Imagine trying to survive a winter at Radstock Bay on Devon Island. For months the temperature remains far below freezing. The sea freezes. The sun sinks below the horizon and eventually does not rise at all. There are no trees for building houses, almost no wood for fuel and certainly no possibility of agriculture.
And yet people did not simply survive here. They built homes, raised families, hunted, travelled enormous distances and developed one of the most sophisticated cold-climate cultures the world has ever known.
Having now visited Radstock Bay myself, that story feels considerably more real. We arrived on a cold, beautifully clear day, with the great cliffs of Caswall Tower rising above the bay. After some of the fog and poor visibility we had experienced elsewhere in the Canadian Arctic, it was wonderful simply to be able to see properly. Better still, conditions were good enough to launch the sea kayaks.
We managed about an hour on the water, paddling beneath the cliffs and along the coast. The water was incredibly cold, but extraordinarily clear. Looking over the side of the kayak, we could see down perhaps 20 metres into the Arctic sea below us. There is something slightly unnerving about paddling in water that transparent. Instead of the surface hiding what lies beneath, it feels almost as though the kayak is suspended above another landscape.
Swimming in that clear water were tiny sea angels, only around four millimetres across. These extraordinary little creatures are pelagic sea snails, related to the better-known sea butterflies, but without a shell as adults. Their modified “feet” have evolved into wing-like structures which they flap through the water, giving them their wonderfully appropriate name. Watching something so tiny swimming beside a sea kayak while surrounded by the enormous landscape of Devon Island was one of those lovely Arctic contrasts: everything from microscopic marine life to towering cliffs existing within the same scene.
There was plenty of birdlife too. Black guillemots were flying backwards and forwards from the cliffs, while phalaropes and kittiwakes sat on the surface of the water. By late August the short Arctic breeding season is already drawing rapidly towards its conclusion. Birds that arrived in spring to take advantage of the explosion of summer productivity are beginning to gather, disperse and prepare for migration. The Arctic summer is astonishingly productive, but it is also astonishingly brief.
It was a wonderful paddle in its own right, but Radstock Bay has another significance that makes arriving by kayak particularly appropriate. People were paddling these waters long before us. After our sea kayak session, we returned to the ship and then headed ashore by Zodiac. From the present shoreline we walked roughly 500 metres inland across the raised beach towards the remains of an ancient Thule winter camp beneath Caswall Tower.
That walk tells an extraordinary geological story before you even reach the archaeology. Around a thousand years ago, when people were living here, the shoreline was much closer to their houses. Today those remains are around half a kilometre from the sea. The reason is isostatic uplift. During the last Ice Age, the enormous weight of ice pushed the Earth’s crust downwards. Once the glaciers retreated and that weight was removed, the land slowly began to rebound. It is still rising today.
The result is a landscape of raised beaches, with old shorelines stranded progressively higher and farther inland. We were effectively walking from the modern coast back through former coastlines towards a place where people once built their homes beside the sea. And beneath the huge cliffs of Caswall Tower, the remains are still there. At first glance the archaeological site is not particularly dramatic. There are no reconstructed houses, standing walls or towering ruins. Instead there are depressions in the ground, arrangements of stones and pieces of enormous bowhead whale bone scattered amongst the tundra.
But once you know what you are looking at, houses begin to emerge from the landscape. These were winter homes, some associated with Thule Inuit occupation roughly between AD 1200 and 1400, although people continued to use this part of the Arctic long afterwards. Modern Inuit are the direct descendants of the Thule people, and sites such as Radstock Bay form part of a much larger living cultural history across the Canadian Arctic.
Standing there, one question becomes unavoidable. How did people live here through an Arctic winter? One of the first problems is obvious: what do you build a house with when there are virtually no trees? Thule people solved that problem by using the materials available to them. Houses could be partly excavated into the ground, providing protection from the wind and helping with insulation. Walls incorporated stone and turf, while the enormous bones of bowhead whales could become structural materials. Jawbones, ribs and other large bones could help support roofs covered with skins, turf and insulating material. These were not crude emergency shelters created by people barely clinging to survival. They were carefully designed homes developed by communities that understood exactly how to live in this environment.
