his intelligence and hard work saw him promoted from carpenter to clerk to factor. Along with , he crossed northern Quebec to establish the HBC's Ungava District, an ordeal fictionalized in R. M. Ballantyne's 1857 adventure novel Ungava. In 1834, misled by his Indigenous guides, he became the first known European to cross the Labrador Peninsula. He also established several outposts in the interior, including the successful , but, effectively barred from further promotion owing to his low and foreign birth, he eventually retired to a homestead in Canada West (present-d

Erland Erlandson

Erland Erlandson (c. 1790 – 1875) was a Danish carpenter and sailor who, after becoming a British prisoner of war during the Napoleonic Wars, joined the Hudson's Bay Company in British North America. Despite his poor English, his intelligence and hard work saw him promoted from carpenter to clerk to factor. Along with , he crossed northern Quebec to establish the HBC's Ungava District, an ordeal fictionalized in R. M. Ballantyne's 1857 adventure novel Ungava. In 1834, misled by his Indigenous guides, he became the first known European to cross the Labrador Peninsula. He also established several outposts in the interior, including the successful , but, effectively barred from further promotion owing to his low and foreign birth, he eventually retired to a homestead in Canada West (present-d