Inuit Maps of Greenland

The Inuit in Greenland and Canada's north inhabit a hostile environment. The cold is appalling, the weather is unpredictable, the distances are vast, the terrain unforgiving and the necessities of life may be hard to come by. And yet, these people thrive in this harshest of environments. Indeed, if you want to see one way they've adapted, check out this fascinating, dated, video.

This is a blog about maps though, so I wondered how these people found their way around their regions. There was reliance on innukshuks, man-made landmarks to help with navigation, but what about out on the water, in a kayak?

The needs of a traveler would have been unique. The north is dark 6 months of the year, so it would have to somehow be read easily in the dark. It would need to be able to be handled without taking off mittens if it was too cold and would need to float, if it were dropped in the water. The solution was an ingenious one that I read about here, a tactile map.

When I first saw these I thought: "are they even maps?", but indeed they are. Known as Ammassalik wooden maps, and the images above are of maps which date to around 1885. The maps were tactile. Small enough to fit in your mitten, made of buoyant wood and carved to represent the contours of the coastline of Greenland. My guess, however, is that they would take some practice to learn how to read. Looking at the comparison between them and a more traditional map leaves me somewhat baffled. Map-reading can be a skill. No doubt those who used these maps learned how they worked.

Not many examples of these types of maps exist. The ones shown above were originally taken to Copenhagen, but are now in a museum in Greenland. Over at this blog, I found an image of a politically incorrect newspaper clipping showing some other similar carved maps. If anyone is aware of any other examples of this type of map, I'd be interested in learning more.