Curious North – thegirlwithcoldhands

What Is Akutuq?

March 9, 2021March 9, 2021 girlwithcoldhandsLeave a comment

For the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about akutuq an awful lot. So much so that I’ve written a poem about it and developed a real hankering to try some, despite usually shunning meat.

Also known as ‘Alaskan ice cream,’ ‘Native ice cream’ or ‘Eskimo ice cream,’ akutuq is animal fat – caribou, usually – mixed with seal oil and whipped together with handfuls of berries, freshly fallen snow or water. Each family has their own recipe, and it’s said the berries you choose to use is a lifetime decision. It’s alright to eat any flavor made by others, but your social standing will be lost if you’re found using berries different to the ones you initially chose.

Interesting Note: Seal oil is used to enhance pretty much all native foods.

The word akutuq means ‘to stir,’ and is pronounced ‘AUK – goo – duck.’ The Inuit have been making akutuq for centuries, and up until fairly recently, would store it in permafrost cellars, so it was ready for when guests dropped by.

On my wanders through the crevasses of the internet, I encountered Zona Spray Starks’s excellent article ‘What Is Eskimo Ice Cream?’ in which she talks about her experience of akutuq:

My favorite jaunt was out on the river to watch men haul fishnets up through the ice, sending whitefish flapping like crazy over the frozen surface. Seeing me, a neighbor named Old Jim would grin widely and yell “akutuq!” as he stooped to pick up a fish. Holding it belly up, he’d bend it until the skin snapped open and eggs popped out onto the ice.
Jim would quickly smash the egg membranes with a rock. With splayed fingers he’d stir, faster and faster, pulling little handfuls of snow into the mass. Within ten minutes a cloud-like batch of frozen akutuq would take shape. We devoured it on the spot, scooping up portions with our fingers, savoring each mouthful as it melted over our tongues. Old Jim’s version of the dish is one of many, and perhaps the most basic.
Zona Spray Starks

A century back, women would hurry the process by chewing the fat to soften it. This had the potential to spoil the dish though, if the woman chewing was a pipe smoker. Watching videos on YouTube of the process of making traditional akutuq – splayed, experienced fingers whipping the fat until it triples in volume, adding a tablespoon of seal oil at a time and a little water to maximize the fluffiness – is akin to magic.

It takes about forty-five minutes for the fat to be transformed into something that looks very much like cake frosting. At this point, berries are added and perhaps a little sugar. (Whalers brought sugar to the Arctic in the 1800s.) The taste of akutuq is apparently ‘delicate, slightly sweet and rich, with a smooth and silky texture.’ It could also be made for hunters to take with them on long trips, by using dried meat instead of fruit.

In 1842 there was a gathering along the Yukon River and an akutuq cooking contest took place. Husbands heckled their wives to create bizarre variations. Some of the ingredients that found their way into the mixing bowls were blood, beaver, otter, caribou stomach contents and bird eggs.

Crisco (shortening) is often used to make akutuq these days, along with raisins. There are several ‘How To’s’ on YouTube – this one is particularly good – if you’re feeling intrepid. You can use a whisk instead of your fingers though, unless you’re keen on a more authentic experience.

Sources

Smithsonian Magazine / What Is Eskimo Ice Cream?

What’s Cooking America / Akutaq

Curious North : 5 Narwhal Facts

November 7, 2019November 7, 2019 girlwithcoldhandsLeave a comment

Narwhals Are Descended From An Evil Woman

In Inuit folklore, there’s a tale about an evil woman who kept her daughter well fed but starved her blind son. The mother and daughter feasted in secret on the meat of a polar bear the son had shot with a bow and arrow. The son didn’t know he’d killed it, what with him being blind, and his mother insisted it had fled. (For the record, his sister helped him get the shot. In some versions of the tale, she’s sympathetic to his cause.)

Eventually, the son’s sight returned and he found the bear’s skin outside their hut. One day, there was a pod of white whales which the mother intended to harvest, but the son had other ideas. He lashed a rope attached to a harpoon around his mother’s middle and harpooned a whale. The whale dragged the boy’s mother from the ice floe she was standing on and out into the sea. Her transformation into a narwhal began when she twisted her long hair into what we know as the narwhal’s distinctive spiraling tusk.

There Are None In Captivity

The last narwhal in captivity was in 1969/1970. It was an orphaned calf that had been caught at Grise Fiord in Canada (one of the coldest inhabited places on earth) and was airlifted to the New York aquarium. A month later and it was dead. At around the same time, the Vancouver aquarium captured six narwhals. Unable to handle the stress of captivity, they all died within months.

