Martha Olsen has sat down with the director of Sisimiut and Kangerlussuaq Museum, Dorthe-Katrine Olsen, to tell her childhood memories from 1955 until 1962, during which she as a 9-16 year old accompanied her family as they went to Aasivissuit for the yearly hunt and preservation of caribou meat.
The yearly trip was always very well organized and started from the settlement Saqqarliit, where Martha was born and raised. The family would pack their rowing boat with only the basic necessities and set out at the end of June. They would not return to the settlement for the next 2 months.
They followed Tasersuaq (Big Lake) and rowed or carried their boat up along rivers until they arrived at Aasivissuit Lake. This was a favored summer camp by Marthas father, Peter Silassen, who hunted and dried caribou meat to last the family through the winter and until the next summer hunting season.
Everybody on the trip always had a role and a task they needed to do, so when Martha one year became ill on a stormy boatride across Tasersuaq the family made camp on the shore for two days, and made sure that the young girl had strength enough for the rest of the long trip. The travel from Saqqarliit to Aasivissuit normally took one week and everybody´s strength was needed for the trip to go well.
During the travel they would pass by Eqalugaarniarfik close to Itinnerup Tupersuai, where her aunts family would be fishing and drying trout for their years supply. Her aunt would give them packed lunches that consisted of partly dried trout that had been boiled. The packed lunch was consumed within a few days, partly because it was a delicacy but also because the warm weather quickly made their packs smell only of fish.
The food Martha and her family had brought from home was tea and oats, which was eaten for breakfast by soaking the oats in the hot beverage. They had also brought ships biscuits as a nutritious and practical snack. The family had brought a light aluminium pot to cook in during the hunting trip.
At arrival to the camp the family would set up two high poles that supported the fabric tent, and fastened the fabric to the ground using cords. Bushes and leaves was gathered to lie on the first night, and clothing was used as covers. Mattresses and bedding had been left at home to minimize the baggage since they had to carry it themselves.
People were always scouting the area for traces of caribou, and the camp was never noisy because that would scare away possible prey. When caribou were spotted instead of a deterring yell the sound “Hor hor hor” could be heard yelled from the spotter, and when hunters were arriving to camp with a catch they would use their hands as a whistle to announce the joyous event.
While the hunters were out, the remaining people would put thin slices of meat on tall bushes to dry, and monitor the setup to make sure the flies didn’t lay eggs on it. The gathering of appropriate bushes for drying and firewood took a long time but they also were in charge of preserving the rest of the animal. The skins were dried and squared, tallow was removed from the guts and skin, and marrow was taken from the bones. No part of the animal was wasted.
Martha and her family ate caribou every day but she remembers that they never got tired of the meat. This was because they some days found and caught ptarmigans or geese, which they would eat raw or cooked. Since they had to be frugal with the small amount of salt and sugar they had brought on the trip, they would each have a small cup of salted water during mealtime for them to dip their meat into like it was a condiment.
When Peter, Marthas father, decided that they had caught enough caribou during that hunting season, they would pack up the catch and camp. If they had some extra time, like it being too late in the day for them to travel, they would have a competition to see who was the best shot in the group. Martha won’t shy away from saying that she won quite a bit of tallow from those competitions.
Usually Peters siblings and their families, as well as family friends, would join them on these two-month long hunting trips where they camped in Aasivissuit. They would keep each other company and when it was time to go back to the coast, they helped each other pack and carry the meat, tallow, and campgear in skin bundles hanging from their head and down their back. With headbands made of skin from the shin of a caribou the skinbundles with load would hang on their back from the headbands.
The only bad memory Martha has from these 8 years of summer hunting trips is, one time her father made her carry a skinbundle filled with tallow that was really heavy and had sharp edges digging into her back. A burning sun, mosquitoes everywhere, heavy load pulling her head, constant pain on her back, and a hike through a hilly landscape. She ended up crying out her pain and exhaustion, and she is now sure that it was her fathers way of making sure she also experienced the hardest parts of the trip.
She was the youngest in the travelling group, starting when she was 9 years old, until 16 years old when she got a job in Sisimiut and established her own family. It was not until she reached 40 years old that she again was part of a family summer hunting trip. Martha is sure that physical and mental health is greatly improved by these summer hunting trips that places you in nature with few ressources but close to family and friends.
On their travel back to the coast it was customary for Marthas family to make a slowly heated nutritious soup consisting of caribou blood, water and tallow. This gave them the strength to go back and forth through the landscape and carry all the skinbundles they had packed. Each member would carry a bundle, hike a long distance, put down the bundle and hike back to bring another bundle. This would be repeated until they did the same with the rowing boat, all the way back to their settlement Saqqarliit.
Martha almost only have fond memories from this period of her life, and to this day she uses very little salt in her food, always has caribou in her freezer and has a deep respect for the nature that she hopes will not be defiled. Her children and grandchildren still go hunting and fishing in this area but Martha and her husband are now too old and weakened to go with them like they used to.
We are thankful to Dorthe-Katrine Olsen, Director of Sisimiut & Kangerlussuaq Museum, for having made time to arrange the interview to document the practiced culture in Aasivissuit. We are also very grateful towards Martha Olsen, who agreed to this interview and made it possible to share this cultural tradition that to many is intangible and rarely seen.
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