On the coldest night/day of the New York winter season, I watched an episode of Nova documenting the navigation of the Northern Passage by Roald Amundsen. Amundsen was a great explorer from Norway, who after becoming the first to successfully navigate the Northern Passage, went on to become the first human to reach the South Pole on December 14, 1911.
Amundsen credits his success to the knowledge he learned from his Northern Passage sail. During a winter layover on King William Island in which their ship was forced to be frozen in for several months, Amundsen met people from a nearby Inuit settlement. The documentary explores this fascinating exchange between Amundsen and the Inuits in which he learns their methods for surving in the arctic tundra.
A group of Netsilik Inuit inside their snow-block constructed igloo. Photo: PBS
The trick is Caribou fur. Clearly by no “accident”, the Inuits chose Caribou as their primary source for clothing because of the nature of the fur itself. The hair fibers are hollow so they are able to trap warm air while still remaining breathable. This allows the person wearing the furs to be quite active outside in sub-freezing temperatures, to stay warm and to remove the sweat from their bodies.
Similar to the air-trapping properties of Caribou fir, Inuits learned that building a shelter using blocks of packed snow (not ice) would provide enough insulation from the cold temperatures. I think to anyone accustomed to sleeping in any where outside the Arctic would have a hard time adjusting to the room-temperature of an igloo but clearly the construction is capable of survival - just enough to get by.
Other important skills Amundsen learned included glazing the dog sled rails with ice so that the sled could stay on top of the snow and to sleep naked, again with the caribou furs to keep warm at night. note: I knew about the sleeping naked technique before watching this documentary.
My grandmother’s family immigrated here from Norway so I feel that I should have been more informed on the adventures of Roald Amundsen. Clearly, I have some catching up to do. More interesting to me, though was the life of an Inuit: cut off from the progress of the modern world (this is changing), completely accepting of their environment and focused on nothing more than survival and community.
Nunavut, the Canadian territory which includes the islands and land masses on which many Inuit live, has an average temperature of 5°F in July and -25°F in January. Meanwhile, New Yorkers are suffering for at least one more day in the current single-digit wind chill.
I was just listening to The Good, The Bad and The Queen - Northern Whale