How do Eskimos keep warm?
Living in the colder areas of the Arctic Circle where the ground is permanently frozen solid and the average daily temperature is well below freezing can’t be easy, and with conditions in the middle of winter often hitting below -50 °C, it’s a wonder anyone can survive in these areas. The Inuit and Yupik people of the Arctic Circle are experts in living in extreme cold and have done so for many generations, but living in such a harsh environment comes with a huge amount of risks, and a single mistake in the wrong area can cost you your life.
Keeping warm here means more than just moving around and having the right clothing, diet, and survival skills make all the difference. People native to these areas have lived there for a very long time and are more accustomed to dealing with the cold, such as how desert tribes can handle the heat much better than someone from a colder country.
They are also survival experts and are taught from a very young age how to recognize incoming storms and how to build their most commonly recognized home, the igloo. Their clothing is also something to brag about and no company on earth can match the warmth levels obtained from clothes traditionally worn by the Inuit. The warmest of these clothes are made from caribou skin which is sown 2 layers thick, with the fur facing towards the skin on the inner layer and the fur facing outwards on the exposed layer.
They typically make this double skin layer type clothing on boots, trousers, a long sleeve undershirt, an overshirt, and anorak, which is a hooded jacket that was invented by the Inuit.
This clothing is completely wind and waterproof, and when wearing both the 2 shirts and jacket it’s possible to be outside for hours at a time in -50 °C winter conditions. Just for a comparison if you were outside in -50 °C with nothing on but jeans and a t-shirt, you would be dead in less than 10 minutes. Even modern-day winter jackets can’t compare to the protection of Inuit clothing, I once watched a program about a group of people trying their luck at reindeer herding for a reality show in northern Siberia. When the mostly American cast turned up with their $1000 plus winter jackets the locals laughed at them and told them they would die if they wore those out in the wild.
What are Inuit clothes made of?
The warmest of their clothes are made from Caribou or seal skin, though skins of various grazing animals also work well, such as deer or moose. Bearskin also makes for some very warm clothing but is very thick and too heavy to move around in, instead mostly being used for blankets.
(Wild Caribou)
Why doesn’t an Igloo melt when there’s a fire inside?
Igloos are made of hard compact ice making them much more insulted which allows it to trap the heat in and keeps the igloo warm, but as long as the fire loses enough heat by the time it reaches the walls, they will never melt. Normally fires in igloos are very small and are only lit when people are awake and using them, instead of making larger fires to burn through the night.
Typically the fire is quite small and would have people surrounding it, which protects much of the walls from direct heat, and since the air temperature is so cold the heat from the flames cools fast enough to not contain enough warmth to melt the walls. Also if any melting should occur the surrounding ice and air temperature would quickly freeze the liquid as soon as it started to run.
The Innuit diet
One major factor in staying warm in these conditions is eating the right things. Their sources of red meat come from grazing animals that have meat darker than standard beef, such as musk ox, caribou, and moose. High amounts of dark red meat, especially when eaten raw help the body resist the cold, and when combined with huge amounts of fat from things like seals and whales, this fatty and high-protein diet prepares the body to be more comfortable in extremely cold conditions. The number of calories gained from eating large amounts of pure animal fat also makes up for the heightened rate at which the body burns calories in cold climates, and gives them a fat store on their own bodies for waiting out long storms or the mid-winter period.
Are Inuit and Eskimo the same thing?
No, no they aren’t. Eskimo is a term that was created in Alaska to describe the northern native inhabitants, with the term Eskimo meaning eater of raw meat, and is generally applied to all Inuit-type tribes across the world.
Most of the people known as Eskimos are made up of two major tribes, which are the Inuit and the Yupik, as well as a number of much smaller isolated tribes which all have their own names. The term Eskimo is a blanket word used to describe all people who are native to the northern areas of land in the countries contained within the circle, but this would be like referring to everyone from Europe as just European instead of the country they come from.