KEEPING WARM 
snow. In their language, snow, depend- 
ing upon its type and consistency, has 
more than a hundred names, and it once 
had many uses. Absorbent, though cold, 
it was used in lieu of toilet paper. Ingen- 
ious traps were built with snow and 
baited with urine to capture caribou. A 
windscreen of snow blocks protected the 
fisherman jigging for lake trout or char. 
And oqaalugsait , hard-packed, fine- 
grained snow deposited unlayered by a 
single storm, was perfect for building 
the igloo, that emblem of Eskimo cul- 
ture and ingenuity, which according to 
Richard L. Handy of the Engineering 
Institute of the University of Iowa, has 
“a structural perfection . . . matched 
but hardly surpassed by modem engi- 
neering.” 
A long, thin probe of caribou antler 
with an ovoid ferrule at one end and a 
handle at the other was used to find 
suitable igloo snow. Then blocks, each 
roughly three to four feet long, two feet 
high, and six inches thick, were cut with 
a snow knife made of bone, ivory, or 
native copper. Men built the circular 
igloo, spiraling the snow blocks upward, 
with each successive tier canted slightly 
more inward to achieve a perfect dome 
so strong it could easily support the 
weight of an adult person. It took less 
than an hour to build a small igloo, used 
as a temporary shelter while traveling, 
and two to three hours to build the large 
winter home, fifteen feet in diameter 
and seven feet high, that would house an 
entire family. A pane of freshwater ice 
set into the igloo’s south or east wall 
served as a window; and an upward- 
sloping entrance tunnel of snow blocks 
formed the essential cold trap that pre- 
vented the escape of warm air from the 
building. 
The myriad air cells within the snow- 
made it an excellent insulator. Just the 
body warmth of its inhabitants could 
raise the igloo’s temperature by about 
forty degrees above that of the outside 
air. The igloo had, however, one major 
failing: heated with oil lamps to more 
than 42°, it began to melt and drip. 
Thus an ordinary igloo, although wind- 
proof and reasonably comfortable, was 
hardly cozy. But many all-winter igloos 
were lined with sealskins, leaving a cold- 
air space between the lining and the 
snow walls, and in such homes the tem- 
perature could be kept between 60° and 
70°. In late spring, the sun-warmed ig- 
loos sagged and became uncomfortably 
dank, necessitating a move into tents 
made of seal or caribou skins. 
As vital as their winter homes, which 
permitted them to five in reasonable 
comfort in an icy land, and just as 
An Eskimo woman watches oxer her 
child in a summer tent. Living 
in tents and igloos has become 
uncommon throughout the Arctic 
as most Eskimos have moved into 
permanent, year-round housing. 
ingenious, was the Eskimos' winter 
clothing, so perfect in design and mate- 
rial it made them nearly impervious to 
any arctic weather. Furless and ex- 
tremely vulnerable to cold. Eskimos pro- 
tected their bodies with the skins of the 
superbly cold adapted animals of the 
north. Musk oxen, cloaked in dense fur 
so long it hangs nearly to the ground, 
can endure, with little heat loss, storms 
of seventy miles per hour and tempera- 
tures of — 50 = . The long guard hairs and 
dense fur of arctic foxes protect them so 
well that they do not have to increase 
their metabolic rate until the tempera- 
ture falls below —40°. The fur most 
important for the Eskimos, virtually the 
sine qua non of their survival in the 
Arctic, was that of the caribou. Caribou 
hairs are club shaped, thicker at the tips 
than at their base, so that they trap body 
warmth in tiny air spaces near the skin; 
47 
