by Lynne Cox
I got my sweats and shoes on and climbed the hills back to the hotel and continued walking for about forty-five minutes, then I climbed into the shower, turned on the warm water, and gradually added warmer water. Within fifteen minutes, the external part and internal part of my body were back to normal, and I wasn’t exhausted as I had been for a couple days after the Antarctic swim. This was a much better way for me to rewarm.
Back in town, we joined the Nunavut Day celebrations. Community leaders were grilling hot dogs and hamburgers. Nearby a pair of caribou carcasses were lying on a tarp. Two others in the community were butchering the caribou and distributing the meat. Some large pieces had already been given out. Men were holding big chunks of raw meat between their teeth with one hand and slicing off pieces of meat with eight-inch-bladed knives with their other hand. One slip of the knife and they would take off their lips. The women were holding the meat between their teeth with one hand and cutting off chewable parts using an ulu knife—a very sharp, half-moon-shaped blade. One woman sliced a white bit of meat, and she explained that it was part of the stomach. She was thoroughly enjoying it, and its bright green contents could have been moss.
Using an ulu, a half-moon-shaped Inuit knife traditionally used for skinning animals, cutting hair, and trimming blocks of snow and ice for igloos, a grandmother shows her granddaughter how to follow the ribs and cut caribou into smaller pieces.
Standing nearby, an elderly woman made a fire of a small pile of dried heather to heat water for tea. She had collected the heather earlier in the day, and burning it created a swirling stream of smoke that filled the air with a fresh and clean fragrance.
One of the nurses from the health center, who was originally from British Columbia, accepted a slice of raw caribou from an Inuit woman. They tried to entice Bob or me to try a slice of raw caribou and told us that it tasted like rare roast beef. They said that we didn’t have to worry about getting parasites from eating the caribou, although one could get trichinosis from raw walrus or polar bear unless it was aged in a cache for three or four months. But eating aged walrus or polar bear was an acquired taste. We passed.
An elder has the job of butchering the caribou and dividing it among the Inuit families.
Best friends standing in line on Nunavut Day waiting for hot dogs. The girl on the left is wearing a traditional anorak lined with fur made by her mother; the girl on the right is wearing a modern sweater and headband.
Brothers ready to participate in the traditional tug-of-war competition and footraces. They will celebrate with the community and dance and sing in the land of the endless sun.
We watched a tug-of-war and running games, and that evening packed our bags. I thought again of Amundsen. When he left the grave site on Beechey Island on August 24, 1903, he sailed southwest, through Peel Sound and into unknown waters. He wrote, “Our voyage now assumed a new character. Hitherto we had been sailing in safe and known waters, where many others had preceded us. Now we were making our way through waters never sailed in, save possibly a couple of vessels, and were hoping to reach still farther where no keep had ever ploughed.” But Amundsen almost lost the Gjøa.
In James Ross Strait—named for the British naval officer who reached the North Magnetic Pole in 1831 and later led the first search for Franklin—Amundsen awoke to the violent shock of the Gjøa running aground. He raced to the deck and found the ship was stuck on a bank. He and his crew set the sails and turned the engine on full speed. They managed to free the Gjøa, only to have her hit a shoal and splinter the false keel. And that same night, Amundsen heard a terrifying shriek as fire broke out in the engine room, near tanks holding twenty-two hundred gallons of petroleum. The crew desperately pumped water on the flames and managed to put out the fire.
CHAPTER 13
King William Island
By the time Amundsen and his crew sailed through the Rae Strait, more than five hundred miles from Beechey Island, they were completely exhausted. They hoped to find a place where they could stop and spend the winter. On September 9, 1903, on the sandy shores of King William Island, they found, Amundsen wrote, “A small harbor quite sheltered from the wind, a veritable haven of rest for us weary travelers.”
