GREENLAND BY THE POLAR SEA 



be taken nearly every spring as to where one intends to hunt 

 the following winter, and all the merry moods of camp-striking 

 which seize on everybody, find their expression in a shout of 

 liberation resounding through the whole country which, for 

 many months, has been bound in cold and darkness. 



It generally happens that those who live on the south-west 

 side, or nearest to the north wind, move to the lee-side camps 

 to spend a couple of years in abundance, in peace and quietness 

 acquiring new dogs. Many a confirmed lee-side inhabitant will 

 go northward or southward in order to find bunk-rugs and 

 blazing white bear trousers. Thus these peoples' lives are based 

 on an ingenious training for the finding of a means of livelihood, 

 a training so well adapted to meet the demands of their harsh 

 country that the civilization built upon it makes of the Polar 

 Eskimos the most care-free people in the world. Nowhere else 

 can one live, as one does here, in such a state of practical and 

 simple communism which gives equal rights and equal chances 

 to everybody. One has tried to counter-balance even the fickle- 

 ness of fortune by dividing all the larger animals into pieces 

 which are distributed to everybody who, during the hunt, has 

 not had the luck to be the first to harpoon, say, a narwhal. 

 By this distributive arrangement every hunter is entitled to 

 meat if only he will keep in the vicinity of the one who kills the 

 quarry. This seems to be the result of humane sentiments 

 developed during the fight for existence against niggard 

 Nature. 



There is yet another point. Men are not all born equally 

 strong and supple, and it is generally only a select few who are 

 able to avail themselves of the chance to throw the first harpoon 

 into an unwounded animal. But if once the animal has got the 

 huge bladder with its heavy trailer dragging behind it through 

 the water, even the mediocre hunter can take part in the kill. 

 It is for this work that he receives his just and generous part of 

 the booty. For the maintaining of one's position as a bread- 

 winner in this community one thing only is required — this is 

 industriousness. The lazy man who will not take up his share 

 of the work must go his own way. 

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