3

Siorapaluk is located in northern Greenland. This very small village, consisting of only 18 or 19 houses, has a population of only 70, and some 300 dogs. With no electricity, gas, running water or showers, living conditions are far from civilized. I borrowed a tent from a Japanese hunter by the name of Oshima who had been living there for 18 years. I slept outdoors, but sometimes he invited me in for a meal, and looked after me in various ways. I made a few friends, and was invited to each of their houses for dinner. One day, I accompanied Mr. Quartz, a Danish resident, on a three-day seal hunting trip. At the echo of gunshots, a seal desperately tries to get away in order to live. And the hunter pursues it desperately in order to live as well. Watching the hunter cutting up the dead seal on the drift ice, I felt no sense of wonder or cruelty. If it’s for survival there’s no choice in the matter. These people never killed more seals or whales than they needed, and I was deeply moved by how they lived in severe conditions, subject to the laws of nature.

When two young Inuit pulled a young white whale up onto the shore, the villagers gathered seemingly from out of nowhere, and with the knives they were holding they cut the whale’s hide, removed the white blubber and started to eat it. Faces and hands dripping scarlet blood, they exclaimed “mamatto” (delicious) as they filled their smiling mouths. A four-year-old girl was deftly using a knife as she ate. When I tried to eat some in the way in which I had been taught, I found the hide to be crunchy, with a delicious taste like that of abalone meat.

When I climbed up to a rocky outcrop on a hill, an infinite number of appariaho (a migratory bird) were flying around, and crying noisily, they let their droppings fall with abandon. A black fox came close to me and found bird’s nests between some rocks. It went around peering into them one by one. In one valley I saw three of them wandering around together — a scene that made me marvel at being in the great outdoors.