Kayak Building        

First of all it has to be articulated that the way to build boats in today’s common yards, as we know it, has little relation to the original way kayaks where built. The method of building kayaks was developed at a time when the art of building boats in the form of skin boats was not known in Europe. Measuring tools like rules, spirit levels, strakes or similar where unknown. Tools of the kind we are used to did not exist. Whilst today the sport- or sea-kayak is mostly been judged based on its runability and displacement, the original kayak of the Inuit’s had to fulfil the requirements of a hunting device or, in a sense, of a general workplace. The most miscellaneous hunting devices and aids had to be placed on the boat; the catch had to be transported, either fixed on deck or in tow.

 

Picture to the left: Kayaker with equipment and catch. Note the snow on deck and on the kayaker. Location: Arsuk Ivituut Foto Jette Bang 1936

Picture to the right: Kayak with equipment, gun bag, line rack, hunting float, paddle etc. Photo . Foto:Morsild Petersen 1912 Picture: Dansk Polar Center


Initially one of the biggest problems was to obtain or find the valuable wood in the more or less tree free Greenland or in the Tundra along the Canadian coastal area. In most cases the wood came from the rivers and coasts of Siberia, North Canada, and Alaska. After floods the trunks floated down the rivers into the Polar Regions and from there with the polar current to the northern coasts of Canada, from there along the eastern coast to the West Coast of Greenland. The kinds of wood used allowed certain determination of their origin. Where else do Pitch-or Oregon Pine, thick trunks of larch or spruce grow. The trunks had to be worked on with the aids made out of wood in the form of wedges and with stones, later on with simple metallic tools. With very time consuming processes the wood was cut to the dimensions needed for the kayak.
Assembling of the ribs and lashing of the deck stringers in the frame of a kayak. Picture from: Eskimo - Geschichte Kultur, von D. Morrison, G.H. Germain Verlag Frederking & Thaler München 1996
The need to hunt marine animals in open waters predetermined the form of the kayak. To avoid collision with every peace of ice and to be able to slide up and down the beach when leaving and coming back stem and stern were at a rather skew angle with the keel. This more or less preassigned the kayaks second characteristically form, the elegant sheer in its longitudinal direction. When fixing the side stringers or gunwales (greenl.: aqummaq) to the stem and stern end profiles and after the following spreading of the gunwales the kayak is brought into its elegant shape as seen from aside. Intention or coincidence? The Catechist Kleist, who published in 1929 a small text book about hunting from the kayak and from ice, presented the kayak as “the ugliest marine vessel”.

The portrayed framework has not originated in Greenland. It was built 1995 in Odense of Lars Rønsager. The ribs are molded from ash.
Overall view, bow on the left. Length 5,3 m, beam 58 cm, weight 19 kg
The height of the ribs in the forward part of the boat is predetermined by the outstretched foot, i.e. the length of the foot. Once these measurements are fixed the cross beams and the ribs are connected to the gunwale, the first ones at deck level sideways, the latter ones from below. Whilst today to some extend screws are been used to connect the parts with one another, in former times wooden dowels, pins carved from bones and sinews kept this peace of art in shape and together.
 




Women repairing a kayak. Picture: Movie SOS Eisberg 1929-1931 Foto: Ferd Vogel

The cover of the kayak was made out of seal skin. The size of the skins depended on their availability. Usually the skin of the Greenland Seal, which could grow up to 2 meters, was used. In earlier times one also used the skin of the Hooded Seal and, as an exemption, that of white whales. Preparation of the skins was women’s work. After removing the blubber, scrapping off the hairs with the “Ulu”, a woman’s knife, the skins where treated “chemically” with different aids like ashes, blubber, blood and urine. Before they were stretched over the kayak frame they were left for some weeks in salt water. After that they were very elastic and could be stretched out for twice their size. In recent times also canvas is been used which is suitably painted with oil colours. It is, however, more economical to sell a skin to a dealer than to use it to cover a Kayak. In former times the skins were sold via the KGH (Royal Greenland Trade Organisation).Today the skins are considered as almost worthless because the activities of Greenpeace in Canada against seal hunting affect also the Greenland seal skins.

The cockpit ring, coaming or seat opening was a special problem because wood in the quality needed and in the length predetermined by its circumference, was not readily available. The ring therefore was constructed out of several parts which than were pegged together to form a complete ring. From the inside the skin was stretched onto the cockpit ring. This ensured a high degree of watertightnes against water flooding across the deck. Obviously it was also required to wear a fitting dress, the kayak jacket (greenl.: Annoraajuvok), similar to our anorak.


