90 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



ivory from their tusks. The Greenlanders also carried on most 

 industrious whaling enterprises, as the many bones of these animals 

 found during the excavation of their settlements indicate. They 

 regularly took the black right whale, the ca'ing, or blackfish, the 

 white-beaked dolphin, and the narwhal. This was a summer activity 

 because of the dark and intensely rigorous winters, and the whole 

 able-bodied male population took part. Fleets were formed and went 

 up the straits into Baffin Bay as far north as Melville Bay at 76° N. 

 latitude, and then crossed to Lancaster Sound. On occasion also they 

 seem to have gone west round the south of Baffin Island and into 

 Hudson Strait. The whales caught were processed on the spot and 

 the products loaded aboard the round ships and freighted back to 

 the settlements. Blubber oil, dried meat, ivory from teeth, and 

 bladders and guts, which were soaked and inflated like balloons to be 

 used as floats, were the most useful items to the colonists. 



Walrus and narwhal tusks were reserved for foreign trade, those 

 of the latter being exceedingly valuable in Europe. Narwhal tusks 

 were sold as the horn of the unicorn, and it is probable that most 

 people in Europe believed they were just this. As such they were 

 thought to be very powerful and almost universally applicable medi- 

 cine, being ground down and made into potions to overcome femi- 

 nine modesty and resistance, to cure corns, heartburn and sore eyes, 

 and for a variety of even more magical purposes. They were also 

 used for making thrones, especially episcopal thrones, and for other 

 ornamental objects in monasteries. They had a regal connotation 

 and were taxed accordingly. 



Although the narwhal has always been taken both for its very 

 high-grade oil and for its tusks, Greenlanders seem to have been the 

 only people in the West who ever made it the basis of a regular 

 industry, and the majority of the narwhal horns that came to 

 Europe for many decades originated with them. Similarly, their 

 regular hunting of the White-beaked Dolphin (Lagenorhynchus al- 

 birostris) seems to have been unique and was probably quite for- 

 tuitous, the animal just happening to be very common in their sea- 

 country, while they needed it for food. This species is a gregarious 

 fish-eater, growing to a length of about nine feet, and ranges through- 

 out the North Atlantic down to about the forty-fifth parallel on the 



