It was a typical summer day: birds, boats, sea, and ice. The difference was, the birds were Arctic geese, the boats were converted canoes, the sea was −10°C, and the ice was the size of a large car, rather than bobbing in a refreshing drink. I was standing on the northern coast of the small island of Uglit, where I camped for five weeks last summer while excavating ancient Arctic houses.
Flight to the frost
The journey to reach the island was already an adventure. The planes that travel to the Arctic are small, but often carry important cargo, such as post, for its various communities. As we flew north of the treeline, the tundra stretched out far below, interspersed by large bodies of water peppered with what I originally thought were clouds, but turned out to be huge stretches of floating sea-ice. Even in the summer months, icebergs are a common sight.
At last, after seven hours split between two flights, I reached Igloolik, the main town where we would be based as we prepared for the excavation. With a population of around 1,700, Igloolik is a small but proud settlement, famous throughout the Arctic for its skilled carvers and successful filmmakers. Perhaps its most internationally famous production is Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, which retells an Inuit legend about a man forced to flee from attackers on foot across the floating ice. We stayed in Igloolik for a week while we gathered supplies – Uglit was too far away to allow regular trips back to town, so we needed to take everything with us – and we saw those floating ice-sheets for ourselves. While we worried that they might not melt in time for us to leave the bay, the local kids capered across the slippery, wobbly surfaces, jumping from one floe to another in daring races that left me with my heart in my mouth.
