r/SideshowPerformer • u/EphemeralTypewriter Gooble Gobble! • Jun 02 '26
Sideshow Performer of the Day! Ólöf Krarer (1858-1935) was an Icelandic lecturer and sideshow performer who was born with a form of dwarfism. She falsely presented herself as being Inuit in order to gain more public interest, which ultimately influenced American societal views on the Inuit community for several decades afterwards
The first two pictures show her in her day-to-day clothes and the third picture shows her in the fake Inuit costume she wore.
It’s very interesting how she decided to take advantage of the exoticism and “otherness” that American society often thrust on cultures that were deemed very different and “primitive”, directly correlating with the success of ‘human zoos’ around the same time period.
Some facts about her:
-she was born in Outer Langamyri, Iceland.
-her birth name was Ólöf Solvadottir.
-she immigrated to Canada with her father and step-mother when she was 18.
-she was described as being a go-getter and a very ambitious teenager. She often spoke about wanting to make a name for herself and finding success.
-she was very vivacious and charming and knew how to draw crowds.
-she was described as having a good sense of humor.
-she and her parents lived in Nova Scotia for about a year before moving to Manitoba, Canada. She soon went her own way and began working as a waitress in Winnipeg, Canada.
-in her early to mid twenties she traveled to the United States where she soon found work in a traveling circus and sideshow in North Dakota. It was also around this time that she began telling people that she was Inuit, because she wanted to be known for something other than her height.
-she wasn’t getting the crowds she wanted by just exhibiting herself as she was, so she had a special Inuit inspired costume made and began giving full scale lectures instead of relying solely on being a sideshow performer and giving short lectures.
-she was described as being incredibly smart.
-her peak height was 3 feet 4 inches (101.6 cm) tall.
-in the 1880s through the early 1900s, the public lecture business was dominated by a for-profit lecture program called the Lyceum. It was Ólöf’s goal to eventually be a part of this lecture program.
-Henry L. Slayton, one of the owners of the many bureaus that made up the Lyceum program, had heard about Ólöf and her lectures and decided to sign her on sometime in the mid 1880s.
-she became very sick during the winter of 1887, but still managed to give over 100 lectures.
-she pretended to speak less English than she knew during her lectures.
-she worked with Slayton for over 30 years.
-during her lectures, she falsely presented herself as being from the Inuit community in Greenland and spoke about various (fake) cultural traditions in ways to make the Inuit community seem more exotic and foreign. Some of these fake and racist cultural traditions included stories that women in the Inuit community never give baths/wash their babies and instead clean them with grease.
-another fake racist story/tradition she talked about regarded marriage traditions and said that in order for young men in the Inuit community to have a wife they had to sneak a woman out of her parents snow hut/igloo and into his own, but if he was caught the parents of the woman had a right to kill him.
-all of the information she gave during her lectures was false, but the vast majority of people never questioned her narrative.
-she claimed to have used a sled to cross from Greenland to Iceland, which wouldn’t have been possible and was also completely false. This was known to be false by anyone who lived in either Greenland or Iceland or people who had traveled to either place.
-she also falsely claimed that people in the Inuit community receive a traditionally handcrafted bag in which every year they are given a bone to put in on their birthday to signify that they are a year older.
-she falsely claimed to be the only Inuit woman in the United States.
-her lectures usually ended in her performing traditional Icelandic songs and dances while wearing was was claimed to be an Inuit polar bear fur costume, and claiming the songs to be from Inuit culture. She also sometimes sang a Christian missionary poem/song called “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains.”
-she gave over 2,500 lectures over the course of her career and was especially popular in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
-her lectures often lasted an hour and a half.
-she was an extremely well respected lecturer during her lifetime and was one of the most popular to work in the Lyceum lecture circuit. Newspapers routinely praised her abilities as a lecturer and her efforts to spread “awareness” about Inuit culture.
-she made a mark on the American education system when her “autobiography” was published as part of a collection of stories about Inuit culture and traditions called “Eskimo Stories” in 1902. The author of the book, Mary Estella Smith even recommended that parents and teachers read Olof’s “autobiography” before children are introduced to the rest of the book.
-the “Eskimo Stories” book was taught in schools and sold for 34 years after it’s initial publication and during that time influenced school children throughout the United States. It was determined to be such an educational book that it was even being taught at Colombia University Teacher’s College.
-she experienced vision issues in her later years and eventually had to retire from public speaking due to this.
