Search results for ""international polar institute press""

Greenland, circa 2015. Three women are found murdered in the capital city Nuuk. Ongoing issues in the country involving the desire for independence from the Kingdom of Denmark are redirected, as race and gender recolor the scene, and the mystery unravels in clashing graphic detail. An intertwined story of corruption, greed, domination, and sovereignty reveals itself through the discoveries of three investigators—Russian, Chinese, and a Danish Greenlander. The politics at hand are reenacted in the very act of investigating the murders, revealing the Inuit of Greenland as the true and only victims of this crime.

Read more less

Two brothers learn their father was murdered by their stepfather. Upon learning this, they both depart on journeys of self discovery leading them to the extremes of traditional Greenlandic culture and, finally, transcendence.

Read more less

The Meaning of Ice celebrates Arctic sea ice as it is seen and experienced by the Inuit, Iñupiat, and Inughuit, who for generations have lived with it and thrived on what it offers. With extensive details offered through their own drawings and writings, this book describes the great depth of Inuit, Iñupiat, and Inughuit knowledge of sea ice and the critical and complex role it plays in their relationships with their environment and with one another. Over forty Inuit, Iñupiat, and Inughuit from three different Arcticcommunities contributed stories, original artwork, hand-drawn illustrations, maps, family photos, and even recipes to this book. Professional and historical photographs, children’s artwork, and innovative graphics add more to the story of The Meaning of Ice.The Meaning of Ice is an important contribution to understanding the Arctic and its people at a time when the region is undergoing profound change, not least in terms of sea ice. It takes readers beyond what sea ice is, to broaden our appreciation of what sea ice means.

Read more less

Dinjii Vadzaih Dhidlit: The Man Who Became a Caribou is a new bilingual volume based on a series of oral interviews with Gwich'in elders living in rural northeast Alaska and the Yukon Territory. Richly illustrated, the book covers a wide range of topics based on traditional harvesting and use of caribou from ancient to contemporary times. It also reveals traditional beliefs and taboos about caribou and includes a detailed naming system for caribou anatomy.

Read more less

“These poems erupted in the East Greenlanders heart–the human sea at the outer limit of the north–on Earth's most desolate and rugged shores. They were found in the living tradition of a small, recently discovered Eskimo people that I (Thalbitzer) had gone to study. For the first time I heard their language as it sounded on people's lips, as it must have sounded through many generations. I understood that this was part of the Inuit people’s ancient poetry, and these songs and poems deserved to be written down for greater humanity.” —from the introduction

Read more less

The catechist Johannes Hansen, called Hanserak, a Greenlandic missionary, was part of Captain Gustav Holm's well-known umiaq expedition to the east coast of Greenland (1884 - 1885) which passed the winter in Angmagssalik and discovered 11 Inuit communities. His diary is a series of extremely interesting sketches of the remarkable customs and practices of the native people, and was reported in the pages of Atuagagdliutit, the first Greenlandic newspaper. This work examines the people of eastern Greenland at the later stages of the 19th century in diaristic form, but with the compassion and empathy of a native. Material of this kind is very rare and significant for understanding the longer, mostly unknown, evolution of Greenlandic culture in the midst of Danish colonization.

Read more less

First published in English in 1918 by the American Museum of Natural History in its series of Anthropological Papers, the stories told here in Tales of Yukaghir were collected among Russianized natives of Eastern Siberia at the end of the nineteenth-century while Bogaras was exiled into North-Eastern Siberia for revolutionary activities. These tales tell of kings, young heroes on horseback, and adventurous animals with varied powers, relating details of native life that clearly show their Russian or Turko-Mongol provenance. In addition to delighting audiences around the world, Bogoras's work in ethnography and ethnology proved valuable to the development of the field of linguistics.

Read more less

Nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Award, 2014. Paul Erik returns to Nuuk after spending the summer in his hometown of Uummannaq, Greenland. In Nuuk he attends high school where people from all over the country are housed in dormitories. But the school systems are Danish – and not adapted to the life and circumstances in Greenland, and the young grow increasingly frustrated. The story takes place in 1969, and we gain an insight into a significant period of Greenlandic history, as well as the dominating worldly cultural influences of the times. First English translation.

