GREENLAND BY THE POLAR SEA 



cold, newly erected hut of snow. No wonder that he, or she, 

 frequently becomes crooked with rheumatism at an early age 

 and has to give up. This rheumatism is a legacy of all those 

 days spent in snowdrifts during sudden blizzards, and 

 serves as a reminder of the many times when he was taken 

 unawares by storms during the hunting of reindeer and birds, 

 and for weeks had to put up with a damp and clammy cave in 

 the mountain. 



Against this background, it is easy to understand that 

 nobody has paid so much attention as have these people to 

 the convenience of clothing. The climate of their country 

 demands it, and it is an absolute condition that the hunter must 

 be clothed fittingly. So the task of the woman is to make and 

 mend the man's clothes, no less than it is to get the daily food. 

 It is not without reason that the Polar Eskimo says that a man, 

 as hunter, is what his wife makes of him. But the wife also 

 knows how highly her part is valued by the man, and no praise 

 is more nattering to her than admiration of her work. As luck 

 will have it, she also has at her disposal the animals which yield 

 the warmest fur from which to make her clothes. Next to the 

 skin is worn a light and soft shirt, made out of birds' skins, the 

 feathers turned inwards ; on top of this a coat of sealskin, with 

 the hairs turned out, is worn during spring, summer, and 

 autumn ; in winter-time this so-called Netseq is exchanged for 

 a coat of blue fox, also with the hairs turned out ; and certainly 

 this is the lightest and warmest costume in existence. For 

 trousers the men use bear-skins — a kind of knickerbockers that 

 reach just below the knees. Out of beautiful white frost- 

 bleached sealskins without hairs they make boots and line them 

 with hare-skin. For long sledge journeys they also use long- 

 haired boots made from the skin of the forelegs of the bear, or 

 from the leg-skins of the reindeer. A woman's costume is not 

 much different from a man's. The chief difference consists 

 in the trousers being shorter than the man's and made out of 

 foxes' skin ; the boots are almost as long as the legs. The 

 difference in coats is only marked by a variation in pattern, or 

 by the way in which skins of different hues are put together. 

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