The whale bones lying around the site also tell another important part of the story. Bowhead whales were enormously valuable to Arctic communities. A single animal could provide a huge quantity of meat and blubber, while baleen and bone could be turned into tools, equipment and building materials. Very little needed to be wasted.
Hunting an animal weighing tens of tonnes from small skin-covered boats required extraordinary skill, organisation and knowledge. Whale hunting was a communal activity, and a successful hunt could provide resources for many people. The ability to exploit bowhead whales was one of the important features associated with the expansion of Thule culture eastwards across the Canadian Arctic around a thousand years ago.
For me, however, there is another aspect of the story that makes Radstock Bay particularly special. The Thule were kayakers. Our modern sea kayaks may be built from composite materials or plastic, and we paddle wearing modern drysuits while carrying radios and other safety equipment, but the fundamental concept of the kayak was developed by Arctic Indigenous peoples.
The qajaq was not designed for recreation. It was a sophisticated hunting craft. A lightweight framework, traditionally constructed using whatever wood and bone were available, was covered with tightly stretched animal skins. The paddler sat low inside the boat, with clothing that could be secured around the cockpit. Different regions developed different qajaq designs according to local sea conditions, wildlife and hunting techniques.
These were working boats designed to allow hunters to approach seals and other marine animals quietly and efficiently. Thule communities also used much larger open skin boats, usually known as umiaqs, capable of transporting families, equipment and hunting parties. Combined with dog sleds, these boats created an extraordinary transport system that allowed people to move across an environment European visitors would later describe as almost impassable. That is something worth remembering when we arrive in the Arctic carrying sea kayaks. Kayaking isn’t something outsiders brought to the Arctic. The Arctic gave kayaking to us.
The technology needed to survive here extended far beyond boats and houses. Clothing was critical. Carefully made animal-skin clothing provided remarkable insulation. Caribou fur, with its hollow hairs trapping air, is extraordinarily effective in extreme cold, while sealskins could provide durable and water-resistant clothing and footwear.
Food was equally important. A diet based heavily upon marine mammals, fish and other Arctic animals provided the energy and nutrients necessary for life in an environment where maintaining body temperature requires enormous amounts of energy.
But perhaps most important of all was knowledge. You needed to know where seals would appear, when whales would migrate, where the sea ice was safe and where it was dangerous. You needed to understand weather, currents, animal movements and seasonal changes. You needed to know when birds would return, where caribou might travel and how conditions could change from one year to the next. That knowledge was accumulated, tested and passed between generations.
The geography of the Arctic also looks very different when viewed through that knowledge. On a conventional map, the Canadian Arctic appears fragmented into islands separated by enormous stretches of sea. From a southern or European perspective, the water appears to divide the land. For Inuit, it could also connect it. In summer, qajaqs and umiaqs travelled across open water. In winter, that same sea became ice and provided a travelling surface for people and dog teams. Communities could move enormous distances according to seasons and the availability of wildlife.
Radstock Bay therefore should not be imagined as an isolated settlement at the end of the world. It was one part of a much larger cultural landscape known and travelled by people who understood this enormous region intimately. And that makes its proximity to Beechey Island particularly fascinating. At Beechey Island we encounter the story of Sir John Franklin and the winter of 1845–46, when HMS Erebus and HMS Terror overwintered during their doomed attempt to navigate the Northwest Passage. Three members of the expedition died there. The ships subsequently became trapped farther south, were abandoned, and eventually all 129 members of the expedition were lost.
For generations, the Franklin story dominated British and European accounts of this part of the Arctic. But travel a relatively short distance to Radstock Bay and another story becomes visible. People had already been successfully living in this environment for centuries.
That does not mean life was easy. Arctic communities experienced periods of scarcity, dangerous hunting conditions, severe weather and enormous environmental change. But their technology, clothing, transport systems, food and accumulated knowledge had evolved specifically for the environment in which they lived.
