There still remains to be considered one of the elements of the Thule culture, viz. the house. It is, on the other hand, so important that it demands a chapter to itself.
The type of house that is connected with the Thule culture is the circular, semi-subterranean house with the walls built of whale bones (particularly whale skulls), stones and turf, the roof supported by whale jaw bones and ribs, with an elevated platform in the rear part of the house and a stone-built doorway which debouches into the house below or at the level of the floor. It is this type of house that can be called the whale bone house, and it is the geographical spread of this type of dwelling and its relationship to other types of Eskimo dwellings that will be the subject of the following.
As will have been seen in Part I, the shape of the house has undergone some variation in different places where it has been found. Whale bones have by no means always been used for the walls, which have then been built exclusively of stones and turf; nor do whale bones always seem to have been used for the roof; in one case (Sentry Island) wood may have been employed, in other cases stone, in which the roof has been constructed in the same manner as those of the Polar Eskimos (Malerualik, Vansittart Island); it may be that it has in many cases been impossible to procure material for a permanent roof, and then skin roofs may have been used (Malerualik). Sometimes two or three houses have been built together with one common doorway, thus leading to the occurrence of houses shaped like a clover leaf. A fireplace has often been built inside the doorway (Naujan, Qilalukan, Malerualik).
We know this type of house best from Kuk, on Southampton Island, where we have a particularly well-preserved example of it in house III (I, fig. 74–76). Kuk is in fact the only place where we found house ruins that were fairly well preserved; in the other places the ruins were oftenest so collapsed, overgrown and flattened out that it was almost impossible to see what the original appearance of the houses had been. However, the observations made indicate
