The Eskimo are a wandering folk, thus their dwellings must of necessity be capable of quick erection, demolition and easy transport. The tribe lives in tents in the summer, moving from one camp to another as the hunters decide; but winter quarters are more permanent, and the snow built house—the igloo—takes the place of the sealskin tupik on a more lasting foundation. The Eskimo tent is a wholly different affair from the Indian wigwam or lodge. It consists of a penthouse shaped framework of poles, semi-circular at the back, with overlapping strips or curtains of dressed skin for the entrance in front. The whole thing carries a covering of skins, firmly and beautifully stitched together. The back part of the tent, used as the family sleeping place, is covered with skins of the large ground seal—ogjuk—or of the ordinary grey seal, with the hair left on in order to ensure some darkness during the long, unbroken day of the arctic summer. The heavy hair also serves to throw off the rain in wet weather. But the front portion of the dwelling has a roofing of the inner membranes of the sealskins, pared from the entire pelt when fresh and [73]moist. These membranes are first stretched upon frames and dried, prior to being sewn together, when they become almost transparent, so that there is plenty of light in the rest of the tent. They are so beautifully and so neatly stitched as to be practically waterproof, like the fine fishing jackets made of dried and split seal gut for the kyakers. The finish of Eskimo clothing, fur “blankets” and tent coverings, is always neat and workmanlike and gives no ragged, tatterdemalion impression of nomad savagery such as might be derived from some Indian’s belongings.

[74]

Towards the back of the tent, inside, a board is fixed from side to side, and the whole space between this and the walls is filled with a deep bed of heather, spread on top with deerskins. This is the sleeping place of the family, in the dark half of the dwelling. Additional deerskins serve as blankets, and lie about the bed, rolled up, during the day. The rest of the furnishing is very simple.

Inside the entrance hang the bags of seal oil used for lighting or cooking purposes. Then there are the cooking pots (“kettles,” as they are called), deep, oblong boxes of soapstone without a lid. And the lamps, also of soapstone, and in shape not unlike a crumb tray, with a raised lip and a little shelf at the back for refuse bits of wick. These “lamps” are fed with seal oil. The wick consists of dried moss and gossypium. This is moulded into pellets; a row of wick balls is set on the rim of the lamp and then kneaded down into a line upon it and kept carefully trimmed, so that the edge of flame remains clear and bright. All the cooking is done over a “lamp” of this description, unless over a fire of heather and driftwood out in the open. The Eskimo housewife uses a blubber hammer (a stone, or mallet of ivory tusk set in a wooden handle), to beat down the seal or whale fat into oil for her lamps. Her furs, and her cooking pots, together with her needles, and knives and implements for dressing skins, constitute the Eskimo woman’s domestic outfit; a training in the clever use of them is the Eskimo girl’s education, and [75]the dowry of the Eskimo bride. The tent and these impedimenta are portable enough for the wanderings of the arctic summer, and it is remarkable what an amazing host and medley of belongings can be stowed in the family travelling boat, and unloaded from it—a veritable Pandora’s box—at the next bit of summer beach.

The winter locale and the winter dwelling is altogether another story. The tribe having chosen the site of a village in some sheltered bay, near a frozen lake or stream (or, at any rate, where ice or water can be obtained), will return to it year after year, and remain there throughout the long dark season, until the time comes round again for the summer-exodus. An occasional excursion is undertaken by both men and women in search of supplies, but the old folk are left on guard.

The building of this village is quite a work of art, and is begun as soon as the snow lies deep enough. Before this happens, the tents have been getting very cold to live in, despite the stitching on of several layers of dried heather to break the force of the wind and keep all snug inside. At last a day comes when by common consent the hunters all remain in camp, and join forces with the old men and the boys to build the winter dwellings.

Each man plans and builds his own house according to the size of his family; but only in his turn, and assisted by the rest of the community, to whom he has already given, or is prepared to give, his services. [76]The first houses to be erected are those of the Angakooeet, the Medicine Men; the chief hunters are the next to be considered, and everyone else comes in the order of his estimation in the tribe.

The main considerations the Eskimo has to bear in mind in building his snow house are that it will have to be kept in repair, and that it must be adequately lighted and warmed. This means labour and oil, so for his own sake the dwelling is planned on as small a scale as possible. It varies in nothing but in this point of size from all the rest of the village.

