Heriberta Tabita Marta Dewi

175070201111007

PSIK’17 Reg. 1

Ok class, we’ve been talking about pruditional type of shelters, about the styles of
houses used by traditional people. and today, today i’d like to talk a bit about the home of the
inuit poeple, the eskimos. The people who lived in the far north in the arctic region of north
America. Now all the inuit used to have 2 types of houses, summer houses and winter houses.
There’s summer houses we’re called topique, and they were originally made of animal skins
and leather tamps. There were various types of winter houses tough, the inuit who lived in
northen alaska, where there was ploty of driftwood, build their winter houses from wood they
found on the shore. The inuit who lived in labradore, that’s in northeastern canada, now they
build their winter houses from stone and earth, and supported them with quale bones. It was
only in the north central part of canada, and in one place in greenland that the inuit build their
winter houses from snow. Oh, and by the way, the inuit who lived up in greenland in a place
called tuley, there were some of the most isolated people in the world until sometime in the
early 18th century in fact they tought they were the only people in the world. Imagine how
surprised they were, the first time they meet outsiders. Anyway when the first conaity in so
pure in decend to arrived in northen canada and they saw this houses made of snow, mask
what they were called. The inuit replied “igloos”, and so that what we called them now. In
english the word igloo means a dome shape tales made of snow. However it turns out the
word igloo in any word just means house, any short of house, a house of wood, a house of
snow, whatever. How did the inuit make this snow houses, they used knifes made of bone or
ivory to cut windpack snow into blocks. They arrange this in a circle and then cut again
smaller and smaller blocks in a rising spiral until the dome was formed. Then they pack the
cracks between the blocks with loose snow. A skilled igloo builder could put up a simple
igloo in a couple of hours. And you know what? He could do it in a blizzard. The igloo was
the only dome shaped traditional housing that was build without internal support. We didn’t
need any interior support because, well because it was so strong. The bitter arctic winds
caused the outside of the igloo to freeze sawed, then the interior was set with the seal loyal
lap, what i mean is the use these laps to melt a little bit of the snow blocks, and then the water
refrozen twice, so you had a layer of ice on the outside the dome and one on the inside, and
like i say it was strong in fact it would support the way of the man standing on top of it.
Igloos were remarkably warm inside, i mean given that they were made up of snow, they
were surprisingly cozy, snow is actually a good isolator, believe it or not. And it keeps the
intense cold out. Igloos were usually small enough, so that body heat warm them up pretty
quickly. The inward slept on platform of pack snow covered with first. Oh, and the entrance
tunnel to the igloo was dark out. So, that it was lower than the igloo floor, and cold air got
trapped in the tunnel. Seal oil laps were usually used to heat igloos, so there had to be a hole
on the top of the dome to let out stale air and smoke. If igloos were to be used for a fairly
long time, they naturally tended to be more elaborate, sometimes circular walls of snow will
build around igloos to shield them from the wind, sometimes this wall were even build into a
second dome around the first one, and the layer of air between the two domes provided even
more isolation. This semi prominent igloos had windows and sky lights made defresh water
ice or transloosen seal got, and sometimes you’d have clusters of igloos, they were connected
by tunnels, sometimes five or more inuit families lived in this clusters. And sometimes the
inuit built larger snow dome that could be use more or less as community centers. You know
the nights are long up there on the arctic, so they needed some entertainment. They held
dances and wrestling matches, and their famous singing compeititon in these larger igloos. In
the early 1950’s, the inuit begin living in permanent year round housing, they only used
igloos when they went out over night haunting trips. Today they don’t use these wonderful
snow domes for shelter at all, not even as temporarely housing. But, sometimes they’re build
igloos for special accidents, and sometimes you’ll see little igloos in their yards that they built
as a play houses for their children.