A Description of Greenland

by Hans Egede

The only difference between the dress of the men and the women is, that the women’s coats are higher on the shoulders and wider than the men’s, with higher and larger hoods. The married women, that have got children, wear much larger coats than the rest, most like gowns, because they must carry their children in them upon their backs, having got no other cradle or swadling clothes for them. They wear drawers, which reach to the middle of the thigh, and over them breeches: the drawers they always keep on, and sleep in them. Their breeches come down to the knee: these they do not wear in the summer, nor in the winter, but when they go abroad; and as soon as they come home they pull them off again. Next to their body they wear a waistcoat made of young fawns’ skins, with the hairy side inward. The coat, or upper garment, is also made of fine coloured swans’ skins (or, in defect of that, of seal skins) trimmed and edged with white, and nicely wrought in the seams, and about the brim, which looks very well. Their shoes and boots, with little difference, are like those of the men. Their hair, which is very long and thick, is braided and tied up in a knot, which becomes them well. They commonly go bare-headed, as well without as within doors; nor are they covered with hoods, but in case it rains or snows. Their chief ornament and finery is to wear glass beads of divers colours, or corals about the neck and arms, and pendants in their ears. They also wear bracelets, made of black skin, set with pearls, with which they also trim their clothes and shoes.

The Greenland sex have, besides this, another sort of embellishment, viz. they make long black strokes between the eyes on the forehead, upon the chin, arms, and hands, and even upon the thighs and legs: these they make with a needle and thread made black. And though this to others seems a wrong way of embellishing, yet they think it very handsome and ornamental. And they say that those who do not thus deform their faces, their heads shall be turned into train tubs, which are placed under the lamps in Heaven, or the land of souls.

They keep their clothes pretty clean, though in other things, especially in their victuals, they are not so nice, chiefly the women, who have got children, are very dirty and slovenly, well knowing, that they cannot be repudiated, or sent a packing. But those wretches that are barren, or whose children are dead, and do not know the moment they may be sent away, are obliged to take more care of their cleanness and property, that they may please their husbands.

CHAP. XII.

Of their Diet, and manner of dressing their Victuals.

THE Greenlanders’ provision and victuals are flesh and fish meat (for the country affords no other kind of provision) as rein deer, whales, seals, hares, and rypes, or white partridges, and all sorts of sea fowls. They eat their flesh meat sometimes raw, sometimes boiled, or dried in the sun or wind; but their fish meat is always thoroughly done, or they eat it dried in the sun or air, as salmon, roe-fish, halibut, or the small stints, which, in the months of May and June, they catch in great abundance, and keep them cured and dried for winter provisions. And whereas, in the winter season, it is very rare to get seals, except in the most Northern parts where they take them upon the ice; so they make all the provision of them they can get in the fall, and bury them under the snow, until the winter comes on, when they dig them up, and eat them raw and frozen as they are. Their drink is nothing but water, and not, as some writers have wrongly pretended, train oil; for they do not so much as eat the fat, but only in sauces to their dried fish.

Furthermore, they put great lumps of ice and snow into the water they drink, to make it the cooler to quench their thirst. They are, taking them in general, very hoggish and dirty in their eating and dressing of their victuals; they never wash, cleanse, or scour the kettles, pots, or dishes, in which they dress, and out of which they eat their victuals; which when dressed, they often lay down upon the dirty ground, which they walk upon, instead of tables. They will, with so great an appetite and greediness, feed upon the rotten and stinking seal flesh, that it turns the stomach of any hungry man who looks upon them. They have no set time for their meals, every man eats when he is hungry, except when they go to sea, and then their chief repast is a supper, after they are come home in the evening; and he, whose supper is first ready, calls his neighbours to come and partake of it, as he does again with them reciprocally; and so it goes round from one to another.

The women do not eat in company with the men, but separately by themselves; and in the absence of their husbands, when gone a fishing, they being left to themselves, invite one another, and make grand cheer. And as they eat heartily, when they can come at it, so they can as well endure hunger, when scarcity of provision requires it. It has been observed, that in great scarcity, they can live upon pieces of old skins, upon reets, or sea weeds, and other such trash. But the reason why they can endure hunger better than we foreigners, I take to be, their bodies being so squat and corpulent, their fat yielding them matter of nourishment within themselves, for a while, till it be consumed.

Besides the fore-mentioned provisions, they also eat a sort of reddish sea weed, and a kind of root, which they call tugloronet, both dressed with fat or train oil; the dung of the rein deer, taken out of the guts, when they cleanse them; the entrails of partridges, and the like out-cast, pass for dainties with them. They make likewise pancakes of what they scrape off the inside of seal skins, when they dress them. In the summer they boil their meat with wood, which they gather in the field, and in winter time over their lamps in little kettles of an oval figure, made of brass, copper, or marble, which they make themselves.

To kindle the fire, when extinguished, they make use of this expedient, which shows their ingenuity: they take a short block of dry fir tree, upon which they rub another piece of hard wood, till, by the continued motion, the fir catches fire. When we first came among them, they did not like to taste any of our victuals, but now they are glad to get some of it, especially bread and butter, which they like mightily, but they do not much care for our liquors; yet notwithstanding, some of them, who have lived some time among us, have learnt to drink wine and brandy, and never refuse it, when it is offered them. But as for tobacco, they do not at all like it, nor can they bear the smell or smoke of it.