In the Empire of Ice

by Gretel Ehrlich

  The spirit world enclosed the human world in ritual circuits. Together, people, animals, and spirits moved seasonally, following the ice. Before calendars and watches, meetings and conferences, time was told by the arrival and departure of birds and animals. Belugas and walruses at the ice edge in March, little auks around May 10, narwhal in the fjord by June. “We are following the universe,” they said. “We watch the stars. They are always moving. So is the ice. Every day our ice-world is new.”

  In such an environment transformations between animals and humans were understandable. Here, spirit beings were always driving into the actual. As ice shifted from hour to hour, so consciousness shifted, rendering species boundaries irrelevant. Narratives animated what, in winter, was a still place. The biological and metaphysical were understood as wholes within wholes, the one never precluding the other.

  In the dark time, winter dances were accompanied by a hand drum made of seal intestine stretched on an elliptical bone frame and beaten with a walrus rib. Villagers sang, “Aja, aja, aja.” In Greenland, unlike Arctic Alaska, where everyone composed songs, only the shamans’ songs had words.

  As in all Arctic villages, angakoks—shamans—were plentiful. Sometimes half the population of a settlement had some kind of power. An apprentice learned from an elder, being sent alone at night to a cave whose entry was then closed. In the dark, the young man or woman acquired power. Then he or she went to the edge of the ice cap, where a helping spirit—a tornarsuk—could be called. Such spirits took on all kinds of forms: They were shapeless or tiny or manifested as an immense bear.

  “Once there were bears who could understand what we say,” Sophie had told me:

  Once there was a man who shot up into the sky and became a star called Nalagssartoq.

  Once there was a woman who made clothes out of raven feathers.

  Once there were dwarves who could kick over a whole mountain.

  Once there was a woman who drank up all the stream-water and it came back out as fog.

  Once there was an orphan boy who became a giant.

  Once there was a shaman, Qitdlaq, who led people from the other side of the sea to Greenland. Overtaken by a storm, he drifted out to sea and came on strange people covered with feathers. When they chased him, he caused a snowstorm to come and froze his pursuers to death.

  Once there was a man who lived inside the earth and was so strong he could carry a bearded seal on his back.

  Once there was a giant dog who could swim out to sea and drag whales and narwhal to land, and could carry its owner and his wife on its back.

  Once there was an inland dweller who was a fast runner, who caught foxes and lived near Etah.

  Once there were ravens who could talk.

  Once there was a bachelor who married a fox.

  It was a time when animals could understand everything.

  2004. Nittaalaaf. It’s snowing for no reason. It’s 35° below zero in mid-March. “Huughuaq, huughuaq,” Jens yells to his dogs. “Faster, faster.” Dogs scramble and bark, a few fights break out, bearded-seal–skin whips are snapped over the dogs’ backs until they pick up speed. There are eight of us, four sleds, and 58 dogs. We’re off on a two-month-long hunting trip to look for walrus. The sleds tip and tilt over the rubble of pressure ice at the shore and bump down hard. A line snags, a dog is dragged, Jens leans over, snaps the line, and the dog jumps up, rejoining the others.

  Behind us is Qaanaaq, with its rows of brightly painted houses. How quickly it fades behind the blowing snow. Wind drifts lie in long lines north to south. We bump over them and career between thick patches of head-high pressure ice. As we get farther out, the ice flattens. Wind wipes snow off huge plates of ice, and the dogs run fast over a cerulean mirror.

  All day we travel in bitter cold. Mamarut passes us, laughing and snapping his whip. The only other sounds are the ones made by the dogs panting and the sled runners creaking over hard-packed snow. The temperature is dropping, and every leading edge of our bodies is nipped by frostbite: middle fingers, feet, nose tips, cheekbones, foreheads. We lurch through patches of jumbled ice, and though it’s hard to stay on the sleds, the effort to do so keeps us warm.

  March is one of the two coldest months in the year. There is light in the sky, a few hours of night, and a sun that brings little warmth. Jens holds his mittened hand against his cheek and nose, where frostbite has appeared. (It takes only 60 seconds for exposed flesh to burn at this temperature.) Behind his kind, boyish face is an elegant mind. In his community he’s regarded as a natural leader with a spiritual bent: one who has been called by the polar bear spirit and who, in an earlier era, might have been an angakok.

