The umiaq is the Inuit’s journey and family boat and it is probably as old as the Inuit culture itself.
The distribution of the Inuit from remote regions of Siberia to East Greenland would have been unthinkable without the umiaq – the boat was used both as a family boat and for long journeys. It is known throughout the region and the word for the boat is similar everywhere in the Inuit region. However, the form and purpose varies from the small umiaqs in Alaska that are used for hunting larger whales to the wider, more spacious transport boats used in Ammassalik.
Women rowed the boat.
It is also called the women’s boat, as it was the women who rowed the boat, whilst the men sailed alongside in their kayaks. Loaded as it was with household implements, children and perhaps dogs, summer tent etc., it carried the whole family’s worldly possessions. There are usually four women rowers and, to some extent, a sail was used for propulsion.
A transportation boat.
The umiaq was used for summer transportation and it was indispensable for Ammassalik. In this large, extensive district with deep fjords and countless islands, it was necessary then, as now, with transportation that could bring the whole family across long distances. People met at the hunting grounds or at the big summer gatherings. Family visits and summer gatherings where you met new people, exchanged news and made agreements for the coming year, where events that were looked forward to, after the long isolation of the winter.
The families sailed together to gather supplies. The big spring seal migration at the outer islands where meat was dried, fishing for capelin (Ammassat) and later Arctic char were all part of the rhythm of the season.
The boats returned home heavily loaded with supplies for the long winter, before the advent of autumn’s dangerous, thin ice. Nevertheless, a tear or hole in the boat’s skin was not necessarily fatal. A piece of blubber was pushed into the hole and when the boat came ashore, it could easily be repaired with the needle and sinew thread that was always stowed at the top of the baggage.
Although the women’s boat in Ammassalik was primarily a cargo vessel capable of carrying many kilos, it was a very light construction that could be carried over land or up onto ice flows, if the ice suddenly blocked the way.
Also a shelter.
It was used for night shelter during the many day’s journey to the summer places. It was carried ashore and turned upside down. Supported by a small stick on one side it quickly provided good shelter for the night. The same naturally applied, if the weather turned bad – storm or rain – on the way. It was probably a beautiful sight in the summer night, almost like Chinese lanterns on the beach, with light shining through the skin of the umiaq and the ribs of the boat like a dark, regular pattern against the golden skin.
The oldest known umiaq
The oldest known umiaq in Greenland and the oldest in the world is the 500-year old umiaq, which was found at the end of the 1940’s in northernmost East Greenland, in Pearyland by polar explorer Eigil Knuth. The boat is also the longest ever to be found in Greenland, with a length of 11 metres, it is narrower than the umiaqs that were usually used in Greenland and resembles more those used in Alaska for whale hunting. Whether it had made the journey from Alaska to East Greenland is obviously not known, but it is quite possible.
A copy of the old boat was made was made at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde (Denmark) in 1980. Elderly Greenlanders from the Nanortalik region in South Greenland came to Roskilde to build the boat.
The umiaq was in use up to 40 years ago in Ammassalik but has now been replaced by boats with motors, so it is becoming increasingly difficult to find people with the skill to build umiaqs. The copy in Roskilde may well be the last umiaq ever to be built.
