Dwellings of Eskimos

1901

It is a mistake to suppose that the Eskimos of Greenland live in huts made of ice or snow, even though some of the writers of geographies do say so. The huts in which they pass the winter are rudely conical in shape, a little more than five feet high, made of stone, with the cracks and spaces filled with earth and the whole covered with turf or sod.

A passageway about six feet long and less than three feet square leads to the interior, and there is a small window in the hut directly over the passageway. The hut, which is called an igloo, contains only one room and has built around its sides a rude platform or bench of stone.

When summer arrives, the Eskimos abandon their igloos and dwell in skin tents, called tupics. Huts made of ice and stone are never used except temporarily, as, for example, when they are traveling long distances during the winter or when for some reason they do not return to their winter settlements.