Amundsen named the harbor Gjøa Haven: “The harbor itself was all that could be desired.” He noted that the narrow entrance would prevent the intrusion of large masses of ice, and the inner basin was so small that no wind could trouble them there no matter from what quarter it blew. He noticed that there were a number of cairns and tent circles that indicated the Eskimo had been there, and he also noticed fresh reindeer tracks, a sign that there would be food. He decided that a spot on a hill above the bay would be a perfect place for the magnetic station where he and his crew would spend two years on his second objective—measuring and determining the location of the North Magnetic Pole. They also made astronomical measurements, as well as weather and temperature measurements.
During their stay in Gjøa Haven, Amundsen and his men became friends with the Eskimo who lived on King William Island, the Ogluli Eskimo who camped near Kaa-aak-ka Lake and the Nechilli Eskimo. Both were migratory peoples. They followed and hunted the caribou herds. In summer they lived in caribou-skin tents, and in winter they lived in igloos and traveled by dogsled. Amundsen and his crew learned the Eskimo dogsledding techniques and how to let the runners of the sleds become covered by a fine layer of snow so they would slide across the snow more easily.
The Eskimo also taught Amundsen and his crew how to prevent frostbite. They took their warm hands out of their gloves and applied them to frozen sections of their bodies until they warmed and blood circulated back into those areas. Amundsen became good friends with an Eskimo named Atikleura, who Amundsen believed was the most skilled among his tribe.
From Atikleura, Amundsen and his men learned the complex task of building igloos by cutting blocks of snow with a large knife that had a blade as large as a butcher knife and a handle a foot long. Atikleura cut blocks of snow that were about eighteen inches wide, twenty-four inches long, and four inches thick. Then he built the igloo up in spirals with one layer of blocks placed on top of another and each layer placed a bit farther inward. The blocks of snow were fitted together so they were seamless. Atikleura’s wife, Nalungia, filled in any cracks with snow to make sure the wind couldn’t penetrate. It took considerable skill. The last block that fit in on the top of the roof was usually a triangular block of snow. The door was cut in the igloo, and blocks of snow were cut and carried inside to create a bed that was covered with skins, and a table made of snow blocks was constructed inside the igloo.
Amundsen and his crew traded with the Inuit for reindeer and fish, and in return the Inuit were given sewing needles and knives. Amundsen invited the Inuit to join with them and celebrate Christmas and New Year’s on board the Gjøa.
Nalungia made the finest reindeer clothing of all the women in the tribe. The reindeer undergarments that Atikleura wore were better for keeping warm in the Arctic than anything Amundsen had brought with him from Norway. Amundsen gestured and hinted to Atikleura that he would like to have some reindeer undergarments. Atikleura was pleased and produced some worn-out underwear, took off his clothes, put on the old underwear, and handed the ones he was wearing to Amundsen, expecting him to put them on immediately. Amundsen was surprised and hesitated. He said he wasn’t accustomed to exchanging underwear with other people, and certainly not in front of Nalungia. But Atikleura insisted, so Amundsen covered himself the best he could and put on Atikleura’s warm underwear.
There was on Amundsen’s part a desire to understand Atikleura’s way of life that proved to be critical for every voyage of exploration that Amundsen attempted in the future.
After eleven days Bob Griffith flew from Baffin Island home to California, and I flew to Gjøa Haven, a hamlet of about twelve hundred Inuit and a handful of government and medical workers from the Canadian mainland. I decided not to swim in Gjøa Haven, because I didn’t have Bob there
for safety. But I wanted to see the place where Amundsen spent two years of his three-year journey, so I flew across the frozen sea and still-frozen land to King William Island in the Central Canadian Arctic.
From the air, Gjøa Haven looked a lot like Pond Inlet, with the same layout of buildings, airport, and homes but without the hills or mountains. When I entered the one-room airport terminal, I looked around, trying to find a way to the Amundsen Hotel. I didn’t see a hotel van or a taxi, and I listened to hear if someone was speaking English, so I could ask directions, but everyone was speaking the Inuit language. There’s nothing quite like landing in a place where you don’t know anyone and trying to find where you’re supposed to go and not being able to speak the language.