The hunter having chosen his site, next takes a [77]sealing spear, a long twelve-inch knife and a saw, and begins piercing the snow in every direction, his object being to find a spot where it is deep, and so closely packed and hardened by the wind that it can be cut out into great blocks for building. Otherwise his “bricks” would be too brittle or too friable for the purpose. Should no such patch lie near at hand, the builder calls all hands, and together they start trampling and packing down the snow with their feet, while the old men, the women and boys constantly bring up fresh supplies and throw it in to be stamped firm. Having thus prepared what he considers sufficient material for his purpose, the good man commences to saw out huge rectangular blocks of this solidified snow mass, each one of which taxes his utmost strength to lift. He begins his house by building a ring of them, a larger or smaller ring as the case may be, fitted and jointed together with the utmost nicety by means of his knife. A second tier is added to this ring, the builder working from the inside and the blocks being brought up by his assistants. As soon as this is “well and truly laid,” he trims the upper surface to a slope, and continues building, but in a spiral now and slightly sloping inwards, until he has reached the top of what has grown to be a dome roof. A key block is deftly fitted in to complete and close it, and the shell of the dwelling is complete.

A semicircular opening in the side is next cut out for the doorway, and then the builder turns his attention [78]to the sleeping bench—the principal feature of the Eskimo igloo. He builds a line of blocks from side to side, facing the opening, up to the height of a man’s legs. The space between this and the walls is filled with broken snow like rubble, which is trampled down until brought to the necessary level, so as to form a solid bench of snow right across the building.

Then side pieces are built out, to form solid shelves for the lamps and family utensils and to serve generally as a larder and storage place for oil and blubber; so that, by the time all is done there is little of the original floor space left.

The next step is the porch or sukso, another little domed erection much like the main igloo, built in front of the entrance and intended, first to break the force of the wind and to keep the larger place warm, and secondly as a store house for surplus meat and blubber, for the dogs’ harness, whips, sealing lines, and anything the latter and the wolves might find eatable. (Eskimo dogs, be it remarked, find nothing uneatable save sticks and stones). As an entrance or exit for the sukso, a further passage is built, like a little tunnel; again as protection from the arctic wind.

The finishing touch is the window. Light is a necessity, but the Eskimo is scarcely particular about ventilation. The less he gets of that the more successful his architecture seems to be. A square opening is cut high up in the dome of the igloo, facing the [79]sleeping bench. It is then glazed after the fashion of the Arctics. The builder sets off for the nearest sheet of fresh water ice, and with the butt end of his sealing spear shivers out a good thick pane of it. This he places over the hole in the roof, packing its edges round with half melted snow, and pouring water over the packing. In two minutes, everything is frozen airtight and solid, and a window of flawless ice lets the illumination of the northern night into the pure and icy chamber of the newly made house. Failing a window of ice, one is made of strips of dried seal intestine (a thin, translucent material, not unlike oiled silk), stitched together with fine deer sinew. The seams are parallel, and as neatly executed as if by machine working on the smallest stitch. The fabric is stretched over the opening and pegged down at the corners, and congealed into its place by half melted snow. A small hole is cut in the dome for ventilation, and a snow block provided to stop it up again when necessary.

Finally, the interior has to be glazed. While the householder himself has been busy more or less within the building, on the outside the old men and the children and the women have been set the task of packing every joint and crevice in the snow masonry with loose snow, so as to make it absolutely wind tight. Now comes the moment when the doorways, too, are closed and every entrance blocked. Two lamps, well trimmed and well supplied with oil, have been carefully lit and left burning inside, much as [80]we in this country leave a sulphur candle in a room to be fumigated after infectious illness, and seal up the door. As the lamps burn slowly away, the temperature rises and all the surface of the snow is slightly melted. As the lamps die out the temperature falls again, and the surface freezes to glass-like smoothness. Every asperity of the sawn blocks of snow is annealed, and the dwelling is as proof against draught as the inside of a bottle. Water, too, is thrown on the floor, to make it smooth as marble and as durable as cement.

