Give Me Winter, Give Me Dogs: Knud Rasmussen and the Fifth Thule Expedition

Give Me Winter, Give Me Dogs: Knud Rasmussen and the Fifth Thule Expedition

by Kenn Harper

Iqaluit, Nunavut: Inhabit Media Inc., 2024

Reviewed by Dave Woodman

One set of matched covers dominates the space on many bookshelves of Arctic expedition accounts. The seven-volume Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, detailing the expedition conducted by the Danish Greenlander Knud Rasmussen and his companions between 1921 and 23, is densely packed with specialized scientific detail. During my early research concerning Inuit recollections of the Franklin expedition, these hefty tomes, amounting to over five thousand pages, seemed peripheral to my purpose. Rasmussen’s collected traditions dealing with Franklin were readily available in secondary sources, so I took the easier alternative of reading his more accessible overview Across Arctic America. I always thought I would return to the primary volumes when I had time.

Thanks to my friend Kenn Harper, I feel less pressure to make such a time investment. After decades of patient study, Kenn was inspired by the approaching centennial of the Fifth Thule expedition to produce his new book Give Me Winter, Give Me Dogs. He does such a masterful job of retelling the story of Rasmussen’s expedition that only the most obsessed readers need to revisit the original report.  

Kenn Harper is perhaps the most appropriate person to publish a popular summary of this large corpus of research, which he calls “a virtual encyclopedia of knowledge on Inuit culture.” A long-time resident of the Arctic, called by the Inuit Ilisaijikutaaq (“tall teacher”), Harper embodies many of the same characteristics as his hero Rasmussen. Both men’s long experience among the Inuit engendered great respect and sympathy for their hardships and the difficulties of coping in a rapidly changing social environment. Harper is fluent in English, Danish and Inuktitut and, in many favourable ways, resembles Rasmussen, who was told, “You have the face of a white man, but our tongue.” 

Harper is also a well-established author. He is well known to readers of Arctic history through his excellent books Give Me My Father's Body and In Those Days. For ten years, he wrote "Taissumani," a regular column on Arctic history in Nunatsiaq News, which he has recently revived.

Harper’s book treats the Thule expedition in two sections. The first revolves around Danish Island, the self-named camp established near modern Naujaat (Repulse Bay). From here, he and his associates conducted forays into the field individually and collectively to pursue their research goals. The primary impetus of the expedition was to validate Steensby’s contention that the coastal Inuit were descendants of earlier inland populations. Their work partially disproved this idea, although they failed to realize this. The modern consensus is that contemporary Inuit migrated east along the coast from Siberia to Greenland, and the second section of the book relates Rasmussen’s trek, accompanied by the young hunter Qaavigarsuaq and his widowed cousin Arnarulunnguaq, along this coast in the opposite direction.

Harper lauds the purely scientific purpose of this Danish expedition:

“It was not to explore for new lands, to claim sovereignty over any lands and plant a flag, to search for mineral wealth and claim that, to convert the people through Christianity, to trade for furs — it was not any of those things … It was to meet new people that had been at that time largely untouched by missionaries, traders, and this expedition happened sort of at the 11th hour before a horde of outside influences arrives in the formerly isolated parts of the Arctic.”

Although Harper clearly recounts the Fifth Expedition's archaeological activities and scientific work, he does not dwell on the details. While lauding the efforts and accomplishments of his Danish scientific travelling companions, Kaj Birket-Smith (anthropology) and Therkel Mathiassen (archaeology), Rasmussen is most effusive in his praise of his Greenlandic companions, including Kalaaleq Jacob Olson (native west Greenlander) and his Inughuit (Greenland Inuit) assistants. He unequivocally stated that “the Eskimo is the hero of this book. His history, his present culture, his daily hardships, and his spiritual life constitute the theme and the narrative.” Harper agrees that these Inughuit were “the largely unsung heroes and aides who helped to make Rasmussen’s expedition a success,” repeatedly demonstrating their essential contributions. 

