These snow houses do not take very long to construct. An Eskimo can build an igloo large enough to house about six people in a few hours, given some assistance. It would be imagined that no great degree of comfort could be expected within a dwelling where a thaw of the roof and walls begins as soon as the temperature rises above freezing point. But warmth is a matter of degree in the Arctic, and shelter from [[81]]the bitterness of the wind alone is almost warmth. The stillness of the air inside, the greatly lessened intensity of cold, and the local if foul warmth over the lamps and cooking pots, all make for comfort as the native understands it.
In some parts of the country the natives line the dome and walls of their houses with cleverly stretched skins, and between them and the snow walls the intervening space acts as a regulator against the interior warmth, so that excessive thaw is checked, or its effects are prevented from damping the family circle below.
Lest the foregoing account of the white and frozen village should convey too dazzling an idea of such a settlement, it should be remembered that the snow all round and about is trampled up, and incredibly defiled by all the refuse of a community who have no ideas at all about sanitation and seemly surroundings. Hence there is an appearance of dirt and squalor wherever the Eskimo encamp, and these little congeries of human beings contrive quite effectually to blot and mar the pure immensity of the snow-white northern landscape.
The Igloovegak once finished, it remains to do the furnishing. This is essentially the women’s work. Heather is lavishly spread over the sleeping bench, and covered again with the heavy winter skins of deer. The rolled-up fur rugs (or “blankets”) of the family are ranged round the walls. Two of the soapstone lamps are placed on stands at each end of the sleeping [[82]]bench, and a rough framework of wood and deer thongs arranged above them by way of a rack for drying clothes. Stone cooking pots may be suspended over the lamps when required, and a store of blubber and meat is kept handy on the snow benches behind the lamps.
The rest of the family belongings are stowed away in the porch, and the house is ready for occupation.
There is another description of snow dwelling used by the Eskimo called a Sinniktâkvik, an acquired sleeping place. This is merely a temporary affair, a hastily built igloo sufficient to house a travelling party for the space of a “sleep,” having no porch or window, and only intended to be abandoned next day.
It is interesting to note that the remains of the dwellings of the Tooneet can be distinguished by the fact of their circular floors having been laid down with rough stones, unlike the modern igloo, which leaves little or nothing to mark its site by the time it has all melted away in summer. The sleeping bench in the Tooneet house was narrower than the present day Eskimo’s, showing that the earlier people were of shorter stature.
The family continue to inhabit the winter igloo until the spring thaw comes, and the roof falls in. Then, for a week or two, skins are stretched over the hole to keep the storms from beating in; but this is only a temporary measure. By the time the milder weather really sets in, and the trickle of water can be [[83]]heard everywhere, and the tunnelling, too, of the lemming under the sleeping bench, the tupik has to be in readiness. It has been stored away under a heap of stones during the winter, but with the advent of the ducks it is brought forth and erected once more.
These Eskimo settlements are not built according to plan. Each man chooses a site for his own igloo, generally in the shelter of some rock, or where there is a good supply of hard packed snow. The dwellings are not very scattered, however, but grouped fairly closely together, for the double purpose of sociability and common defence against attack by dogs, wolves, or bears. The true Eskimo village boasts of no common room or general meeting house such as may be in use among some of the tribes in Alaska and elsewhere, where few native customs survive unchanged. Nor is the log or sod hut ever seen in the regions where Eskimo life is still lived as it used to be before Europeans set foot in the polar wilds.
It is noteworthy that, when an Eskimo tribe moves to another locality, the old igloos are never destroyed. In the barrens, the law of hospitality is universally observed, and such of these buildings as may survive the springtime thaw, might serve for shelter at any time to travellers on journey. Those that are fairly intact when the tribe moves away are merely blocked up; but those which have become unsafe have the roof knocked in. The writer has frequently come across these deserted villages in the course of his journeys, [[84]]and had occasion to avail himself of the shelter thus offered. It is a weird and desolate sight—a collection of derelict igloos—some gaping open, others closed; but no smoke or steam escaping from their little domes. And, over all, the pall of the frozen silence of the Arctic. [[85]]