The writer has dwelt thus at length upon the building of the Eskimo’s winter quarters, since there is something almost like a fairy tale in this fantastic yet ingenious and practical use of snow and ice. If masters of taste have always insisted upon the principles in architecture that design should be in keeping with site and surroundings, and material should be indigenous to the locality, surely the houses that these hardy children of the frozen North build for themselves are by no means wanting in true artistry.

These snow houses do not take very long to construct. An Eskimo can build an igloo large enough to house about six people in a few hours, given some assistance. It would be imagined that no great degree of comfort could be expected within a dwelling where a thaw of the roof and walls begins as soon as the temperature rises above freezing point. But warmth is a matter of degree in the Arctic, and shelter from [81]the bitterness of the wind alone is almost warmth. The stillness of the air inside, the greatly lessened intensity of cold, and the local if foul warmth over the lamps and cooking pots, all make for comfort as the native understands it.

In some parts of the country the natives line the dome and walls of their houses with cleverly stretched skins, and between them and the snow walls the intervening space acts as a regulator against the interior warmth, so that excessive thaw is checked, or its effects are prevented from damping the family circle below.

Lest the foregoing account of the white and frozen village should convey too dazzling an idea of such a settlement, it should be remembered that the snow all round and about is trampled up, and incredibly defiled by all the refuse of a community who have no ideas at all about sanitation and seemly surroundings. Hence there is an appearance of dirt and squalor wherever the Eskimo encamp, and these little congeries of human beings contrive quite effectually to blot and mar the pure immensity of the snow-white northern landscape.

The Igloovegak once finished, it remains to do the furnishing. This is essentially the women’s work. Heather is lavishly spread over the sleeping bench, and covered again with the heavy winter skins of deer. The rolled-up fur rugs (or “blankets”) of the family are ranged round the walls. Two of the soapstone lamps are placed on stands at each end of the sleeping [82]bench, and a rough framework of wood and deer thongs arranged above them by way of a rack for drying clothes. Stone cooking pots may be suspended over the lamps when required, and a store of blubber and meat is kept handy on the snow benches behind the lamps.

The rest of the family belongings are stowed away in the porch, and the house is ready for occupation.

There is another description of snow dwelling used by the Eskimo called a Sinniktâkvik, an acquired sleeping place. This is merely a temporary affair, a hastily built igloo sufficient to house a travelling party for the space of a “sleep,” having no porch or window, and only intended to be abandoned next day.

It is interesting to note that the remains of the dwellings of the Tooneet can be distinguished by the fact of their circular floors having been laid down with rough stones, unlike the modern igloo, which leaves little or nothing to mark its site by the time it has all melted away in summer. The sleeping bench in the Tooneet house was narrower than the present day Eskimo’s, showing that the earlier people were of shorter stature.

The family continue to inhabit the winter igloo until the spring thaw comes, and the roof falls in. Then, for a week or two, skins are stretched over the hole to keep the storms from beating in; but this is only a temporary measure. By the time the milder weather really sets in, and the trickle of water can be [83]heard everywhere, and the tunnelling, too, of the lemming under the sleeping bench, the tupik has to be in readiness. It has been stored away under a heap of stones during the winter, but with the advent of the ducks it is brought forth and erected once more.

These Eskimo settlements are not built according to plan. Each man chooses a site for his own igloo, generally in the shelter of some rock, or where there is a good supply of hard packed snow. The dwellings are not very scattered, however, but grouped fairly closely together, for the double purpose of sociability and common defence against attack by dogs, wolves, or bears. The true Eskimo village boasts of no common room or general meeting house such as may be in use among some of the tribes in Alaska and elsewhere, where few native customs survive unchanged. Nor is the log or sod hut ever seen in the regions where Eskimo life is still lived as it used to be before Europeans set foot in the polar wilds.

It is noteworthy that, when an Eskimo tribe moves to another locality, the old igloos are never destroyed. In the barrens, the law of hospitality is universally observed, and such of these buildings as may survive the springtime thaw, might serve for shelter at any time to travellers on journey. Those that are fairly intact when the tribe moves away are merely blocked up; but those which have become unsafe have the roof knocked in. The writer has frequently come across these deserted villages in the course of his journeys, [84]and had occasion to avail himself of the shelter thus offered. It is a weird and desolate sight—a collection of derelict igloos—some gaping open, others closed; but no smoke or steam escaping from their little domes. And, over all, the pall of the frozen silence of the Arctic. [85]