  From time to time Jens looks at me, raises his eyebrows to ask if I’m all right, laughs when I nod yes, and turns back to his beloved dogs. He is my protector, my teacher on the ice, as well as my windbreak (we sit sideways on the sled, legs dangling, ankles crossed), and I’m grateful to him.

  Twice we stop to melt ice for water, make tea, eat cookies. While we try to warm ourselves, the dogs roll in the snow to cool down. “Man and dogs go together here,” Jens says. “It’s a good combination. We have great respect and affection for each other. They aren’t pets; they’re half wild; maybe we are too!” The dogs have to be a little hungry to keep working for them, and they have to be hungry to keep going out with them. “They need us and we need them. We belong to each other,” he says.

  We cross the mouth of the fjord, where, in summer, the long-toothed narwhal breed and calve, then follow the coast of Steensby Land, named for a Danish ethnographer. No food up there. Why go? The hunters ask.

  Looking west toward Canada’s Ellesmere Island, the horizon is no longer a thin line of light but a feathery gray spray of mist—water sky, denoting open water where it should be frozen at this time of year. Little do we know that the sea ice of the entire Arctic is in decline, that abrupt climate change is coming on much faster than anyone expected.

  As we bump along, I try to ask why there is open water so early in the spring and how ice can break up in these temperatures, but it’s too cold to talk. We pull the hoods of our fox-fur anoraks over our faces and continue on.

  Sun is low in the sky. Light shoots up in the four cardinal directions. At the end of the day we make camp on a rocky beach at the edge of the shore-fast ice. It’s 11 in the evening and the light is fading. But the hunters are in high spirits. The farther from town they get, the happier they are. “Now we are entering some nice country,” Mamarut says, smiling, meaning the ice edge and walrus. Dogs are unhitched and retied by cutting notches in the ice and threading the end of the harness line through it. Sleds are unloaded and pushed together. Two small canvas tents are pitched over the sleds. Harpoon shafts are the tent stakes; the sleds are our beds.

  We lay caribou skins down, then our sleeping bags. The floor is ice. A line running the length of the ridgepole is hung with sealskin mittens, kamiks, hats, a loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese, camera batteries, and my pens, because even they need thawing. An old Primus stove is lit. In a battered pot a spangled piece of glacier ice snaps and pops and slowly turns to water.

  After dinner the men prepare to hunt walrus. Gear is laid out—harpoon lines and rifles, block and tackle; knives and harpoon points are sharpened. “Yes, yes, yes,” Mamarut chants. “Aurrit, aurrit, aurrit.” Walrus. “There are many out there.” Tonight, we are going to the hiku hinaa—the ice edge.

  We walk single file for an hour. “The walrus are very alert,” Mamarut warns. “They can hear us moving over the ice, so we must make it sound like we are just one hunter, moving as though we were one man.”

  The floor of the world groans as we walk; the ice age procession is solemn. A red sun hangs just above the horizon as if waiting. The temperature has dropped. Now it’s 40 below. Thin ice undulates like rubber. We move in flickering frostfall. “It’s so beautiful. I could walk all night,” Gedeon whispers. The ice shifts as the tide goes out. “Now the ice we were walking on will b
ecome unsafe,” he says.

  The men climb a stranded iceberg and use it as a lookout. No walrus in sight. Far out gray mist unfurls from an open sea and folds back down around a warehouse-size iceberg. Venus shines in a charcoal sky. “Issiktuq,” Jens whispers, rubbing his arms. “It’s cold!” No walrus pass by.

  After a long wait, we walk the two miles back to camp. “The walrus must have heard us coming, but they’ll return,” Mamarut says. “There should be walrus all the way down the coast to Moriusaq and out to Saunders Island.” He shrugs nonchalantly and smiles. “Now life begins to get good,” he says with a deep grunt.

  The dogs howl a welcoming chorus as a frigid wind lifts the hair on their shoulders. Lanterns are lit. There are four hours of darkness. A late snack is eaten—seal jerky, cookies, and tea. “We’ll go back tomorrow,” Jens says in his deep, purring voice. All eight of us lie nose to nose on caribou skins. The hissing Primus stove keeps us warm.