They Change Colour With Age

Newborn narwhals are mottled -blue-grey, juveniles are blue-black, adults are spotted grey and old narwhals are almost completely white. James Mead, the curator of marine mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History says the speckles complexion of the narwhal is ‘weird’ as whales are usually a more uniform colour.

It’s Tusk Is Actually A Tooth

The narwhal’s tusk is actually an exaggerated front left tooth. (Its right tooth is smaller and remains inside its mouth.) While most teeth, humans included, have a hard exterior and a sort interior, it’s the opposite in the case of the narwhal. Covered in thousands of nerve endings, this tooth can grow up to ten feet long and is able to bend about a foot before breaking off.

Narwhal Tastes Nutty…To Some

Muktuk is the name for the Inuit staple of whale skin and blubber. Apparently, when it’s eaten raw, muktuk becomes quite chewy and tastes nutty. However, ‘nutty’ isn’t how one writer describes it. When Abigail Tucker when to Greenland she sampled some muktuk and this is her experience: “With the tips of my fingers I seized a tiny, half-frozen piece of raw blubber, dunked it soy sauce and put it in my mouth. That first bite was exactly like chomping down on a thick vein of gristle in a great aunt’s holiday roast. It was tough as rubber, with a taste like congealed gravy.”

Sources

Smithsonian Mag

Mental Floss

What Is Skyr?

October 30, 2019November 1, 2019 girlwithcoldhandsLeave a comment

I spent three months in Iceland back in 2011 and I ate my body weight in Skyr. I tried every flavour I could and had Skyr withdrawal symptoms when I came home. I remember when Skyr first arrived in Tesco a few years later. I squealed and stashed a couple of tubs in my basket, ignoring the hefty Icelandic-esque price tag attached to them.

Once home, I promptly posted a photo of my Skyr to Facebook. My family, meanwhile, thought it bizarre me getting so excited about some dairy.

Pronounced skeer (with a slight trill on the r if you’re really going in for authenticity) Skyr is a cultured dairy product that’s been sustaining Icelanders since it was brought over from Norway in the 9th Century. Today, Skyr is probably Iceland’s most valuable contribution to the world’s culinary culture.

Uber, uber thick (yes, those two ubers are necessary) creamy and stacked with protein, Skyr has a tart taste to it. Icelanders traditionally eat it whipped with cream and topped with sugar. Though the most popular flavours among locals today are vanilla and blueberries. (I can vouch for vanilla. It’s awesome.)

While most people think of Skyr are being a yogurt, its technically a soft cheese. After the whey has been removed, it goes through a process of ultra-filtration, and that’s how it gets to be so thick you can stand your spoon up in it.

Although Skyr was hardly known about beyond the shores of Iceland for a thousand years, the word of this ‘superfood’ has spread worldwide, and it’s made some folks their fortune, including Siggi Hilmarsson. A native Icelander living in the US, Siggi found himself homesick for what had been a part of his staple diet back home – Skyr.

Using a recipe that his mother found (I think in some magazine from the 1960’s), Siggi started to make Skyr in his little New York kitchen. And it tasted like home. Within a few months, Siggi quit his day job, bought a bunch of dairy making equipment and boom, his Skyr making empire – Siggi’s Dairy – was born.

If, like me, you find yourself becoming just that bit obsessed with Skyr, get yourself to Iceland and visit the National Museum where you’ll find three Viking-era jars that contain Skyr residue. Now if that’s not cool, I don’t know what is.

Curious North : 10 Polar Bear Facts

October 13, 2019October 13, 2019 girlwithcoldhandsLeave a comment

annie-spratt-YXPKFBsLtkc-unsplash — Annie Spratt

The Inuit Have Many Different Names For The Polar Bear

The Inuit have many, many names for Nanuq. In this instance, I’ll take examples from The Netsilik Inuit of Canada. (Interestingly, they were among the last of the northern indigenous peoples to be preyed upon by Southern missionaries.) The adult male is anguraq, the adult female without cubs is tattaq, the pregnant female is arnaluk, the newborn is hagliaqtuq and the teenage polar bear who’s almost the same size as his mother is namiaq.

havets_moder — ‘Havets Moder’ by Christian Rosing

In Inuit Mythology, The Polar Bear Is Said To Have Been One Of Sedna’s Finger Joints

In Inuit culture, the origin of the polar bear is somewhat blurred. However, in some stories, the polar bear started life at the same time as all other Arctic marine creatures – when Sedna had her hands hacked off with an axe wielded by her own father. It’s said that the sea goddess’s fingers became seals and fish, whereas the rest of her hands became the whales and polar bears.

Nanuq Was Always Honoured By The Inuit After The Hunt

When hunting, the Inuit always maintained the highest level of respect for the great wanderer. And this continued after death. In northwestern Alaska for example, a ritual would be observed called the Polar Bear Dance. It would celebrate both the hunter and the hunted.