The comparison with Franklin is difficult to ignore. Franklin arrived with two of the most technologically advanced expedition ships Victorian Britain could produce: strengthened hulls, steam engines, heating systems, scientific instruments and thousands of tins of preserved food. The Thule arrived with skin boats, sledges, dogs, animal-skin clothing and generations of Arctic knowledge. Which represented the more sophisticated technology depended entirely upon the environment in which you needed to survive.
The wildlife that supported people here has not disappeared either. The waters around Devon Island and Lancaster Sound – Tallurutiup Imanga – remain extraordinarily productive. During our time in the area we saw large numbers of harp seals and also watched a single beluga moving through the surrounding waters.
The birds were equally noticeable from the kayak, particularly the black guillemots around the cliffs and the phalaropes and kittiwakes resting on the water. And wherever there are seals in the Canadian High Arctic, there is always the possibility of polar bears. That means landing at somewhere such as Radstock Bay requires us to look at the landscape in several different ways at once. We are looking for wildlife, scanning beaches and slopes for bears, watching the weather and sea conditions, but also trying to recognise the subtle traces of human history beneath our feet.
Those traces are extremely fragile. A piece of whale bone may have remained where we see it for hundreds of years. A shallow depression may be someone’s former home. An apparently insignificant arrangement of stones could be a food cache, tent ring or another archaeological feature. They are not simply interesting objects scattered across the tundra. They are archaeological evidence and part of Inuit cultural heritage.
So the principle when visiting is simple: look, photograph and leave everything exactly where it is. Bones should not be moved for photographs, stones should not be rearranged and artefacts should never be picked up or removed. Something that has survived a thousand Arctic winters can still be damaged by one careless visitor. Walking amongst those remains after paddling the bay made Radstock particularly memorable for me.
Only a short time earlier I had been sitting in a modern sea kayak on incredibly clear Arctic water, watching sea angels swimming beneath the boat and black guillemots flying from the cliffs. I had a drysuit, modern paddle, buoyancy aid and safety equipment. There was a Zodiac nearby and, beyond that, an expedition ship with warmth, food, communications and medical facilities.
That is why Radstock Bay and Beechey Island make such fascinating companions when travelling through the Northwest Passage. At Beechey we see the enormous effort Victorian Britain made to explore and ultimately try to conquer the Arctic: steam engines, strengthened ships, preserved food, Royal Navy discipline and scientific equipment.
At Radstock Bay we encounter another approach: skin boats, whalebone houses, animal-skin clothing, dog teams, seasonal movement and generations of accumulated knowledge. It would be completely wrong to describe one as technological and the other as primitive. Both involved sophisticated technology. The crucial difference was that one had evolved specifically for life in the Arctic. Perhaps that is what I will remember most from Radstock Bay.
The cold, clear water. Looking down perhaps 20 metres beneath my kayak. Tiny sea angels swimming alongside us. Black guillemots against the cliffs and phalaropes resting on the sea. The immense presence of Caswall Tower above us. And then stepping ashore and walking half a kilometre across a beach that did not exist when people were living here a thousand years ago. At the end of that walk were the remains of houses built from stone, turf and the bones of whales by people who understood this landscape in ways that we can only begin to appreciate. Radstock Bay isn’t simply an archaeological stop on a journey through the Northwest Passage. It is evidence of something much more impressive. People didn’t merely survive in the High Arctic. They made it home.
Why not take the opportunity to read our other blogs about Nunavut and the Canadian arctic;
- Beechey Island: Polar Bears, Franklin and Three Graves Beside the Sea
- Kayaking with Arctic Wildlife: Staying Safe Around Polar Bears, Walrus and Whales
- Croker Bay: Paddling Beneath the Glaciers of Devon Island
- Dundas Harbour: Ghosts in the Fog on Devon Island
- Duart Bay: Sea Kayaking into a Scottish Corner of Baffin Island
- Isabella Bay: In the Realm of the Bowhead Whale
- Qikiqtarjuaq: Gateway to the Wild Mountains of Baffin Island
- Port Leopold: Paddling Through the Search for Franklin
- Prince Leopold Island: Paddling Beneath a City of Seabirds