Kayak and whaling

“It is a gallant business, this kayak-hunting; it is like a sportive dance with the sea and with death. There is no finer sight possible than to see the kayak-man breasting the heavy rollers that seem utterly to engulf him. Or when, overtaken by a storm at sea, the kayaks run for the shore, they come like black storm-birds rushing before the wind and the waves, which, like rolling mountains, sweep on their wake. The paddles whirl through air and water, the body is bent a little forwards, the head often turned half backwards to watch the seas; all is life and spirit - while the sea around reeks like a seething cauldron.”

Fridtjof Nansen, polar explorer (1861-1930)

Source: flickr.com; Photo: Ville Miettinen

The Eskimo in his kayak represents – at least to the European mind – a downright heraldic picture. This is obvious in the cover design of several “classic” books on the subject matter. This is how hunting Eskimos in their kayaks are to be found on the cover of the 1986 German edition of the Diaries (1737) and Natural History of Greenland (1741) by Hans Egede, the Danish founder of the Greenland Mission.

Hunting Eskimos in kayaks are also to be seen on the cover of the 1877 English edition of Henrik Rinks' detailed monograph on Danish Greenland. Its People and Products. But what is the object of this hunting party? It isn't for our eyes to see. Such is not the case in Fridtjof Nansen's "Eskimo Life" (1891), where the prey is also depicted: a walrus threateningly surging from the water. The book later refers to that animal as a “dangerous adversary”. In historical times – that is, in the case of non–written Inuit culture, starting with the first studies devoted to that people, as late as the 18th century – the kayak was usually really used first and foremost for seal–hunting.

Small whales, the preferred prey

Rink, a Royal Inspector for South Greenland, actively sought to improve the living conditions of natives. His book features the kayak-hunt of a white whale in one of the pictures Rink made local huntsmen draw, as well as in description. The hunter has just thrown his harpoon by means of a throwing board, while at the other end of the rope the inflated sealskin, which will serve as a float to force the animal back to the surface and indicate its position, has not yet been thrown into the water and still lies on the kayak behind the huntsman. Thus a lone hunter in his 5-meter-long boat must have been able to prey on and tackle white whales, which are typically a good four meters long, and narwhals, just as long and as big with a weight of up to 1600kg.

Greenland whale

In contrast, another picture in Rink's book illustrates the hunting of a school of Adluarsuk, where the float is thrown as soon as possible into the water to prevent huntsman and boat from being driven underwater by the harpooned animal. For, in Nansen's words, there is “one species in particular which is more dangerous than any other - the grampus” or, as he calls it, ardluk. This is another name for the killer whale: “With its strength, its swiftness, and its horrible teeth, if it happens to take the offensive, it can make an end of a kayak in an instant. Even the Eskimo fears it; but that does not prevent him from attacking it when opportunity offers.”

“In former times they hunted the larger whales as well”, Nansen goes on to say, “using, however, the great woman-boats, with many people in them, both men and women.” For this sort of hunting, says Hans Egede, “they get themselves up in their greatest finery as if for a marriage, otherwise the whale will avoid them; he cannot endure uncleanliness.” The whale was harpooned from the bow, but it sometimes happened that it capsized the boat or even crushed it with a whisk of its tail. The men were often so daring as to jump on the whale's back, when it began to show exhaustion, in order to give it a finishing stroke of their lances. “This method of hunting is now unusual.”

In fact, in Nansen's time, the umiak had already been relegated to the status of „womenboat“, deprived therefore of its hunting function but used as a transportation means. While according to Birket-Smith the umiak was about nine meters long in West Greenland, in Alaska the boat, made from bearded seal or walrus skin, could be considerably longer still. But in Hans Egede's time, growing competition with Dutch, English and not least Danish whale hunters in the Davis Strait must have already largely reduced its use. If the catch were great whales – generally humpback whales, sperm whales, fin whales, sometimes also right whales – then they were mainly adrift, stranded or dead, possibly of natural causes.

Great whale hunting in Siberia and Alaska

Big mammal hunting in general and great whale hunting in particular is not achievable by a single individual. It must be carried out in teamwork. Task distribution comes naturally to a boat crew, whose members have different duties to perform. But it is also conceivable as an organised cooperation between several kayakists. In any case, it is best to have as many boats as possible for the hunt as one never knows where a wounded animal, gone underwater, will surface again.

Archaeological findings have shown that paleoeskimo peoples in Chukotka and Western Alaska already systematically hunted Greenland whales and Gray whales around 1000 BC. Petroglyphs from the Pegtymel River region on the northern coast of the Chukchi Peninsula depict whale-hunting: the first whale may be a humpback whale and the other a Gray whale, and in the hunting boats eight, five and three heads respectively are to be seen. However, according to Hansjürgen Müller-Beck, an archaeologist from Tübingen who carried out excavations in Chukotka, kayaks were used in the first place, and umiaks only later. He points to three factors likely to have made hunting easier: first, shallow waters with an average depth of 40 meters in the Bering Strait which made it more difficult for the harpooned animals to dive; second, the probable use of poison, a proven fact in the region in later times; and last, the fact that dead right whales and humpback whales at least come up again a few days after they have sunk. Still, gas inside a dead body enveloped in a thick layer of fat can expand to such an extent that it may cause the body to literally explode.

Text: Christoph Egger