What's On

Join Professor Eric McVicar for a talk about his new book, which explores the history and current situations of the Sami people of the warm Arctic and the Inuit people of the cold Arctic. The author has lived and worked with both groups of people and has family history going back over a century with the Inuit of Greenland and Baffin Island. He looks at the effect of modern society and climate change on these amazing people who have for millennia lived in harmony with nature. Many of the hunting techniques described are now almost unknown among young Inuit, and the legacy that the Scottish whaling industry has left with the Inuit is clearly demonstrated in the book.

The author's Norwegian ancestry is also evident when describing the attempts at integrating the ancient ways of the Sami into modern Norwegian culture, and the book is probably the most comprehensive account of what is happening in the Arctic on both sides of the Atlantic. The book includes the verbatim account of Alex Ritchie's survival when crossing Baffin Island in the winter of 1908-1909 and is a unique first-hand account of unequalled bravery and determination almost unknown and unrecognised outside the Inuit community, despite Alex Ritchie coming from a Scottish fishing village. His rescuing of a complete Inuit community from the shipwreck of the Dundee whaling ship, Snowdrop, remains one of the greatest untold stories of the Arctic.

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Information published by Leisure and Culture Dundee.