The hunter having chosen his site, next takes a [[77]]sealing spear, a long twelve-inch knife and a saw, and begins piercing the snow in every direction, his object being to find a spot where it is deep, and so closely packed and hardened by the wind that it can be cut out into great blocks for building. Otherwise his “bricks” would be too brittle or too friable for the purpose. Should no such patch lie near at hand, the builder calls all hands, and together they start trampling and packing down the snow with their feet, while the old men, the women and boys constantly bring up fresh supplies and throw it in to be stamped firm. Having thus prepared what he considers sufficient material for his purpose, the good man commences to saw out huge rectangular blocks of this solidified snow mass, each one of which taxes his utmost strength to lift. He begins his house by building a ring of them, a larger or smaller ring as the case may be, fitted and jointed together with the utmost nicety by means of his knife. A second tier is added to this ring, the builder working from the inside and the blocks being brought up by his assistants. As soon as this is “well and truly laid,” he trims the upper surface to a slope, and continues building, but in a spiral now and slightly sloping inwards, until he has reached the top of what has grown to be a dome roof. A key block is deftly fitted in to complete and close it, and the shell of the dwelling is complete.
A semicircular opening in the side is next cut out for the doorway, and then the builder turns his attention [[78]]to the sleeping bench—the principal feature of the Eskimo igloo. He builds a line of blocks from side to side, facing the opening, up to the height of a man’s legs. The space between this and the walls is filled with broken snow like rubble, which is trampled down until brought to the necessary level, so as to form a solid bench of snow right across the building.
Then side pieces are built out, to form solid shelves for the lamps and family utensils and to serve generally as a larder and storage place for oil and blubber; so that, by the time all is done there is little of the original floor space left.
The next step is the porch or sukso, another little domed erection much like the main igloo, built in front of the entrance and intended, first to break the force of the wind and to keep the larger place warm, and secondly as a store house for surplus meat and blubber, for the dogs’ harness, whips, sealing lines, and anything the latter and the wolves might find eatable. (Eskimo dogs, be it remarked, find nothing uneatable save sticks and stones). As an entrance or exit for the sukso, a further passage is built, like a little tunnel; again as protection from the arctic wind.
The finishing touch is the window. Light is a necessity, but the Eskimo is scarcely particular about ventilation. The less he gets of that the more successful his architecture seems to be. A square opening is cut high up in the dome of the igloo, facing the [[79]]sleeping bench. It is then glazed after the fashion of the Arctics. The builder sets off for the nearest sheet of fresh water ice, and with the butt end of his sealing spear shivers out a good thick pane of it. This he places over the hole in the roof, packing its edges round with half melted snow, and pouring water over the packing. In two minutes, everything is frozen airtight and solid, and a window of flawless ice lets the illumination of the northern night into the pure and icy chamber of the newly made house. Failing a window of ice, one is made of strips of dried seal intestine (a thin, translucent material, not unlike oiled silk), stitched together with fine deer sinew. The seams are parallel, and as neatly executed as if by machine working on the smallest stitch. The fabric is stretched over the opening and pegged down at the corners, and congealed into its place by half melted snow. A small hole is cut in the dome for ventilation, and a snow block provided to stop it up again when necessary.
Finally, the interior has to be glazed. While the householder himself has been busy more or less within the building, on the outside the old men and the children and the women have been set the task of packing every joint and crevice in the snow masonry with loose snow, so as to make it absolutely wind tight. Now comes the moment when the doorways, too, are closed and every entrance blocked. Two lamps, well trimmed and well supplied with oil, have been carefully lit and left burning inside, much as [[80]]we in this country leave a sulphur candle in a room to be fumigated after infectious illness, and seal up the door. As the lamps burn slowly away, the temperature rises and all the surface of the snow is slightly melted. As the lamps die out the temperature falls again, and the surface freezes to glass-like smoothness. Every asperity of the sawn blocks of snow is annealed, and the dwelling is as proof against draught as the inside of a bottle. Water, too, is thrown on the floor, to make it smooth as marble and as durable as cement.
The writer has dwelt thus at length upon the building of the Eskimo’s winter quarters, since there is something almost like a fairy tale in this fantastic yet ingenious and practical use of snow and ice. If masters of taste have always insisted upon the principles in architecture that design should be in keeping with site and surroundings, and material should be indigenous to the locality, surely the houses that these hardy children of the frozen North build for themselves are by no means wanting in true artistry.
An Eskimo Home.
Here is a little collection of igloos joining each other, with one common entrance. It is really a collection of relations living together, each one having their own igloo with doorways opening into the principal families’ igloo.