Tag Archives: Inuit

91. Too far away

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I remember the phone ringing down the hall. Mammy got up from the kitchen table to answer it. ‘It’s for you,’ she said, coming back to sit down. ‘Someone from Canada.’ I walked down the hall to the table by the hall window and put the receiver to my ear.

‘Hello?’ I said.

‘Huvi?’ came the reply. Frank. Dear Frank. My friend, my teacher, my hunting buddy. One of my primary research participants in Arviat, it was Frank who had taught me to skin and butcher caribou, and to get it right by doing it over and over; Frank who had taught me how to drive a boat amongst pods of beluga whales in the shallow waters close to shore, so he could harpoon them from the bow; Frank who put me on polar bear patrol while he collected the arctic char that had swum into his fishing net; Frank who I spent hours and days with, far inland on our quad bikes, out at sea at first light. He and Martha welcomed me into their home, made me tea, fed me biscuits and bannock, took me out on the land and to their cabin with their daughters. Frank made me laugh and made me think. How at ease I felt in his company.

And now, he was on the phone. He on the tundra, on the western shore of Hudson Bay; I in the Bog of Allen, in the middle of Ireland. And the distance between us seemed vast. Vaster than the Atlantic Ocean, and maritime Canada and the width of Hudson Bay that separated us. All that we talked about with such ease when we were together dissolved now across the expanse.

He asked about the weather and I told him. But what was Irish weather to him? What was the Irish autumn, with leaves changing colour and falling off the trees, the rain and the mud, when he lived in a place with no trees, where autumn meant the ground covered in snow and the sea gradually turning to ice, travel by boat giving way to skidoos. My autumn meant nothing to him and, from this distance, his autumn was starting to dim for me.

I asked what he’d been doing and he told me where he’d been seal hunting the previous day, who he’d gone with and the other hunters he’d met when he was out. I smiled as he spoke. In my mind’s eye, I could see where he’d been and who he’d been with. I had been there with him, and with his brother-in-law Arden, just a few weeks earlier.

He asked what I’d been up to. It was September and in Ireland there was only Gaelic football in the air. How could I tell him about the match I had been to on Sunday? About the crowds, the excitement, how important football was to my life here? Or that the turf was home and there were still a couple of loads to be thrown in the shed. My voice sounded strange in my ears as I tried to talk to him about my life here.

I’d lived in his world and loved it. He was interested in my world, but had no experience of it. The ease we felt in each other’s company was made jagged by the cultural distance that now lay between us.

We continued to speak on the phone occasionally and I got to spend another summer with him a few years later. It’s a few years now since he passed away. I wish I had been better able to bridge that distance when he called.

5. Sedna

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Sedna/Nuliajuq by Brian Arualak, Arviat, 20003

A few days ago, when it was too hot for Lady’s little paws to be on the road, I took her down to the river for a swim. When I got there, I spotted a yacht on the pontoon called Sedna. I got very excited. Sedna (or Nuliajuq in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut) is the supreme goddess of Inuit mythology. Goddess of the sea, she hides and protects the marine animals in her long flowing seaweedy hair, only revealing them to hunters who prove themselves deserving. How does she decide who’s deserving? It’s those hunters and, more importantly, their wives, who generously share the meat and fur and other parts taken in the hunt. In the old days (and in some quarters still today), Inuit believed that animals, once released from Sedna’s hair, gave themselves to generous hunters.

So, I got very excited when I saw this boat. The way I got excited in the past to see a boat called Aarluk (orca) or one called Nanuq (polar bear). One doesn’t expect to see Inuktitut words in southern Europe! I couldn’t resist popping down to the pontoon to say hi and inquire as to why the owner had named his boat after the Inuit goddess of the sea. I mean, a goddess of the sea I get; but the Inuit one specifically?

I saw that the boat was flying a Spanish flag and had a Spanish registration mark printed on the hull. There was a man in his seventies in the cockpit. ‘Buenas tardes,’ I said, assuming that he, like his boat, was Spanish. When he replied in English with a British accent, I said hi, and told him, perhaps a little over-enthusiastically, that I’d noticed his boat was called Sedna.

‘Oh yeah,’ he said, distinctly less enthusiastic than I was. ‘Why did you call it that?’ I asked. ‘That’s what the previous owner called it and I didn’t bother to change it.’ He seemed not curious, not interested, not bemused, not annoyed that I’d bothered him. Indeed, he seemed not really anything at all that this overly-exuberant Irish dog-walker on the Spanish border was trying to make conversation about the name of his boat.

‘Do you know what it means?’ I asked.

‘Nope,’ he replied.

‘She’s the Inuit goddess of the sea,’ I started, but he cut me short and asked, ‘Do you live here?’ He was completely disinterested and my little bubble of excitement at having found someone who might share my interest in Inuit mythology and Inuit culture was immediately burst.

I laughed at my silliness after. At how I had imagined our conversation would go and at how the conversation actually went. I chatted with him for a few minutes more, answering his questions about life in the village, and whether I still owned a boat, and whether the schools around here are any good. Then I said goodbye, wished him luck on his sailing trip and Lady and I carried on on our merry way.