I walked over to an older couple with their family and asked them in English if they could point me in the direction of the Amundsen Hotel. The woman pointed through the window and said they had a hotel van, and she had her husband talk to a man behind the airport counter who called the hotel. They said the van would be there in ten minutes.
After waiting half an hour, I decided to walk with my luggage the mile and a half or so into town. I was feeling a little down, being alone in such a remote place, but just as I stepped out of the terminal, an Inuit man, probably in his late twenties, pulled up in an enormous truck. He asked me if I was going to the Amundsen Hotel, and he offered me a ride. The elder couple said hello to him as they left the airport. And so I accepted his offer. He said his name was Samuel, and he drove the water truck for Gjøa Haven. I smiled. Of all the trucks I could get a ride in, I got the water truck. In a moment, I realized how doubly fortunate I was.
Samuel explained that because the ground was permafrost, the community couldn’t use underground pipes. The pipes would simply freeze and burst. So the community had water trucks and sewage trucks. Everyone in town had a water tank and a sewage tank under their homes, and each day, he delivered water or removed the sewage.
Samuel jumped into the driver’s side, and I climbed into the passenger’s side. The ride to the Amundsen, unfortunately, took only a few minutes. Samuel was a bright spark of a guy, and he smiled so big when I asked him if he could show me how he drove the truck. He demonstrated the gearing, speed, and stopping distance based on the weight of the truck. He asked me why I had come to Gjøa Haven, and he pointed out different parts of the community, the central part where we were heading, and then the suburban area up out of town, and he mentioned where I could find the places where Amundsen and his crew had stayed.
Samuel stopped in front of the two-story-high Amundsen Hotel and explained that Jackie Flynn ran the hotel, and Leo, her husband, ran the town’s co-op. They were from Newfoundland but had come north to work in Gjøa Haven until December.
Samuel lifted my swim bag out of the cab and led the way into the hotel’s coffee shop and introduced me to Jackie.
Jackie explained that the hotel van had a flat tire, and they were waiting for a new tire to arrive, and it could take some time. Jackie was of Irish background with freckles and creamy white skin, a big smile, and great warmth. She was trim, probably from working hard, and moved and spoke very quickly with a Newfoundland accent and sweet Newfoundland colloquialisms.
She immediately asked why I was in Gjøa Haven and said that, in the nine months she’d been there, she’d never really had the time to explore much of the town, but she thought what I was doing was fascinating. So I asked her if she would take a break with me; she would be gone for only about an hour, so Leo wouldn’t worry if he called and she wasn’t there.
We walked along dirt roads, past new and rundown homes, many surrounded by rusting snowmobiles and old ATVs. There were four markers in and around town noting where Amundsen and his men had camped, but we discovered that the plaque on a distant hillside commemorating Amundsen’s visit had been stolen, and the two old cemeteries in the town center had been vandalized, and the crosses were destroyed.
During the next few days, I wandered through Gjøa Haven, walking down to the tiny bay where the Gjøa had been anchored in clear blue waters. I walked to the site where the observation hut had been and imagined what it must have been like there in the dead of winter with temperatures plunging to 50 degrees or more below zero. I thought that many of the people I saw now must be descendants of those of Amundsen’s time.
I noticed that there were several twelve-and thirteen-year-old girls with babies, and Jackie explained that this was the norm. She said that by the time the girls were in their twenties, they often had five or six children. And with the twenty-four hours of sunlight in summer, the children and teenagers stayed up all night playing unattended in the streets and hanging out in vacant homes. Sometimes they kept the hotel guests up late at night. The town looked so quiet during the day because most of the people were sleeping. Many were on government assistance. There were all kinds of problems with abuse: drug, alcohol, elderly, child, animal, and spouse. At the co-op the shoe polish and mouthwash had to be locked up. And there had been theft of yeast to make moonshine—home brews.
