BUILDING A SNOW IGLOO
When Papik and Milak weren't busy, they played outside in the snow with other children. They tumbled around with the puppies, threw snowballs and slid down their houses.
The houses were very strong. They could last all winter. But very often a family or a whole village would pack up and go off to find new hunting grounds or just to visit another village. When they moved, they built new houses, if they didn't find empty ones to use.
It took only a few hours to make a new house. This is how Papik's family did it: His father looked for a place where the snow had drifted deep in one big storm, so that he could get solid, even chunks of it. (Snow on level places in Eskimo land was seldom very deep!)
With his snow knife Papik's father cut out blocks about the size and shape of a small suitcase and placed them in a circle ten or twelve feet across. Each block leaned inward.
The second row of blocks began to spiral upward.
After the first row of blocks had been laid, Papik's father shaved two of them down, the way you see in the picture. When he laid the next row, the blocks began to slant in a spiral, upward and inward. Soon, the spiral almost closed in over his head, because he worked inside while his family worked outside.
This snow house would be used for hunting or a short visit. It had no window.
Finally, there was only a small hole at the very top. He cut a block just the shape of this hole and fitted it into place. Now he was inside a house that had no door!
But he and his wife had already decided where to put the door. So he started to dig his way out, making a tunnel under the wall. At the same time, his wife tunneled toward him from the outside. After a while they met. Now they made the tunnel strong by roofing it over with snow blocks.
A regular house had a window made of seal intestines sewed together. Or it might have a pane of thin clear ice.
Papik and Milak were busy all this time, too. They pushed loose snow into the cracks between the blocks. Then they helped shovel more snow all over the house and tunnel. When they were through, it looked just like a snowdrift.
unpacking dry heather
Inside, their father cut a small hole up through the roof for ventilation. Cold air would come into the house through the tunnel. Hot air would leave through the hole in the roof.
Next, their father dug the middle of the floor deeper, leaving a snow bench all around the circular room. He tramped hard on the floor to pack it down. Then he sprinkled water on it to give it a hard finish.
Milak and her mother were ready to make the beds. They unpacked bundles of dry heather—a plant with tough, springy stems—that they had collected in the summer. They spread the heather on the snow benches. This was a mattress. Over it they laid deerskins, making one big blanket for the family.
The snow benches were seats as well as beds. Often Papik and Milak sat there cross-legged, while their parents made tools and clothes or sang or told long stories.
snow bench
door
storeroom for meat and fish
storeroom for clothing and harness
snow bench
One kind of snow house would look like this if you saw it from above with the top off.
Outdoors the sky was sometimes filled with weird, quickly changing colored light, which we call the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights. This is the way Papik's father explained the lights: Even though people died, their spirits kept on living. Some of them were in the sky. The changing, jumping lights were really spirits having a wonderful time playing a kind of football game—kicking a walrus head around.