Rasmussen, modestly self-described as “folklorist," nevertheless provides the book's primary focus. Harper lauds Rasmussen’s effort to preserve and catalogue the beliefs, customs, and traditions of the Inuit he encountered. The difficulties of the era in which Rasmussen worked, when southern culture increasingly encroached on traditional Inuit life, are sympathetically retold by Harper with his valuable insight from having been immersed in both worlds. He tells of the murders committed by Alikammig and Tatamirana, their trial and execution, as the great tragedy in intercultural misunderstanding and incompatibility that it is now recognized to be. He also relates how Umiq brought his idiosyncratic version of Christianity to the Iglulimiut, integrating it with older traditions and practices. 

Rasmussen’s “salvage ethnography” is brought forth from the wonderful stories and magic songs of the Inuit with whom he interacted. Much of his work centered around interviews with powerful shamans who were valuable sources of traditional Inuit philosophy, practices and beliefs. Others, including Ivaluarjuk, Urulu and Igsivalitaq “the Outlaw” tell their gripping stories of lives lived in a culture now sadly displaced. Most of these individuals are brought to life by inclusion in the excellent section of photographs included in the end matter. However, these might have been more efficiently spread throughout the text and keyed to the individual stories. 

Although the Inuit recollections relayed to Rasmussen form the basis of the book, Harper expands the context by including stories of the lively and engaging characters of the era, many of whom deserve, and some have benefitted from, complete book-length treatment. These include the southern traders, George Comer, George Cleveland and Patsy Klengenburg. Other well-known characters make cameo appearances, such as Ada Blackjack and the explorers  Vihljarmar Stefansson and Rasmussen’s own companion Peter Freuchen. Their interactions within the context of the Thule Expedition are emphasized. The latter two are both prolific authors and subjects of books themselves. Stefansson emerges in this book as somewhat of a bête noire, while Rasmussen’s friend Peter Freuchen’s adventures add colour. The latter’s popular books would eventually eclipse Rasmussen himself among the general public. After reading Harper’s excellent overview, I am sure many readers will be inspired to follow up with these.

A section of helpful maps is useful, but again, they may have been more efficiently scattered throughout the book in accordance with the narrative of the various excursions from the base at Danish Island and the eventual crossing of the entire Arctic coast from Greenland to Siberia. Although no index is provided, Harper includes an excellent glossary and references for those inspired to further reading and research. 

In addition to popularizing a somewhat obscure expedition on its centenary, Harper believes that the book is relevant to modern Inuit as well, who “are now coming to realize their indebtedness to him [Rasmussen] as well for the documentation he made of their ancestor’s lives and beliefs.” These traditions and the many collected artifacts preserved worldwide form an essential and enduring legacy.

The Land Was Always Used: An Inuit Oral History of the Franklin Expedition

The Land Was Always Used: An Inuit Oral History of the Franklin Expedition

Edited by Connie Gunn

Gjoa Haven: Nattilik Heritage Centre, 2024

Reviewed by Russell A. Potter

When I heard back in 2018 that there was to be a new project to collect testimony about the Franklin expedition from Inuit elders in Gjoa Haven, I was tremendously excited. First, because a project of this kind had long been a dream of my late friend Louie Kamookak, and secondly because I held out hope that local traditional knowledge might yet add key elements to the Inuit testimony about the Franklin expedition. In many ways, the finished book of this project exceeded my expectations; it's beautifully produced and richly illustrated, in a large format that lends itself to sidebars and connections amidst the imagery. At the same time, though, the actual amount of new information about the Franklin story is fairly modest, and in most cases adds only a slight degree of clarity or context to what we've long known from the oral stories collected in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Traditional Inuit territories (19th century), from the book

The book opens with, and draws heavily upon, the oral testimony collected in the 1850's, 60's, and 70's by Franklin searchers such as McClintock, Hall, and Schwatka. Its first figure is Pooyetta, who along with his wife Tooktoocheer was among the first Inuit to come upon the remains of the Franklin expedition and its men. There are conflicting surmises about his discoveries -- and whether the boat he found and the bodies he discovered were actually at the same place -- but here, they're treated as the same, in a narrative that draws on accounts given to Hall and Schwatka.

