[Paddlewise] Polar Inuit

5:30 am, can't sleep, agitated.
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The Last People on Earth:

Whether the skills and gear of the Polar Inuit are discredited 
because they were "corrupted" by their association with polar 
explorer Robert Peary, or, the latest reason I've now heard, 
because their skills and equipment were "IMPORTED" in about 
1860, the end result is the same and equally disturbing.

I agree that the Bafin Island boats are a good match with the Polar 
Arctic kayaks. Their lineage is well known and obvious when side 
by side.

This is not the case for their long paddles. Treatment of long 
paddles has been wholly inadequate. Bark and Skin Boats 
describes several eastern arctic kayaks that have relatively deep 
draft bows and shallow, keeless sterns. For those that love short 
paddles, imagine paddling such eastern arctic kayaks downwind 
with a short paddle ! Never mind the capsize-rolling issues.

I have done that with the original NARWAL kayak, before the 
designer reluctantly (without admitting the design error) decided to 
put a keel on the stern of the boat. The P&H Iceflow exhibited the 
same behavior. I have that boat-I know it's behavior down wind!

About those Polar Arctic paddles! Such paddles ARE NOT the 
same as those from the eastern arctic. A few years ago, they 
mounted a display showing the evolution of modern glass kayaks 
at the Mystic Museum. They hung a southwest Greenland kayak 
on the wall with an eastern arctic paddle just over it as showing the 
origins of modern kayak design. I asked them why they did that 
and was told that it was OK because the general public coming to 
see the exhibit would not know the difference. 

One of the boats in Bark and Skin Boats (Figure 200, p.207) there 
is a "North Greenland Kayak" shown with a bone paddle rest 
attached to the front edge on the kayak rim. I saw such a paddle 
rest on a collection boat in the canoe/kayak museum in Peterboro, 
Canada some years back. I asked a one of the curators about it, 
but she didn't realize it was there and knew not what it was for.

The use of long paddles with east arctic kayaks is described briefly 
by Arima on p. 120 of his book "Inuit Kayaks in Canada". It offers 
some insite on the issue, but is not adequate. Among other things, 
he decribes why the hunters liked the weight of their paddles.

The east arctic paddles are easily recognized because of their 
length, considerable weight and relatively crude finishing. They look 
a lot like a 2"x3" beam about 10 feet long that is somewhat 
flattened in the blade area. The paddles seen in Nanook of the 
North are of this sort. Many such paddles, as was true in the 
Mystic exhibit, have a scarf several inches long in the middle of the 
loom where the two halves of the paddle are reinforced with 3-4 
iron(?) bolts.

By contrast, the Polar Arctic paddles are finely finished, have a 
knot and notch outside the hand grips that serve as absolutely 
effective drip rings, and have thin, finely finished blades that are 
MOST OFTEN symmetric on both sides, but just slightly curved 
surfaces. These paddles, though long, were remarkably light 
weight. I weighed a collection of them, but never got to publish the 
data. Taken together, the paddles tell their own story of an 
impoverished culture that survived in the face of stunning adversity 
when even the elegant boat handling skills of the southwest 
Greenland kayak culture were unavailable to them. Turning your 
back on these people is lunacy!

I have always been especially interested in the paddles that are flat 
on one side and slightly rounded on the powerface because that 
was the design of the first such Polar Arctic paddles that I ever 
encountered. I was fascinated by it because, in the early 80's, I 
was already using long euro-paddles, and this museum paddle 
happened to be the same length as my paddle. I have a picture of 
them side-by-side.

But pardon me, I have commited sins of misplaced, unjustified 
interest in a bandit, corrupt culture! Let us return to God's true 
kayak culture of Southwest Greenland. Short is great-long live 
short.

When skin boats and southwest Greenland paddles and skills were 
first becoming popular in the mid-1990s, several of our best such 
paddlers were showing their skills, boats and paddles at the annual 
spring South Carolina (?) sea kayaking symposium. An ACA 
instructor was following along right behind them telling everyone 
that you could not use Greenland kayaks and paddles on the open 
ocean. 

One of the Greenland Paddling tapes shows about 20 seconds of a 
kayaker in a skinboat paddling in huge gale with house-sized 
waves. The film is shot from the top of a cliff along the shore. The 
paddler does half a dozen types of rolls at will, obviously absolutely 
at ease in the storm.

It took me back to the early 80's when we started sea kayaking in 
the ACA. The white water instructors that dominated instruction in 
the ACA at the time, ranked sea kayaking as equivalent to flat-
water paddling. The Gurus of the day are always out there telling 
us what is truth. Evolution occurs in spite of them.

Chuck Sutherland

Some of the paddles were edged with bone, others just with a hard 
wood. The joinery was exquisite! 
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