  Before dawn Mamarut is gone. We learn later that he’s gone to the ice edge alone and has harpooned a walrus. “He is always like that,” Jens explains. “He is always going out alone on the ice. He can’t stay still. He is hard to keep up with.”

  Mamarut returns rosy cheeked and exuberant. “The walruses were close to the ice edge. They were swimming up and down. When they went underwater, I moved in closer; when they were up, I stayed still. The next time they came up, I harpooned one. The ice was bad but it held me! [laughter] Don’t worry, there are lots of walrus. Narwhal too. They’ll go away for a while, but they’ll be back in a couple of hours, and then we’ll have enough food for all the dogs and us too.”

  When there is light in the sky, Jens harnesses one sled while Mamarut sharpens his flensing knives. “I’m happy that the dogs will be getting good food. They’ll have lots of energy for traveling,” he says. We follow the sled, moving quickly in the direction of the dead walrus. It’s important to go back for it before a polar bear comes.

  Ahead gray mist curls up like smoke and something moves, not a bear but a slender channel of open water ablaze in sun. “Miteq!” Jens whispers, pointing to an eider duck flying by, then two arctic terns. We approach the ice edge with a keen eye for polar bears. We step carefully: Thin ice bends under our feet, and beyond, water churns.

  Mamarut motions for us to stop. There’s the sound of gulping, sloshing, thrashing, blowing. A pod of beluga whales swim by, their ivory backs flashing in sunlight. We stare at them, dazed. Winter was ice tight. Now it has opened, giving life. The chilled water is oxygen rich, glutted with fish and plankton. If winter was otherworldly, so is spring. Another eider duck flies down the lead. Beyond is a delicate ladder of ice laid down flat; its rungs are blue. Rotting ice pans heave out of their turquoise moats, and ice pulls apart into long strands.

  More churning. “Aurrit! Walrus coming!” Mamarut says in a loud whisper. They bob up and down, almost comically, gulping and splashing. But before anyone can throw a harpoon, they dive and swim away. It’s not known exactly how far south or west the Atlantic walrus off Qaanaaq spend their winters. Some go to the south coast of Baffin Island. But in the spring, they follow the food sources north, and the breaking up of the ice.

  No time is wasted. Mamarut takes out his flensing knives and stands before the one dead walrus. He looks at it with admiration: “The mind of the walrus is wild and aggressive,” he says. “He is always defending his territory. Not long ago we hunted walrus from kayaks, but they attacked our boats and killed many of us. You can walk right up to them when they are resting and they can be gentle. But if threatened, they are fast.”

  They winch the animal from the hole in the ice, its whiskers silvered. Tusks and head appear, then the bulbous body shining in cold sunlight. A mature male walrus can weigh 2,500 pounds and live to be 35 years old. With swift, sure strokes the men cut the walrus open. Heart and liver are laid out on the ice, steaming, and a tangle of guts flow from the abdomen. Jens cuts the intestines in long lengths and feeds them to the dogs. Flippers are cut off. They look like hands. Long lengths of skin with an inch of blubber are peeled back. This is mataaq, eaten by everyone for the essential vitamins and minerals in a place where no vegetables or fruits grow.

  Meat is stacked on the sled. When flensing is finished, Mamarut leaves a pile of meaty ribs and intestines on the ice. “For nanoq,” he says. “For the polar bears.”

  On the way back to the tents, the mood is relaxed and happy. Mamarut’s wild eye seems like a link to the wild animals around him. He talks about what he has learned from polar bears, how, when he fell through the ice once, he put his left arm and left leg up on the edge, using his free hand like a bear paw moving in the water and lifted himself sideways up onto the ice. “We are always learning from the polar bear. He is good for us to see all the time. The bear is his own weapon. He doesn’t need a gun or a harpoon like we do. He can move on water or on ice equally and can hunt anything. He is worth our admiration. Without knowing his ways, I would have died many times.”

  I look back at the heap of innards steaming on the ice. Already the ravens have discovered it and are diving down to the feast. The sharing of food between humans and animals is a practical and moral necessity. “Sometimes things go against us and we don’t get anything to eat,” Mamarut says. “Our lives are based on how nature gives us animals. And we give food back to them,” he says, speaking softly and slowly, as if looking back in time, remembering incidents of hunger in his village.

