Subject: Re: baidarka Nanook of the North
From: Harvey Golden (qayaq@pacifier.com)
Date: Mon Aug 07 2000 - 19:46:09 EDT
Dear Peter,
Many scale drawings of East Canadian kayaks exist (types such as appear in
"Nanook of the North"), as well as exceptional construction information. A
prime source should be Eugene Arima's "Inuit Kayaks In Canada", 1987.
Equally important, and even centered in proximity to where the film was made
are the two short but concentrated Ethnological works by Arima and Milton
Freeman from the early 1960's. Arima's is titled "Notes on the Kayak and
its Equipment at Ivuyivik, P.Q." Freeman's paper is titled "Observations
on the Kayak-Complex, Belcher Islands, N.W.T."
The scene in "Nanook of the North" where Nanook pulls his family and dog out
of the kayak was a trick of the camera, so says a fellow who spoke to a few
of the people that were in the film. I hope this doesn't spoil the fun of
the film. I merely bring this to your attention so as to protect your wife
and kids should you ever build such a kayak.
All the best,
Harvey
----- Original Message -----
From: Peter A. Chopelas <pac@premier1.net>
To: <baidarka@lists.intelenet.net>
Sent: Monday, August 07, 2000 2:00 PM
Subject: baidarka Nanook of the North
> Did anyone catch the broad cast of Nanook of the North on PBS Sunday
night?
> I taped it and have already viewed it three times, the kayak parts even
> more times. It is a fascinating piece of film making. It does not appear
> that they used any kind of spray skirts on their kayaks, and notice the
> long high aspect ratio paddles! They must be fairly large kayaks, I was
> surpassed to see Nanook carry his whole family of five, including his dog,
> inside a single hatch kayak (yup, young son on the deck infront of him,
his
> wife, infant child and teenage daughter and dog below deck, with him in
the
> cockpit!)
>
> There was also a brief scene where it shows them stretching the skin over
> the frame, notice how elastic the skin is! There must not be a lot of
> stiffness added by the skin. The frame construction is very different
than
> what is shown in either Zimmarly's and Wolfgang's books, I want to study
it
> some more...(I wonder if I can get some decent prints off the tape, the
> original film was rather grainy). I would like to try and scale the
> dimensions of the kayak off the images as well, though they look fairly
> large, more or less Greenland style.
>
> Peter
>
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