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Passionate kayak builders sharing the knowledge of the different regional construction methods at a traditional paddling event.
The culture and traditions are as important as learning the skills.
Everyone is welcome to learn with whatever equipment they have.
Greenland is a beautiful barren wilderness, yet everything that makes it beautiful made it challenging for the inhabitants to eke out an existence. For many months of the year,the only available source of sustenance was sea life. To ensure their survival,over many generations the Greenland Inuit developed techniques and equipment that allowed them to become eficient hunters of mammalian sea life. It was through this process of development that the traditional Greenland kayak emerged as the preferred means to hunt. More than just a source of food, every part of the sea life the Inuit hunted was used. Whether it was blubber used to waterproof the clothes and craft, bones used to make harpoon tips, or meat used to feed the village, nothing was wasted. Only the available resources deined the limits of the Inuit ingenuity. The original kayaks were built using driftwood that washed up on the shoreline. They were skinned using seal and sea lion hides,sewn together with sinew.The paddling hunter’s clothes were also assembled from skins, kept waterproof and supple by rubbing melted blubber into them regularly.
After the development of the steamer around the turn of the twentieth century, travel to Greenland became relatively easy. This ease of movement of people and goods has forever changed the character of the island and its people. It is no longer a subsistence community: the rile replaced the harpoon, steamships brought imports, and the grocery store now has replaced the hunter. For decades it also looked like the advent of the motorboat would replace the ancient kayaks, and the craft of building and art of paddling these irst kayaks nearly became extinct.Seeing the inevitable demise of the Greenland kayak culture rapidly approaching, a small dedicated band of Inuit established an organization, Qaannat Kattufiat, to preserve the knowledge and skills of the ancient hunters and their craft. Over the past decades several afiliate groups have been established around the globe, speciically in the USA, Denmark and Japan to support the goals of Qaannat Kattufiat by ensuring the skills of building, paddling, harpooning and rolling with Greenland style kayaks continue.
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The Greenland qajaq, or kayak, as the English speaking world more commonly spells it, is not a boat; it would be more accurate to describe it as a prosthesis, an extension enabling the hunter to swiftly and silently approach, harpoon and recover the prey.
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