  ONCE THERE was a great famine in east Greenland, when two winters followed, one upon the other, without a summer in between. Huge blocks of ice began to shoot up out of the sea, and the bottom of the ocean seemed to be covered with ice. At the end of the first winter there were no living things. The sea was ice covered all summer. The second winter people consumed their skin clothing and kayak-skin coverings. Corpses were cut up and devoured. Parents ate children and children ate parents. Then they began murdering one another for food. After eating human liver, they went mad and their hair fell out. But a few did survive. Summer came again, and all who came after are descended from the time of winter and cannibalism.

  Back at camp, Jens makes a slit in the walrus stomach and pokes around in the brown juices with his knife. He spears a scallop and offers it to me. “You first,” I say. He pops it in his mouth. “Ummmm. Mamatuk,” he says. “Good.”

  Sun shines through frostfall, and the hairs in my nose freeze instantly. Our thermometer reads 44 below. We’ve been thrown into a hall of light that no longer confers warmth. This is a cold sun, so cold it might not be a sun at all. Mornings, we wash ourselves with snow because it melts from body heat, and afterward we dry ourselves with snow because it absorbs moisture.

  “In the last two or three years there were big storms and high waves in November,” Jens says. “That was new. We never had storms like that break up the ice before. The ice refreezes, then we have screw ice. It’s hard on hunting. There are now so few days of getting food. This year the ice didn’t come until December, later than we’ve ever known.” A thin cloud slides over the sun, making the day suddenly colder. Jens is pensive, sitting on an upturned fuel can looking out to sea. “Our lives are based on ice,” he says. “Without it we can’t live, we can’t eat. Ten years ago the ice was six feet thick. When the ice was thick, nothing bothered us when it was cold like this. Now the ice is so thin, just a little wind wave breaks it. It has been like this for the last three years.”

  We sleep in white tents at the shore. When we wake, it’s hard to know if it is morning or evening. “We are lost,” I say, but it doesn’t matter. There are larger powers at work here: Sila rules.

  On the vernal equinox a front pushes in fast. “We have to go now before the storm hits us,” the hunters say. Sleds are loaded hastily as wind gusts increase. The men kneel on flapping caribou skins and pull the lash ropes tight. The dogs are wild eyed. The moment the lines are hooked to the sleds, they roar off. The hunters make flying leaps toward the moving sleds, just barely making
it aboard.

  For days we travel south along the mountainous coast. Out on the frozen sea the world is made of wind-driven drifts and upended, see-through pieces of ice. Ocean currents have squeezed ice into a chaotic labyrinth. At an impasse the dogs moan and cry. Jens stands up on the sled, surveying the scene, then lifts and turns the front sled runners. We bump through a narrow passage, pulling our legs up to our chests to squeeze through.

  A hard wind makes it too cold to stop for tea. Behind us is a bank of clouds layered black and white. Ice fog and blowing snow shroud the horizon. A single pointed mountain sticks up through the fog. “Amaumak,” Mamarut yells over to Jens’s sled, making a cupping gesture to indicate a breast because that’s what the word means. We stop and hack off a piece of glacier ice from a stranded floe, then continue on. Jens points to something buried in snow. The dogs clamber up a steep hill to it. Then I see: a tiny hut covered in snow, with only a bit of roof and part of one window visible.

  We slide off the high loads on the sleds, and for a moment the wind stops. The only thing alive is ice, moaning and cracking in tympanic reports. Cold is the thing. It is a kind of night, a wall that isolates us from the rest of the living world. Two ravens tumble end over end as if their mock fall to earth might shatter the clouds and let in more sun. We check a thermometer: 59 degrees below zero. “Issiktuq”—cold—Jens says, laughing as the wind kicks up again.

  The entry to the hut is dug out, dogs are unharnessed, and lash ropes untied. My fingers don’t work. I help unload sleds using my wrists. Always observant, Jens quietly leads me into the hut, lights a Primus stove for heat, and gently holds my hands. “Frostbite comes quickly, and you don’t know it. It’s like a bad dream, a ghost putting its hands on you,” he says. Windows rattle. A hunk of walrus is hung from the ceiling. When it begins thawing, large pieces are cut off and fed to the dogs.