FORTY BELOW
Traditional Life in the Arctic Text and photos by Bryan and Cherry Alexander
C
old is synonymous with the Arctic, particularly during the winter months. In some areas, temperatures can plummet to minus 60°C and winds roar across the ice and tundra at
more than 300 kph. It’s almost unbelievable that people have adapted to these extreme conditions to call the Arctic home. This only became possible with a simple invention some 100,000 years ago — the needle. After that, instead of throwing animal skins over their body to keep warm, people could make fitted, wind-proof, and well-insulated clothing. Arctic animals like seals, polar bear, caribou and fox are perfectly equipped to withstand intense cold, so hunters used their fur to make the garments they needed to survive. From the 16th century when European explorers began
venturing into the Arctic, the expeditions that fared best, like those of Knud Rasmussen and Robert Peary, often relied on local Inuit guides, and adopted their fur clothing and means of transport. One explorer, the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, famously commented: “The English have loudly and openly told the world that skis
and dogs are unusable in these regions and that fur clothes are rubbish. We will see — we will see.” For the people who live there, cold and wind may be the most
severe features of an Arctic winter but, particularly at higher latitudes, darkness is also significant. In the Thule district of north- west Greenland, the most northerly native community, the Sun sets in late October and doesn’t appear again until the following February. Once, visiting an Inuit friend called Ituko, I asked how he felt during the darkness; I wanted to know if he got depressed, or had difficulty sleeping — the kind of symptoms Europeans experience in winter. Ituko laughed and told me he was much too busy hunting in the winter to feel depressed.
Qingaq paddles his floe-edge boat through frost smoke. Nunavut, Canada, 1990.
March/April 2012
above & beyond
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