Read more less

The Meaning of Ice celebrates Arctic sea ice as it is seen and experienced by the Inuit, Iñupiat, and Inughuit, who for generations have lived with it and thrived on what it offers. With extensive details offered through their own drawings and writings, this book describes the great depth of Inuit, Iñupiat, and Inughuit knowledge of sea ice and the critical and complex role it plays in their relationships with their environment and with one another. Over forty Inuit, Iñupiat, and Inughuit from three different Arctic communities contributed stories, original artwork, hand-drawn illustrations, maps, family photos, and even recipes to this book. Professional and historical photographs, children’s artwork, and innovative graphics add more to the story of The Meaning of Ice. The Meaning of Ice is an important contribution to understanding the Arctic and its people at a time when the region is undergoing profound change, not least in terms of sea ice. It takes readers beyond what sea ice is, to broaden our appreciation of what sea ice means.

Read more less

Traced here are the beginnings of literacy and literature for Inuit living in Labrador and the eastern Canadian arctic. Inuit living in Labrador in the 19th and early 20th centuries were more literate than white settlers as a direct result of the Moravian missionaries who taught them to read and write in Inuktitut in the mission schools. Many of the original Inuktitut texts used by the mission teachers and students are included as part of this exhibition. The Labrador Inuit are the first Canadian Inuit to have their own language. Their first texts took the form of songs or narratives. This catalog represents this history with images from pages and covers of books in the collection along with detailed descriptions of their importance. Texts in French, English, Inuktitut and Inuktitut roman orthography& descriptions in English.

Read more less

This volume of folk tales collected by Heinrich Rink, by native Greenlanders, is the translation of the first book printed in Greenland. Rink began his career as an administrator based at the Moravian mission at Godthaab, on the southwest coast of Greenland. He used the press to produce both official notices and literary works. Rink was determined to collect legends and folk tales of Greenland natives and publish them, an ambition achieved in these volumes, published over a five year span. Rink collected oral tales from throughout Greenland, although mainly in the southern area he administered.The remarkable oral tradition of the Inuit, unaffected by few outside influences, is traced through their history on the land. Many of the stories describe the clashes between the Norse and the Inuit. Rink recognized that some of the tales existed in the realm of pure myth, but that others represented recollections, passed from one generation to the next, of events of many centuries earlier.Translated from Danish, this is the first English translation of these stories. Illustrations are by Aron of Kangeq, a sealer and walrus hunter who lived at the Moravian mission at the small trading station of Kangeq. His illustrations of the oral storytelling tradition have gained status as a symbol of the new artistic tradition developed in Greenland in the mid-19th century.

Read more less

The Los Angeles Times praises the wordplay and the richness of Bergland's poetry, erupting through deep forest, with all the exuberance and reticence of Emily Dickinson.

Read more less

First English translation of this 19th century novel tracing the relationship between traditional Greenlandic life and the interaction with the culture of their Danish colonizers. These first hand accounts of Greenlanders have rarely been recorded. Written in 1887, with exquisite poetic detail, the dynamics driving ritual, domestic affairs and women's place in society are described as never before. Signe Rink (née Miller, 1836–1909) was born and raised in Greenland. Eden of The North was written after Rink returned to Denmark in 1883, and was followed by two more novels in 1886 and 1902. She remains the first female interpreter of Greenlandic culture and maintains a poetic style only achieved by the deepest of empathies developed after many years of living and working among Inuit as a woman and a scientist. L.S. Johanson was born in San Diego,California. L.S. later moved to Scandinavia where she lived on a small farm in western Denmark for 25 years. As an interpreter, translator, and teacher, she studied languages and linguistics at Aalborg University and Aarhus University in Denmark (Cand.Phil., Cand.Mag.) She has been translating fiction and non-fiction professionally in the U.S. and Scandinavia for over two decades. She currently lives, writes, and works in Vermont.

