We’re lucky to be right on the fabled Northwest Passage. As I write this blog, the ice at Arctic Watch is melting, and the Arctic is beginning to emerge out of winter – spring is on the horizon. The polar bears have had their young, the foxes are busy scavenging, and the historical sites are slowly beginning to emerge from the snow.

The surroundings of Arctic Watch Safari Lodge has countless untouched archeological and historical remains. The Thule people – ancestors to modern day Inuit, lived along the shores of the Northwest Passage. As a marine people, they lived primarily off bowhead whale. (Bowhead Whales, fully grown, are nearly 20 meters in length!)

The Thule people are thought to have existed from 1000 to around 1600 A.D. Upon the arrival of the “small ice-age” (1650 – 1850 A.D), the traditional hunting grounds; polynyas (bodies of open water that did not freeze during the arctic winter) froze and the Thule people began to hunt new sources of food, such as seal, caribou and muskox; effectively transforming into today’s modern inuit.

Many of these prehistoric people built their camps near present day Arctic Watch! These sites, some with stone walls as high as four feet, and tunnels connecting, have never been excavated nor touched. The majority of these sites date at around 1100 – 1300 A.D. These sites offer stunning insight into the history of the Arctic. Many of these sites are littered with bones, and small artifacts. We have even spotted slate knife blades and chiseled bones (resembling prehistoric sleds runners!). Untouched, unspoiled and overgrown with moss, these beautiful sites dot the north coast of Somerset Island.

The majority of these sites, have a stone ring, with tunnels connecting each ring. Each stone ring has a raised stone platform, where the inhabitants would sleep. These stone rings were typically built up with a stone wall around. Whale bones were used as a frame, where a skin “tent” stretched over the bones and the stone wall, effectively creating a rustic house from which the inhabitants could hide from the weather!