UMIAK

[aukepalmhof]

Greenland Post gives the following information by this issue:

Otto Nordenskjöld was born on 6th December 1869 on the farm Sjögelö near Mariannelund in Småland, Sweden. He was the eldest and only son in a family of five. His father, Otto Gustaf, was a soldier and served as captain at the Regiment Eksjö.
Otto, as a child, already showed a great interest in the surrounding countryside. One event that strongly influenced the then 10-year-old Otto was when his uncle Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld returned to Stockholm on 24th April 1880 with the vessel
VEGA.
AE Nordenskiold was, at that time, the first person who had successfully sailed through the Northeast Passage and around Eurasia.
Otto Nordenskjöld showed from a very early age that he would become an explorer, inspired primarily by his uncle. As soon as he had completed his studies in Uppsala with a doctorate in geology, he embarked in 1895 on a two-year long expedition
to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, in order to study questions of biology and quaternary geology, between two former ice covered areas. In 1898,

Otto Nordenskjöld was requested to lead an expedition to the Klondike in Alaska in order to search for gold. The expedition was very adventurous with a strenuous ascent of the Chilcoot Pass and boating down the Yukon River to Dawson City. He made some small gold findings thereby making the expedition balance economically.

Otto Nordenskjöld’s first expedition to Greenland was as a member of Lieutenant Amdrup’s summer expedition on board the vessel ANTARCTIC in 1900. He was hired as a geologist and participated in the exploration and mapping of Greenland’s
almost completely unknown east coast. The expedition had, with the assistance of the Carlsberg Foundation, acquired the whaling vessel ANTARCTIC, and aboard this ship, the expedition sailed from Copenhagen on 14th June 1900. The voyage initially went to Jan Mayen Island, where they went ashore, and then continued north, where they immediately encountered so much drift ice that they had to return to Jan Mayen Island, and then follow the ice edge on a north easterly course. After a four-day struggle against the ice, they came into open water and could then follow the Greenlandic coastline south. At Cape Dalton at 69 º N, Otto Nordenskjöld could begin to explore the area. He was so fortunate, already on the first day, to find a bedrock deposit from the Tertiary period, which was filled with fossils of both excrescences and sea animals. He found it strange to be able to date a
prehistoric warm climate in these Polar Regions.

Together with the cartographer JP Koch and some assistants, Otto went, in a rowing boat, on a 120 km long journey to Jameson Land, which was completely unexplored. The broad fjord was filled with large icebergs and violent bangs were often heard, when the glaciers calved or the iceberg capsized. On land there was a rich wildlife, with among other things, flocks of muskoxen.

Before Otto Nordenskjöld returned to Greenland to carry out his own expedition, he completed Sweden’s first expedition to Antarctica from 1901 to 1903. The expedition became dramatic, as the
expedition vessel ANTARCTIC wrecked, and the crew was forced to make two winterings.

In the summer of 1909 Otto Nordenskjöld led his own expedition to Greenland along with the conservator Hilmar Skoog from the Natural History Museum in Gothenburg. Otto wanted to study the morphology and geology of the Arctic landscape. They first docked at Holsteinsborg (Sisimiut), where the district doctor, whom Otto had met during the Amdrup expedition in 1900, had engaged a group of Greenlanders to row the expedition to the ice cap in an umiak (a women’s boat). Later, the expedition headed towards the south-west of Greenland, from Holsteinsborg to Godthåb (Nuuk), in a larger seaworthy rowing boat. They rowed and
sailed in all 350 km through the fjords. In order to reach the ice cap from the bottom of the fjords, Otto continued alone on foot for the remaining 70 kms which impressed the Greenlanders. The rowing boat journey took 25 days and gave him the opportunity to study the coastal belt and its nature, characterised by high glacier-clad mountains. Otto was also interested in the culture and living conditions of the Greenlanders. He believed that they should preserve their national culture.
Nordenskjold did use a UMIAK as depict on the stamp. Wikipedia gives on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umiak
The umiak, umialak, umiaq, umiac, oomiac or oomiak is a type of boat used by Eskimo people, both Yupik and Inuit, and was originally found in all coastal areas from Siberia to Greenland. Its name means "woman's boat," as opposed to the kayak, which means "man's boat".
Like the kayak, the traditional umiak was made from a driftwood frame pegged and lashed together, over which walrus (in western Alaska) or bearded seal skins are stretched. Modern versions are essentially identical with the exception of using metal bolts and screws.
The open umiak is significantly larger than the enclosed kayak which was built to carry one or two men while hunting. A large umiak can hold more than 20 people in its 6 metres (20 ft) to 10 m (33 ft) frame; and about seven skins are needed for the cover on a boat of 30 ft (9.1 m). It has traditionally been used in summer to move people and possessions to seasonal hunting grounds and for hunting whales and walrus.
While the kayak ceased being used in the early 1960s, the umiak skin boat is still very much a part of life in the Yupik and Inupiat Eskimo whaling villages of Alaska. It is still far superior to modern aluminum boats for spring whaling. The boat must be hauled on a sled pulled by snowmobile over very rough trails cut through the ice ridges to locations where there are open leads in the ice pack, where it is used to catch whales.
The skin cover on an umiak will last for two or three years, as does an aluminum boat used in the same way; however, replacing the skin on an umiak is much easier than repairing an aluminum boat. Additionally, Bowhead Whales are sensitive to the metallic noise from aluminum boats, and tend to move away under the ice, to avoid them.
In Barrow, Alaska the process for replacing the skin of an umiak begins when the ice moves away from the shores of the Arctic Ocean in July. At their first summer access to the ocean, whaling crews hunt for oogruk, the Bearded Seal, for suitable skins. The skins are packed into seal oil, and allowed to ferment while they are stored until March. At that time the skins are scraped free of hair, sewn together with a waterproof stitch, and then stretched over the wooden frame and tied into place using the sinew from caribou.
With a new skin on the frame, the umiak is placed out in the wind and cold, to dry. In May when the Bowhead Whales migrate eastward past Point Barrow, umiak skin boats are hauled on sleds pulled by snowmobiles out onto the ice.
Greenland 2009 30.00Kr. sg?


In the miniature sheet of Bulgaria in the right corner, you can see an Eskimo in an "umiak", you have to look careful it is a very small image.

Bulgaria 2021 0.65L sgMS?, Scott?