The People of the Polar North/Chapter 8
It is a strange life that we live up here; no programme of arrangements is ever drawn up; the days bring their own diversions and their own work. The only thing laid down beforehand for each day is the allotted portion of walrus flesh that we have to eat to keep our bodies in fit condition for work. But, should a happy suggestion occur to any one, it is acted upon at once.
On September 1st we were intending to hold high festival, for that day we had completed the stone house in which we were going to pass the winter. It was an extraordinary house, this that we had made for ourselves. We had carried our building materials from the rocks, where there was stone and to spare. For two long weeks our arms and backs had ached, with dragging down the boulders of rock and piling them up. And when it stood there complete, we christened it the "Cave in the Cliff,"—for it was little more, having been built practically in the side of the cliff, with the rock itself for its inside wall. There were two rooms in it—a sleeping-room for six men, and a working and cooking room. The walls were entirely of stone. The roof had been constructed with the help of four oars, which we had obtained from Scottish whalers, with cross-beams made of barrel-staves, the whole covered with turf. In the work-room we had set up three empty provision-chests which were to serve the Danish members of the expedition as writing-tables. In the sleeping-room we had built a raised pallet of stone, on which we laid our sleeping-bags. The floor was of flat stones.
But we were very proud of our handiwork and glad enough of the shelter we had made ourselves from the Polar winter; and now we were anxious to dedicate it to its purpose by filling it with happy people. All the Eskimos in the village were ceremoniously invited up to tea. From the Norwegian ship Gjöa, we had had a bag of currant biscuit which, as a rule, we dealt out sparingly in daily rations at tea; but we sacrificed this to the occasion, and vastly it was appreciated.
Our phonograph, which, it is true, had grown somewhat hoarse, supplied the necessary music for the entertainment, and Harald Moltke provided some very effective fireworks, by letting off a few magnesium shells. This may sound all very childish and foolish, read among the manifold resources of civilisation; but to us, up in that little Eskimo camp, it meant a great deal. Our spirits rose high and we saw our strange existence in a very festive light.
In this marvellous land you can hold perfect bacchanalia on a few cups of tea and a little mouldy bread.
It was something new only to be in a real house again; we had lived in tents and snow-huts ever since we left Upernivik in March. The room seemed to us palatially large, and the rude rock face in the background, the stone walls and the stone floor, lent to the whole interior a brigand aspect which quite took our fancy. Unfortunately the old robber grandmother was lacking. When, later on in the evening, we lighted our little blubber lamps, it was all more fantastic still, and I felt a delight in our cave which I could hardly explain, even to myself. I was obliged to go away, down to 
Up there then, in that cave half-buried in the cliff, we were to await our fate, the Winter and the Dark. We were going to pass the next few months of cold and night far north of the civilisation which so many of us regard as a necessity of life. Our tiny winter lair was of cold stones, and we had no stove to warm ourselves with, and no firing. And we should have to procure our food from day to day. And yet—I felt a warming wave of joy rush through my body, the joy which those who live on their travels feel most keenly: excitement at the rich possibilities of life!
On my way home I met an old heathen woman, Arnaluk. She stopped me and pointed out over the sea.
"Dost thou see that?" she asked.
"What?"
"That—out there over the sea. It is the Dark coming up, the great Dark!" she said gravely, and crept away home.
The sea was calm, and the awl-like summits of the hills stood up against the sky like supports. It was twilight, but you could see a long way. A black bank of fog lay up against the horizon: so that was the Polar night advancing.
I went back to our cave and found there a score of Eskimos, men and women, almost standing on one another for want of room, listening to one of the records of the phonograph orchestra: it was Wagner's "Tannhäuser."
The light dazzled my eyes.
When the phonograph ceased, the cave rang with peals of happy laughter. No one had a thought to spare for the Dark and the Winter.
The first dark evenings are hailed with the same glee as the first daylight, after the Polar night. Up there, as here, people like change. When, a whole summer through, your eyes have been bathed in light, day and night, you long to see the land vanish softly into the darkness again, that the stars and the moon may light their lamps.