Copy taken from the book: DEN GRØNLANDSKE KAJAK OG DENS REDSKABER von
P. Scavenius Jensen Nyt Nordisk Forlag Arnold Busk 1975







Cockpit of a West Greenland kayak.
measurements: length 37 cm, width 34 cm, length of the kayak: 5,44 m, width 48 cm, heigth of Cockpit 0,20 m
Foto: German Museum Munich, Dr. Oestmann
This kayak was bought by the sculptor Emil Eduard Hammer, resident of Munich on the 14th of July, 1907. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the boat`s origin. It might well be over a hundred years old.


East-Greenland Kayak
To enter or crawl into one of the extreme low east-Greanland kayaks is only possible if the knee joints have been over streched by training allready as a child or teenager. The kayak is located in the National Museum in Copenhagen, made available by Dr. Therkel Mathiassen in 1932.
Length 5,683 m, width 47,6 cm, hight of the deck at the cockpit 13,9 cm.
Measured and drawn by Harvey Golden 2002.
Published with kind permission of Harvey Golden from his book "Kayaks of Greenland", page 402. Photography: Wolfgang Half.




Enter, slide, into the kayak using the paddle bridge technique and start paddling. Length 5,60 m, beam 53 cm, weight with wet leather cover about 35 kg. Ammassalikfjord, Quernertivartivit Eastgreenlandkajak,
Picture by W. Half 1976
Naturally there were differences in the use and design of the kayak covers. In areas were the hunting season was short, the covers were made in shorter time and of less durable skins. In areas with mostly open waters and where hunting was carried out all year round, skins with higher quality were chosen. In the region of North Greenland and in Anmmassalik, East Greenland, dark skins were used in order not to be detected in front of the dark rock walls there. In south-westerly Greenland bright skins were used to achieve a good camouflaging effect during hunting in front of the big ice walls there. The skins should frequently be rubbed with blubber to ensure longer durability and watertightnes. Even a looked after kayak skin cover became, though watertight, heavy under wet conditions. A Kayak coming back from the sea easily weighed 28-35 kg.
All wooden parts of the kayak have special names which differ slightly between North-, South- and East Greenland.

There were distinctions between the use of the boats. Be it for whaling, hunting of walruses, for short term use or during the whole year, be it at the East Coast with much drift ice or at the West Coast with long periods of open water but high ice bergs. The boats were always specially assigned to those criteria. Long and shallow boats at the East Coast, slightly higher and wider ones at the West Coast, very narrow, long and fast ones for hunting reindeers on the rivers of NW Canada.
Once a kayak was finally finished, it was a small festivity in the domicile, similar to a launching.
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Whilst the methods of kayak building and constructing were largely identical, there were differences in the shape of the boats and in the equipment on deck. J. L. Rousselot lists 28 different types of kayaks. Only three of them are from the Greenland area. All the others are boats from NW Canada and Alaska. Whilst the Greenland kayak was used to hunt on the open sea and from the edge of the ice, different “home”-conditions existed in Alaska along the rivers or coastline.
Similarly to Rousselot, Edwin Tappan and Howard Chapelle mention four Greenland kayaks in “The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America”. All the others mentioned are rather different ones from NW-Canada and Alaska.

Picture from: Equipment of the western Eskimos for hunting seals. Investigated with respect to their cultural context from J. L. Rousselot Verlg. Klaus Renner
The Greenland kayak is special in comparison with e.g. the NW-Canada kayak or the Aleut baidarka with respect to the small cockpit and to the generally small width between 47 and 55 cm. This requires special navigating experience beginning with the way to get in. You don’t just sit into a kayak; you slide into it, comparable to get a big pair of trousers on. Because there is not everywhere a shallow sand beach one has to “make a bridge” with the paddle. One either rests the paddle upon land or upon the water surface. This technique, which is usually only possible using the original paddle of the Eskimos with its blades in one plane, is the only possibility to get into the boat especially from a high ice edge.
Once sitting in the boat one has to feel it. Kayaker and boat should form a unity. The kayaker has to feel the movements of his boat, he has to anticipate them, react upon them and to control them. Exerting pressure with the hips and slightly edging the boat allows to control the direction or to correct the course once the boat is moving ahead. The kayak does not have a rudder.
Only around 1850 the advantage of having a skeg (Aqûut) under the boat was realised.
With every stroke one feels the pressure on the blade and the boat jumping ahead. It is an almost ecstasy feeling when the boat is cutting the waves, when a wave closes in sideways, flooding over the deck and the kayaker and both, in upright position, continue on to the next wave. Out at sea it is irritating if the surface is absolutely flat and the mirror image of the coast line continues without interruption into the depth. Where is the horizon? It happened that due to “Kayakangst” kayakers capsized and drowned. Similar situations occurred in sea fog. The compass was not known.

For big opinion please on the picture clicks.
The speed through the water of the kayak is about 6-7 km/h. Speed over ground may increase by tidal current. Distances made good during a day up to 80 km were possible. Kayakers of the KGH, who travelled from one domicile to another in order to distribute e.g. mail, earned 5 Öre per Km. This called for distances!