Umiaks
For no obvious reason, I found myself reflecting on Inuit boats (kayaks and umiaks) during Quaker meeting yesterday, after reading from "The Sixth Extinction", by Elizabeth Kolbert. Today, I found this article from Natural History magazine, which called the umiak "almost extinct" and mentioned the "last umiak' in Shishmaref, Alaska 1n 1968, which may be the same umiak I saw "in dry dock" near the Shishmaref post office a decade earlier. I was also reminded of the legend of an Inuit settlement in Greenland forced to evacuate when its alliance with norsemen fell apart, commemorated in a Danish Christmas plate:
