This review appeared in Atlantic Coastal Kayaker, (http://www.ackayak.com/index.htm) November issue, Vol. 13, Number 9, pages 4 and 5. It is reproduced here with permission.
By John D. Heath and E. Arima
(c) 2004 University of Alaska Press
P.O. Box 756240
Fairbanks, AK 99775-6240
ISBN 1-889963-25-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 1-889963-26-7 (paperback)
(The publisher says NO PAPERBACK for a year. Comment by David Heath.)
Published November 2004, 160 pages
This book can now be ordered from the University of Alaska Press
Orders: fypress@uaf.edu; website: www.uaf.edu/uapress
(Of course, we hope that you will buy it from Jessie Heath. Comment by David Heath.)
“Eastern Arctic Kayaks: History, Design, Technique” is the most comprehensive review of the evolution of traditional Inuit skin boat construction in the Canadian eastern Arctic and Greenland that I have ever seen. Chapters by five of the eight authors contributing to this book describe the construction of numerous boats found in museums in Europe, Canada, Greenland and the U.S. The current locations of these boats are all noted. Previous publications by other authors describing the history of these boats and other subjects covered in this book are also referenced. Danish whalers collected some of these boats in the 1600’s.
John D. Heath opens the book with discussion about the evolution and general construction of Inuit kayaks from Alaska to Greenland. He includes a number of beautifully done line drawings of some of the structurally more important boats found in the many museums he visited over the years. This is followed by information on how paddles were sized for and used by their specific owners.
His review of historical records of rolling skills of the Inuit hunters, observed and described as far back as the 1600’s, is terrific. Quotes are provided from observations recorded and preserved from those ancient times. The boat handling skills we see today are not new!
Training techniques that are currently used in Greenland by the members of the Greenland Kayaking Association (Qaanat Kattuffiat) are described, followed by a detailed review of some forty or more ways of rolling a kayak. He even describes the ancient Inuit cigarette trick. Those who roll, understand!
John makes it clear that each kayak and paddle is customized both to the physical size of its owner and the intended use for his equipment. Skin boats may seem frail, but they were in fact designed to withstand both the most brutal conditions the arctic marine environment had to offer and the abuse heaped on the boats by harpooned marine mammals. Boats and men survived in demanding conditions. The Inuit boat handling skills were and still are the best sea kayaking skills ever developed by man.
Greg Stamer discusses paddles, feathering, size, length considerations, shoulders at the inner end of the blades, blade width and shape, strokes and stroke technique, extended grip, bracing, sculling, and paddle making.
Harvey Golden describes 12 kayaks in European Museums, all illustrated with his famous line drawings, even including a polar arctic kayak and its typical long arctic paddle of the sort that I have harassed my friends with for the past twenty years (p.72).
Hugh Collins provides a detailed treatment of three kayaks from two museums in Sweden, including one that was first mentioned in 1710. This is a nifty presentation of everything relating to these boats in the respective museums.
John Brand contributes an excerpt from his “The Little Kayak Book” series describing 11 kayaks, plus several paddles, in museums in England, Wales and Denmark.
H.C. Petersen is represented by a translation of a museum publication in which Mr. Petersen describes a series of increasingly challenging and then dangerous games played in training paddlers and future paddlers to master the vast repertoire of Inuit paddling/boat handling skills. It’s short, 4 pages, but fascinating. One game involves tying a float to a harpooned seal in big sea conditions. The challenge is to paddle under the line as it bridges the wave troughs between the float and the wounded fleeing seal. Don’t try this stuff without backup!
Johannes Rosing is represented by a short story about his December, 1899 dance with death, lost, alone, and far from shore in his kayak in a great winter storm. I truly believe that the authors of “Eastern Arctic Kayaks” have reviewed for us a huge array of Inuit boat handling skills, all of which are necessary for survival in the most dangerous of sea conditions.
In a part of the story, Rosing says “I exerted myself until I was thoroughly exhausted and became sleepy. This was the worst part of it. As I tried to keep my eyes open in the darkness, I began to dream I was in a warm house playing happily with my children. Some time later I discovered that all was cold around me and I realized that I had overturned.” Now that’s a serious wake up call!
E. Arima closes out the Eastern Arctic Kayaks in chapter eight with a detailed review of kayaks found in various regions of the Eastern Canadian Arctic. Some of those boats were up to 27 feet long and 27 inches wide with weights as high as 150 pounds. Mr. Arima includes some recently recorded oral histories describing how east arctic hunters lanced caribou and harpooned walrus’ and narwal whales. The narratives preserved from the hunters themselves, and also included in other chapters, constitute one of the outstanding attributes of this book.
The heavier, wider construction of these kayaks was in part a result of the absence of rolling skills in this part of the arctic. Arima states, “Historically, kayak hunting with firearms is a generation-long phase dating to the mid-20th century, which left a preponderance of extra-wide East Canadian Arctic specimens [of skin boats] in museums and obscured the sleeker centuries-old designs”(p.127). Hard to believe that happened within my lifetime!
Arima includes a particularly interesting section of his chapter in which he describes a series of ancient kayak models excavated from middens discovered on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. The oldest of these, shown in photographs taken by Vernon Doucette, may date to 300 B.C. to 500 A.D. It appears that the kayakers of the Arctic had plenty of time to get it right!
A final thought of my own. As an instructor, I have seen sea kayaking instruction programs inspired chiefly by white water paddlers and sprint racers, that routinely emphasize power rolls (C-C) and sculling braces holding the head and torso above the surface of the water that pit human power against the challenges of the sea. We must all be tough guys on the sea, it seems! Twenty years ago, after straining a tendon in my elbow, I learned an effortless, and bomb proof roll to the rear deck. Since then, I have never missed a combat roll, even on class-five West Virginia Rivers.
Over ten plus years of exposure to Greenland paddling and boat handling skills has convinced me that the real critical difference between the Greenland skills and the hard rock skills currently dominating instruction programs is that the Inuit boat handling skills teach paddlers to use coordination and finesse to keep their boats upright or bring them upright after a capsize. They do not fight the power of the sea. They use the sea for support in lying on the water while sculling, in leaning into breaking waves, and when presenting the bottom of the boat to breaking waves.
In one of John Heath’s videotapes there is a 10-second clip of a Greenland paddler out on house-sized waves in a raging gale that must have been filmed from the top of a cliff. The paddler is rolling at will, paddling at will, and in total control of his boat. He was truly one with the sea. Think of sea otters! That is how it should be! This book, by John D. Heath and E. Arima, with the valuable contributions of six other authors, tells how the Inuit built and still build their boats and paddles, and how they train to survive on the sea in one of the most hostile marine environments in the world. We should listen to them!
Our friend, John D. Heath, died on July 14, 2003. This fine book is a great tribute to him and a fine way for us all to remember him. I give him much credit for bringing the Greenland Inuit paddling traditions and skills to all of us in the