Photograph of: Silvio Zavatti

Silvio Zavatti was born in Forlì in november 10^th 1917 and he dies inAncona in May 13^th 1985.

Silvio Zavatti and Umberto Nobile

He was a Captain of an English ship for long years but it comes hit from " arctic desease" meeting an iceberg at the age of 20 years.

In 1944 found in Forlì the Polar Geographic institute and in 1945 he public the first number of the Bulletin " The Pole ", distributed all over the world.

Actually, thanks to the exchange of the Bulletin, Zavatti succeeds to fasten relations with istitutions, researchers and universities all over the world.

Since 1959 Professor Zavatti fight to obtain that Italy cooperate with the other nations begining scientific programs of search in Antartide. In the first years of life of the institute, Zavatti promotes shippings in Greenland and in Antartic.

In 1958 he also elaborates an ambitious program for the construction of an italian scientific base in the Land of the Queen Maud (Norwegian antarctic area).

In 1958 he public the Polar Geographic atlas, winning the prize of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) Foundation Vacchelli.

In 1970 he organizes in Civitanova the International Polar Congress , while in 1983 he speaks to the Paris one. Until his death, in 1985, Zavatti lived and fought for the knowledge and the defence of the artic environments and peoples.

Deepening on his figure and on his work:

www.museopolare.it/Silvio%20Zavatti.htm

www.museopolare.it

Contribution of the Foreign Business Ministry, project Lifeland:

www.lifeland.it/scheda_istituto.htm

Shippings

In the same year of the International Congress of Geophisic (1959), he lands in the island of Bouvet, trying to built the first italian antarctic base. The first phase of the search should indicate the real possibility to built a persisting scientific Italian base.

Such possibility was verified, but the financial scarcity hindered the connection of the second phase of the project… "his initiative didn’t continue because of the lack of funds but above all the lack of interest, and this cause him a deep bitterness" ( M. P. Casarini in Artic and Antartic pag. 154).

In 1961 he studies uses and customs of the Inuit and in 1962 with Walter Minestrini and Viadimiro Riccobelli, he is in Lapland, among the Somos people, where he studies the ergology and collects hetnographic material.

In 1961 he leaves to his first arctic shipping and he meets for the first time the eskimos to Rankin Inlet, in the Canadian artic. He make searches about the habits of the arctic peoples, on their games of cord, on their songs and dances. It begins his battle as paladin of the people of the ices. The meeting with these populations will enrich his life and will change it inexorably.

In 1963 he leaves to eastern Greenland, where he deepens psychology searches, he studies dances, the art, the songs, the scholastic regulation and the human ecology.

In 1967 and in 1969 he is again in the Canadian antartic. During the first shipping, conduct in the eskimo village of Rankin Inlet, Zavatti entire the searches begun in 1961 and realized two colors documents about the life in the tundra and about the game of cord. In the second shipping he reaches Repulse Bay. where, besides the hetnographic search, he carries out topographical observations that carry to the correction of lots of mistakes present in the Canadian maps; moreover, he studies the rests of Forte Hope, built in 1846 by the English explorer, John Rae.

With the Repulse Bay expedition finish the adventures of Zavatti as explorer.

The Polar Geographic Institute

The Polar Geographic Institute was open by Zavatti to Civitanova, Marche, with the intentions of making available all of the material collected in his different explorations. The Museum was transferred in the actual seat, Villa Vitali in Fermo, after Zavatti’s death.

Deepening on the Polar Geographic Museum:

www.museopolare.it/Museo.htm

The Inuit and Novatut

In 1976, the Inuit of the Canadian antartic begin to claim their autonomy from the Canadian Government. Zavatti since 1971 had leaned, thanks to his magazine, the birth of the nation Inuit. Fourteen years after his death, the Inuit will realize their dream creating the territory of the Nunavut, in tongue inuktitut "our land ".

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