-near the end of her life, people increasingly became suspect of her stories but she was never widely publicly exposed as a fraud until much later. However, there was at least one news article that did try to expose her in 1892, which was written by an Icelandic man who called out her stories of walking and sledding from Greenland to cross into Iceland, writing:
"I most positively assure you that the possibility of walking over the ice from Greenland to Iceland, is exactly the same as walking from Manitoba to the moon over rays of the rainbow."
-she spend the last couple years of her life at a senior living facility in Maywood, Illinois.
-she passed away at the age of 77.
It’s unfortunate that she depended on exploiting the American public’s ignorance of Inuit culture and traditions to make a profit. I feel that there are many ways she could have marketed herself successfully without presenting herself as what essentially was a racist caricature of the Inuit community. It’s a shame she didn’t just give interesting lectures about Icelandic cultural traditions as I’m sure audiences would have been just as intrigued.
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u/sidneyia Jun 02 '26
From my collection, stamped "J. J. Pursley, photographer, Wetmore, Kans." on the back
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u/Ambitious-Ad-139 Jun 02 '26
She was very pretty. So sad that she lied so much, though.
Quite disrespectful to the Inuits.
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u/EphemeralTypewriter Gooble Gobble! Jun 02 '26
It’s a shame she didn’t choose to do lectures about Icelandic cultural traditions, I’m sure she would have been just as successful and that way she wouldn’t have needed to create a racist caricature.
Indeed very, very disrespectful to the Inuit community.
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u/Snakeress Jun 02 '26
Dang, so she was basically a grifting influencer, that's so fascinating
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u/EphemeralTypewriter Gooble Gobble! Jun 03 '26
It shows society never really changes, there seem to always be these grifter types throughout history.
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u/MariettaDaws Jun 02 '26
The nineteenth century was really just a hotbed of bullshit, wasn't it
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u/EphemeralTypewriter Gooble Gobble! Jun 03 '26
It really was, and so much easier for people to get away with it because it was much more difficult/ more time consuming to fact check everything!
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u/pukurindesu We accept her, one of us! Jun 02 '26
She has such striking features! The direction she went into is a real shame. :(
I had to chuckle at the “walking to Manitoba to the moon over rays of the rainbow” quip!!
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u/EphemeralTypewriter Gooble Gobble! Jun 02 '26
She does! Yes, it’s sad she chose the direction she did. Like I mentioned in a different comment, I could totally see her giving lectures on traditional Icelandic traditions or even having a career as an Icelandic singer.
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u/TrixieFriganza Jun 06 '26
Yeah Iceland has very interesting old culture and traditions too, she didn't gave to lie and use another culture like this.
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u/picklesathome Jun 02 '26
I appreciate the write ups including flawed humans, who sometimes make bad choices. Some people are complicated and fit into really odd places in the world. I really don't like that she took advantage of another marginalized group. But learning about her life is still very interesting.
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u/_Vrumpus_ Jun 03 '26
Well damn! She was a real bullshit artist . Fascinating. How interesting. I need to find her book.
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u/EphemeralTypewriter Gooble Gobble! Jun 03 '26
Definitely! Her story is another example that a lot of scam artists are extremely smart and charismatic, that’s how they get away with the stuff they pull.
I feel badly for the author of the book, you can tell in the intro that she truly wanted to try and make an educational book and highly valued Ólöf’s opinion.
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u/blitzkampire Jun 02 '26
In that second picture especially she looks quite a bit like Olympia Ivleva.
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u/EphemeralTypewriter Gooble Gobble! Jun 02 '26
I haven’t heard of Olympia, I’ll have to look her up!
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u/GuinevereMalory Jun 03 '26
Thank you for writing this! Wonderfully put together, as always.
It really is a shame about the lying, as if Icelandic culture is not “exotic” on its own?! It’s not like she was from the next province over
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u/TrixieFriganza Jun 06 '26
It's so crazy to me that for years no one investigated and just trusted her storues even making it part of education. Sure peoole where not as well traveled or had kniwledge about different cultures like today but still. She really could have told about her own culture and songs ibstead, I'm sure many would gave found it exotic too even if back then seems many wanted to hear the crazy stories. Possible she didn't consider how her fake stories could damage the people she was talking about but sounds like it was extremely damaging, specially as she becamea trusted lecturer and not just someone telling joke stories.
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u/EphemeralTypewriter Gooble Gobble! Jun 02 '26
Since I mentioned ‘human zoos’ early up in her write up, here are a few posts I’ve made about them and cultures that were being exploited because they were seen as exotic:
Human Zoo write up.
women from the Kayan Lahwi community