From there, the book steps back to give a general introduction to the Inuit presence in Qikiqtak (King William Island), the Franklin expedition, and the stories gathered over the years. In a sidebar, the editor makes an important point about difference between the older accounts transcribed by nineteenth-century searchers and those collected as part of this new oral history project:

"Inuit are particular about getting their facts straight, and very careful to tell a story in the way that story was told to them ... Inuit recognize that stories about Franklin and other Qablunaat are shadows of the originals told by their ancestors, and are reticent to speak of something they may not know enough about ... During interviews for the book, Saul Aqsaluk Qirngnirq abruptly ended more than one anecdote with 'That's all my father knew or 'That's the end of that story.'"

All this is prelude to the main body of the book, which is organized into six chapters, ranging from "We are the Descendants" to "A Nice Place to Be" to "They Perished Here Too." As the titles imply, the focus here is on contemporary Inuit from Gjoa Haven, their perspective on these now-distant events, and their relationship with the land and its creatures. It's fair enough to observe, as the editors do here, that the lost Franklin expedition was really just a small blip in the long and continuous memory of the people, which was -- sensibly enough -- more concerned with hunting, fishing, and the ways of the land and climate. The book is certainly a rich source of Qauijimajatuqangit -- Inuit traditional knowledge -- from this region, but while the sites associated with Franklin are given prominence, it's the necessities of daily life that stand at the center. As Gjoa Haven elder Martha Pooyatak says in the quote that gives the book its title, "The land was used before I was born. It was always used."

Patsy Klengenberg's trading post

The second chapter, "They Kept On Coming," mixed brief quotes from the historical testimony (Kok-lee-arng-nun and Seepunger among them) with a series of brief accounts from the elders, keyed to a map of the island. This continues into the second chapter, which focuses on Terror Bay; the link there is Patsy Klengenberg's fur trading post there and the recollections of some of his descendants; again, historical voices mingle with those of present-day elders. What's added is certainly a strong sense of place, though little of this new testimony adds any detail to the Franklin story. 

Along the way, numerous sidebars introduce elements of Inuit culture and knowledge, from "preserving fish" to "Inuit navigation" to "Inuit and Qablunaat Burial Practices." Gorgeous photographs, many by my friend and fellow traveller Michelle Valberg, appear alongside well-reproduced historical maps and sketches; as a visual document, the book certainly gives readers a strong sense of the place in which these stories transpired. Here and there, the words of the elders add an interesting element to the tradition, as when Saul Aqslaluk Qirngnirq recalls a person seeing two boats "still covered with their loads":

"The men gathered at the camp and they all went to the boats. The loads were covered -- hadn't been unloaded and there was nobody else around. When the covers were removed, they revealed guns on top of the load. They later learned that they were guns as they didn't know what guns were ... they smashed the wood off against a rock to salvage the metal."

This testimony certainly rings true, and adds some possible insight into there having been not one but two boats at the infamous "boat place."

Saul Aqslaluk Qirngnirq and Dave Woodman, 2002

The final chapter, "Working Together," details some of the work accomplished in modern times by searchers working in collaboration with Inuit and using the historical testimony as a guide; it culminates in the discovery of the ships, and goes on to offer a brief account of the continuing move toward collaboration and co-curation of found artifacts that has made the past few years much more of a shared endeavor, with benefits to Inuit as well as to the larger communities of Canada and the world.

It's a worthy book, perhaps best read in the spirit with which it was assembled -- that of learning, listening, and imagining these histories in the fullest possible context of the land and the people, guided by the voices of the elders. It's tempting to pick through it looking for just those bits that add something to our imagining of the Franklin story, but that would miss the larger point of the book.

Finally, a word on availability; for now, the book can't be obrained through any of the usual online channels or book chains. Co-published by the Nattilik Heritage Centre and Parks Canada, it was printed by Friesens in Altona, Manitoba, and the ISBN prefix is one that's been used in previous publications by Parks Canada. The NHC is currently working to find ways to make it more readily available; I'll certainly update readers here if and when I hear further details.

UPDATE (1/23/25): Orders for the book may now be placed at this site!