Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 124, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1916 — Life in Habitable Greenland [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Life in Habitable Greenland

NOT many people ever have seen Greenland, or perhaps have any desire to see it, and yet it is far from uninteresting in its natural features and the life of its inhabitants. Though it is somewhat bigger than the continent of Australia, of its vast area only about 12,000 miles, on the west coast, are habitable. The population of the country consists of about 11,000 Greenlanders, 200 government servants, and the workmen at the cryolite and copper mines, to the number of 200 in summer and 100 in winter. In addition to these numbers there is the 400 population of the only east coast settlement —Angmasalik. The Greenlander is a cross between the Eskimo and ■whalers and sealers of Danish, Norwegian and Scottish nationalities; he objects to being called an Eskimo arid much prefers the term of Greenlander. Some of these Greenlanders are quite European in appearance, others are more like the Japanese, Mongolian or Red Indian; the great majority, however, resemble the lower types of the hairy Ainu of North Japan. The trade of Greenland is practically a Danish government monopoly and consists mainly of whale, seal and shark oil, the ivory of the walrus, blue fox skins, ermine furs and the eider duck. Communication is entirely by water as no travel of any kind is possible on land. There are no domestic animals except for a few half-wild dogs of mongrel breed or an occasional cow or goat kept by a government servant for his own personal use. The country, consisting as it does of barren rock —mostly granite, gneiss or schist —there is no sedimentary rock —renders all agriculture impossible; it is only just here and there that one is able to-see a thin sprinkling of soil. In consequence of the lack of agriculture the natives eat no vegetables, subsisting mainly on the carcass of the seal, which provides them with an equivalent for mutton; the seal also gives them skin for clothing and for covering boats, and oil for light and fuel. How the People Dress. The women have no definite headdress; sometimes they will wear just a cloth for a hat. They wear collars made of dog fur, broad beadwork ornaments over a sort of blouse or coat, often made of Scotch tartan in some cotton material, with dog-fur cuffs and beadwork ornaments. Under this in

cold weather they will wear a “timiak,” which is made of bird skins and is purchasable for about four dollars. The women also wear short trousers of seal fur with the hair outside, with ornamental stripes stitched down the front. Long seal-leather boots known as “kamiks,” dyed to suit the various tastes of the wearers, are worn by the women. The kamiks come nearly up to the knee and are topped with some sort of lacework which comes well above the knee; the kamik has a loose lining of seal fur with the hair inside. The poorer women are only able to afford the cotton coat, the short trousers, and kamiks. The men’s clothing consists of an ordinary European tweed cap, an anorak, which 4s a sort of cotton jumper with a hood to go over the heap —this is supplanted in cold weather by a timiak, a heavier garment—and as often as not a European coat and trousers. Sometimes in place of European trousers the men will wear seal-fur trousers with the hair inside; for legwear they have short kamiks, which come about half way up to the knee, showing a band of an inch or two of fur turned over from the inner stocking at the top. Crime Almost Unknown. The Inhabitants of Greenland all profess Christianity, and they live quiet, uneventful lives, crime being almost unknown in the country. There is no police force of any kind and no apparent means of enforcing the law, which is administered by the “bestyrer” in each colony under the resident Inspector of North or South Greenland and the governor of the colony, who Is usually resident in Copenhagen. The country is liable to sudden, violent storms, especially those which come up from the southeast and which are quite local in their Incidence; the neighborhood of the copper mines seems to be particularly favored by the visits of these violent storms. At Godthaab last year there was a. fall of snow of several inches on August 22, but that was exceptionally early in the year for such an occurrence. At Julianshaab in October of last year the water in the harbor was covered with a sheet of ice. On the whole the climate is very wet; during some summers it rains on nearly every day. The aurora borealis may be seen on practically any cloudless night, but it is only white, not colored.