285 



down towards the Aleutians the sea is open the whole year 

 round and we find a very higly developed kayak-hunting, just 

 as in South Greenland. There can be no doubt that the many 

 points of agreement between the Eskimo culture in South 

 Greenland and that in South Alaska have arisen from this 

 adaptation to the same kind of natural conditions. At both 

 these places the Eskimo culture has become subarctic, whilst 

 in the intermediate, more northerly regions from Point Barrow 

 to Baffin Bay it assumes more distinctly arctic formst The 

 Polar Eskimos are thus preeminently arctic people, but in cul- 

 tural regards not appreciably more so than the continental 

 Eskimo tribes from Coronation Gulf to Melville Peninsula. 



In addition to the division of the year into a period of 3 

 months with open water and another of 9 months with ice and 

 sledging, we find here also, owing to the situation so far 

 north of the Polar Circle, a dark period and a light period 

 with two intermediate periods when the sun comes up and 

 goes down. The dark period or the true winter time lasts from 

 about the F^ of November to the W^^ of February, or ca. 102 

 days, in the regions about Cape York or more correctly 

 76° N. L. Then comes a kind of spring-lime with day and 

 night, which lasts till about the 29"^ of April, after which the 

 sun no longer goes down until the lo*^^ of August, i. e. for 

 about 109 days. Then follows the autumn period from the 

 middle of August to the beginning of November. The further 

 north we go the more do the real dark and light periods in- 

 crease in duration at the expense of the intermediate, arctic 

 spring and autumn; in Inglefield Gulf, for example, these 

 periods are each fully ten days longer than at Cape York. 



These four polar seasons, which are each approximately 

 one-fourth of the year, determine the yearly changes in the 

 Eskimo life and the yearly hunting journeys, but the part they 



1 cf. H. P. Steensby: Om Eskimokulturens OprindeLse. København 190.5, 

 pp. 12 and 142 ei neq. 



19* 