It was believed the bear’s spirit would attend the ceremony, so great care was taken to honour the spirit so it would move on its way. The bear’s skull would be placed on a bench so it was able to ‘watch’ the dancing and feasting. This would go on for four or five days, after which the hunter who had killed the bear would then take the skull out onto the sea ice. When the hunter would hear the sea ice make a noise, he would know the spirit had left.

The Mother Of All Polar Bears Was Found In Ireland

When I think of all the places the polar bear could have originated from, Ireland isn’t the first destination on the list. However, it appears the mother of all polar bears descended from a brown bear which lived 20,000 – 50,000 years ago in the present-day Emerald Isle. DNA taken from polar bears from Russia, Canada, Greenland, Norway, and Alaska showed that each individual bear’s ancestry could be traced back to the Emerald Isle dweller.

tumblr_nakhhqwFT21qhh9l6o1_400 — Le Petit Journal

Suicide by Polar Bear Has Happened More Than Once

Remember that tragic event in 2009 when Mandy K, a school teacher from Berlin attempted to commit suicide by entering the polar bear enclosure at Berlin Zoo? Well, I’ve recently discovered that she’s not the only person to have entered a polar bear enclosure with the intention of killing themselves.

Back in 1891, a woman by the name of Karoline Wolfe climbed down a rope into the Frankfurt Zoo’s bear pit with the aim of ‘being eaten alive by a white bear.’ Unlike Mandy K, Karoline didn’t leave the pit alive. In 1903 when the bear who had ‘shredded her flesh’ passed away, a number of Frankfurt businessmen has some postcards printed on which was the bear’s obituary. In the obituary, the bear was described as Wolf’s ‘ravenous lover,’ who was ‘so infatuated with her that he ‘gobbled her up.’

no-nb_bldsa_NPRA1998 001 — Photographer unknown

Roald Amundsen Considered Using Polar Bears To Pull His Sledges

Poor Captain Scott has been mocked relentlessly for his idea to use ponies to pull his sleds in Antarctica. But Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen also had a bizarre plan for his North Pole expedition – to use polar bears instead of dogs. Apparently, the thought first crossed his mind when he first saw trained polar bears in a zoological garden in Hamburg.

In an interview, Amundsen said: “These bears, when properly trained, are as tractable as oxen. They are at home in the cold of the Arctic and can be easily cared for and fed with seal meat.” But taming a bear isn’t an easy feat. The idea didn’t take off in the end – Amundsen wasn’t prepared to try and handle his fury convoy on his own – though over a decade after proposing the idea, he was still up for it, despite having been mauled by a bear in the meantime.

annie-spratt-3zE3OXraC9Q-unsplash — Annie Spratt

Polar Bears Get Hot Extremely Fast

You would think that, on occasion, a polar bear might get a bit cold. But they actually have the opposite problem – they overheat extremely easily. It’s much more likely for a polar bear to die from the heat than it is for them to die from the cold. With their two layers of fur and a solid layer of fat (which can measure up to 4.5 inches thick), their metabolic rate is steady, even in the most frigid of temperatures. While they can sprint up to 30 miles an hour if they need to, they can’t spend much time running as their temperature can rise to dangerous levels if they move too fast.

Polar Bears Don’t Hibernate

Unlike grizzlies and black bears that spend each winter in hibernation, polar bears don’t need to, and instead spend all winter being active. The reason being that there’s plenty of food available to hunt. The exception though is when a female bear is pregnant. Then, she digs herself a den and is sealed inside, surviving off her fat stores, until her cubs are large enough to brave the outdoors.

Doors Are Kept Unlocked In Churchill On Halloween

On the shores of the Hudson Bay in Manitoba, Canada, lies the town of Churchill. During Autumn, hundreds of bears pass through on their way to the hunting grounds. During this time, many of the locals don’t lock their doors so that if someone is running from a polar bear, they can duck inside. Halloween happens smack bang in the middle of polar bear season and, unsurprisingly, kids aren’t allowed to wear anything white for the festivities.

‘ Man Proposes, God Disposes’ by Edwin Henry Landseer

Superstition Surrounds Man Proposes, God Disposes

The painting Man Proposes, God Disposes (1864) by Edwin Henry Landseer, was inspired by the search for Franklin’s Lost Expedition and features two polar bears among the grizzly remains of the expedition wreckage. The painting, which hangs in the study hall of Royal Holloway, University London was, for a long time, covered up with a Union Jack during exams, for it was said students who sat in front of it were doomed to fail. One urban legend claims that in the 1920s a student looked at the painting and stabbed themselves in the eye with a pencil, after writing on their exam paper ‘the bears made me do it.’

Sources

Ice Bear by Michael Engelhard