In spite of all this, the Inuit I met were very hospitable. They invited me into their homes, showed me how to play traditional Inuit games with dice, and served me hot tea. Through Rita Hummiktuq, a student-support assistant and the girls’ soccer coach at the local school, I met Jimmy Qirqqut, Rita’s uncle and one of the town’s elders, who recounted an amazing story he had been told by his mother about the day his great-grandfather met Amundsen. Amundsen wrote about this encounter in his book, except Jimmy was far more dramatic when he described the initial tension between the Europeans and the Eskimo when they first met. Neither of the groups knew if the other was friend or foe.
They walked up to each other, standing close enough to see each other’s eyes clearly. One of Amundsen’s men had been carrying a gun, and when he set it down and put it aside, Jimmy said, the two groups realized they could be friends.
One evening, I joined Rita, Jimmy, his wife, and his wife’s two sisters in Jimmy’s home. The living room was sparsely furnished, with just one chair and a small couch. Jimmy sat in the chair, and Rita’s tiny elderly aunt and her two small sisters insisted that Rita and I sit on the couch. They would sit on the floor. I felt uncomfortable doing this and asked them through Rita to please sit on the couch, and I would sit on the floor. They smiled and said it was more comfortable for them to sit on the floor. This was what they did when they were growing up. In the winter they had lived in igloos, and they sat on caribou skins spread on the snow floor, and in summer they had lived in caribou tents and sat and slept on the ground. They assured me that sitting on a couch was strange to them.
It seemed wrong for three elderly ladies in colorful skirts to be sitting on the floor. This was not the way I had been brought up to treat older people, so I sat cross-legged on the floor with them. They shook their heads. I was their guest, and they expected me to sit on the couch with Rita. They were three strong-willed women, and there was no way that they would give in. I laughed and thanked them, and they broke into smiles. Everyone was comfortable, and Rita asked if it was okay to let the questions begin. Jimmy wanted to know what fascinated me about Amundsen. Why had I traveled to Gjøa Haven? I explained that for four hundred years men from all over the world had attempted to sail through the Northwest Passage and Amundsen was the one who succeeded, partly because he knew that he would not be able to carry all the provisions he needed. He would have to hunt and fish and live off the land. One of the major reasons he succeeded was because of the people he met in Gjøa Haven, their ancestors.
Amundsen and his men didn’t just survive when they lived in Gjøa Haven. They lived fairly well, and that was due to these people’s ancestors. They showed Amundsen and his crew where to hunt and fish and how to train the dogs to pull the sleds and how to build igloos.
The elders listened to Rita and me, hanging on to each word. Their families were part of this history of great exploration; they had helped facilitate it. They had helped Amun
dsen and his crew accomplish their Northwest Passage.
But what Rita’s family didn’t know was that after finding his way through the Northwest Passage, Amundsen went on to the South Pole. Rita drew a globe with her hands and pointed to the bottom and talked about Antarctica. I was smiling because Rita and her family were from the Arctic, and they never confused where they lived with Antarctica, as so many other people in the world did.
Rita translated that the reason Amundsen succeeded in reaching the South Pole was because he had learned how to make garments from reindeer skin from their ancestors. Those garments had kept him and his crew warm on their way to the South Pole and back.
The elders smiled at the stories, and it was one of those memorable moments in life when one shares something about a loved one that was never known before. Rita continued translating, and she helped me pull everything together for them and let them know how important their families had been to opening the Arctic and Antarctica.
I told them, “Amundsen was so successful because he was open-minded. He learned from the Inuit people, and they helped him. It was because of your families who lived in Gjøa Haven and the Canadian Arctic, as well as your extended relatives in Greenland and their Greenlandic dogs that pulled the sleds with Amundsen’s supplies, and that they killed for food, that Amundsen reached the South Pole.”
My hosts nodded and smiled and recognized the great importance their ancestors had played. They sat up proudly, and we had tea together, and they told me about growing up in the Canadian Arctic. How they had lived like nomads, following the caribou and fish, and how difficult life was. Many friends and family members starved. They told me of great blizzards, of friends being lost on the ice, and of the day-to-day struggle to find food, especially in the winter.
