Inglesfield Fjord

This piece depicts a surfacing Narwhale, the only whale with a tusk. The tusk forms as the whale matures by the twisting of the two lower front teeth, which grow into a spiral formation to yield this beautiful ivory tusk. The Narwhale is found in many places in the Arctic, but is most common in northernmost Greenland in Inglesfield Fjord, whose glaciers produce the majority of the Atlantic Ocean’s icebergs. The Greenlanders from Qaanaaq still hunt this whale by using the traditional methods used by their ancestors a thousand years ago. The hunter throws his harpoon from a Greenland kayak that is attached to a float made of seal skin. A group of hunters then follow the float until the whale is spent when it is harvested for food for the village.