Read more less

Wilfred Grenfell was sent to Newfoundland in 1892 to improve the plight of coastal inhabitants and fishermen. The initial Grenfell text, Vikings of To-day, is intended to summarize three years among the residents of Labrador. These three years would lead to a lifetime spent in aid and passionate defense of the Labradorians. Beginning with descriptions of the environment, Grenfell sees the hardships and ingeniousness with which these people live off the land and maintain an indomitable spirit.

Read more less

Hans Egede's remarkable 1770-1778 journals were first published in 1818 when the British launched their great nineteenth-century Arctic explorations and such information was in enormous demand. The coast of eastern Greenland had been virtually inaccessible to Europeans for four centuries. Egede's fascinating writings relate his determined quest for remnants of old settlements, keen observations of the Greenlandic Inuit on subjects as varied as polygamy, witchcraft, health, education, how the Inuit's contact with outsiders affected this indigenous people, and previously little-known information about the geography of the island's eastern territories. After years of being out-of-print, Egede's colorful accounts are once again made available to English-speaking readers in this wonderful and timely new series, launched just as the eyes of the world are, not a moment too soon, drawn northward.

Read more less

In the ’40s and ’50s many men from Denmark traveled to Greenland to work. Here they met Greenlandic women—which more than once resulted in pregnancies. Many of these men then returned to Denmark, which meant that the children grew up as illegitimate children without even knowing their fathers. One of these children was Anne Sofie Hardenberg, who was teased all through her childhood for having a Danish father—and an absent one at that. By the age of 17 she gathered the courage to write to her father. To her surprise he was very glad to hear from her, and wished to make her a part of his family. Unluckily they only got three weeks together—then he died in a car accident… This book is Anne Sofie’s memoir accompanied by photos and letters between her and her Danish family. Today, still, there is a problem with the legal rights of this generation of “fatherless” children.

Read more less

Tuumarsi is a realistic depiction of the struggle for survival. A famine causes a family to pick up and relocate to fairer hunting grounds. The psyche and humor of the people is reflected through Nielsen’s own experiences with them. The struggle among the settlement members to make their lives better illustrates what was to become Greenland’s desire for sovereignty from Denmark.

Read more less

The Story of Katrine tells the story of a young Greenlandic woman who falls in love with a Danish craftsman, who works in Greenland over a summer. When he returns to Denmark, Katrine follows him because she thinks they should get married, having had their child. It will be a big disappointment for her, but she stays in Denmark. A dramatic and sad tale of cultural unity and oppression of women. This story, which is fictionalized here, is unfortunately not unknown for Greenlanders in Denmark.

Read more less

Few animals on the planet inspire the sense of wonder evoked by the narwhal. The ‘Arctic unicorn’ is everyone’s version of “awesome” and “cool.” Explorers, aristocrats, artists and scientists celebrate this elusive whale and its extraordinary tusk. From Flemish unicorn tapestries, Inuit legends and traditional knowledge, and the research of devoted scientists, comes a tale of discovery reported here from the top of the world, a place where climate change is rapidly transforming one of the harshest environments on earth. How did the narwhal tusk become the horn of the fabled unicorn? What treasures do the Inuit hold about this majestic but elusive denizen? What have scientists discovered about the function of its tusk? Explore with whale biologists as they capture live narwhals to answer questions of narwhal biology, migration, population and behavior. Ponder the evolutionary history of the narwhal through paleontology and genetic science. Contemplate the fate of northern regions, animals, and peoples in a rapidly warming Arctic. Experience the insights and observations of Inuit hunters who have lived with the narwhal for thousands of years. The following pages present their views along with the latest research in narwhal biology, art, and climate science illustrated by more than a dozen photographers and graphic artists.

Read more less

Greenlanders gained reliable social entertainment from the oral retelling of their legends. With the only printed material available at the time being of Christian origin, interest grew for Greenlandic stories, leading to the formation of Atuagagdliutit—the first, and still published, periodical in the country. The stories collected in Kayakmen originally appeared there. This text represents a firsthand account of the civilization of Greenlanders depicting a true picture of their age.

Read more less