And with the idea of change they associate the thought of all the good things the winter will bring with it: the frozen sea, and the hunting on the ice, and the swift sledge-drives, far from the sweltering houses, after bears.
"Ha! now the dark nights are coming, soon the ice will close in the sea!" the men cry, as they meet, towards evening.
"Be glad, for soon blubber lamps shall light those who go out to fetch meat from the flesh-pits!" others call out.
"And windows and fires shall light far out in the night, and hasten the lagging pace of late-returning sledges!" adds another.
With such exclamations the change is greeted by the little groups that meet in an evening to chat. The eager ones get their sledges. out to examine the bone runners, repair old damage, or cut new harness or traces for the dogs. All must be ready for the gifts the cold brings with it.
And the lower the sun circles towards the horizon, the lovelier in its vivid colouring the Polar country grows. Light and darkness wrestle in blood-red sunsets, and the clouds with the light behind them, crimson-gashed, glide out into the night.
I stood in the centre of a gay group on just such a late summer evening; the men, old and young, sat clustered round a seal-catcher who was making a sledge. Behind us, shouting children played their games.
Suddenly one of them called out, "qaqaitsorssuákut!" which, in this connection, means, "The men with boats without masts!"
The cry was echoed by the whole tribe of them, and all tore in a wild race up to the hills, where they hid in the hollows of the stones.
I wanted to know what it all meant, and my question gave one of the old ones an opportunity of narrating an interesting legend.
"Do you see that low, black iceberg yonder?" he began; "that is what the children are running away from. In olden days, at the approach of the first dark evenings, there was always a good look-out kept on the sea; for it sometimes happened that ships came into sight, out at sea: ships without masts. They were nakasungnaitsut, the short-legged men, or, as they were also called, qavdlunâtsait, a race of white men who were very warlike; they used to come up here with great boats, the sterns of which were higher than the bows, so the old people tell us.
"These white men came originally from these parts, so tradition relates in the legend of the girl who married a dog.
"These qavdlunâtsait were amongst her children; when they grew up, she made a boat out of the sole of a leather boot and started them out to sea, so that they might sail to the country where the white men lived.
"'Ye shall be fighting men!' she had said to them when they went away. These are the words of the legend.
"After that, men were always afraid of the ships that came up here, for they invariably picked quarrels, and killed. But often a dark iceberg was mistaken for them, and roused false terror in a village; and that is what has now grown into a game among the children.
"One year it was already winter when sledges, which were out hunting walruses, discovered one of the white men's big ships frozen up in the ice. That was out beyond Northumberland Island.
"The people knew from experience that sooner or later these men would come and attack them, and so they decided to be beforehand with them.
"Armed with lances and harpoons they rushed up against them on foot. The ice round the ship was new and smooth, and so they bound the skin from the palate of seals round their feet, that they might not slip. The white men were taken by surprise, and, as they found it difficult to run on the smooth ice, it was an easy matter to overcome them. Thus the men from these parts avenged the deaths of many of their compatriots.
"After that they plundered the ship and shared the booty between them. One of them ran off with a box. When he got it home and opened it, what should there be in it but a beautiful laughing boy! He had most certainly been hidden there to save him from being killed.
"The man let the white boy grow up with his own little son, and the two grew very fond of each other. The white boy used to catch ravens for his foster-brother, and soon became very adroit. He would pretend to be a dog, crawl along the ground, and get so close to them that he could bring them down with stones.
"Every one was very fond of the strange boy, who grew up just like the children here, and learnt to catch seals as we do. They made him a shirt of seal bladder, that rendered him invisible to bears, so it was said.
"It is told that the boy grew homesick when he saw the sky turn red in an evening; then he began to talk of milk and the sweet dishes that he had been accustomed to in the white men's land, and after that he would grow silent.
"One day he went out, stayed out, and never came back. They looked for him everywhere, but could not even find his footprints.
"Up near Cape York, some of his clothing was found, and that was all: it was the seal-bladder shirt. So the old people supposed that his longing for home had grown so strong that he had flown through the air to the white men's land.
"That is what the old story tells. And it tells the truth, for you are strange, you white foreigners; one fine day you appear in our country, and as soon as we have learnt to care for you, you vanish, and we do not know where you go."
