Igloo building

On the ridge behind Jenn and Ian's house there are three large Inuksugait. An Inuksuk or Inuksugaq is essentially the same as a Scottish cairn - a marker for campsites, path turnings, food caches, etc. Although think more along the lines of a carefully crafted Stonehenge style monument rather than a pile of rubble. At one o'clock I headed out towards the Inuksugait, well wrapped up in balaclava, borrowed parka and borrowed sealskin mitts. Jenn had arranged for one of the Inuit to show me how to build an igloo. Soon a figure appeared from between the houses carrying a saw in one hand and a knife in the other. This was Pakak - a man of few words but a very competent igloo builder. He'd already identified a suitable patch of snow and cut out a block to mark it. The first step was to cut two parallel lines, just over half a metre apart. Then he cut straight across between the two lines with his saw and excavated the snow in front to leave a flat face. Now he was ready to cut the first block by making a slanting cut to form the base and a vertical cut between the parallel lines, about 15cm away from the existing edge.

When Pakak did this the block almost seemed to pop out. When I tried it seemed to involve quite a few more cutting strokes and even then my blocks were rather misshapen. Definitely not the tidy cuboids with a diagonally cut base that Pakak produced. The snow was very dry - it looked and sounded like polystyrene. This appearance belied the reality - each block was much heavier than polystyrene as I discovered when lifting them up onto the side of the growing hole. The hole grew into a 2m slot and after cutting about 15 blocks it was time to start building the igloo. The first block was placed vertically into the hole. A second was placed horizontally to bridge the gap between the first block and the side of the hole. Each subsequent block was snuggled up side by side with the preceeding block and leant slightly inwards towards the centre of the growing igloo. Pakak used his knife to trim the sides of the blocks so that they made a close fit. Particularly when he started on the second layer of blocks I was amazed to see how much the blocks could be angled inwards without collapsing. By this time Pakak was trapped in the centre of the igloo and soon he ran out of blocks and started cutting more from the area within the igloo itself. Lifting each block up over his head took quite some physical strength! Placing the last couple of blocks to close the igloo looked like an especially skillful task as it involves shaving each to fit - all the while holding it up over his head and lowering it carefully into place. The whole operation only took about an hour and a half - incredibly quick!