ENGLISH TASK

Farhana husna amaliyah

165070307111022

Okay class, we’ve been talking about traditional type of shelters. About the style of houses used by
traditional people. And today , today i like to talk a bit about the homes of Enuit People, the
Eskimos, the people who live in far north in the Arctic region of north America. Now the Enuit used
to have two type of houses, summer houses and winter houses. Their summer houses were called
Tupic and they were originally made of animal skins and, later canvas. There were various types of of
winter houses, though. The inuit who lived in northern Alaska, where there was plenty of driftwood,
built their winter houses from wood they found on the shore. The Inuit who live in Labrador, thats
in North eastern Canada, now they build their winter houses from stone and earth and supported
them with whale bones. It was only in the north central part of Canada and the one place in Green
land that the Inuit build their winter houses from snow. Oh, and by the way the Inuit who live up in
Greenland in the place called Tully, they were some of the isolated people in the world until
sometime in the early 90th century in fact, they thought they were the only people in the world.
Imagine how surprised the were the first time they meet the outsiders! Anyway when the first
Canadian of european descent arrive in north of Canada and they saw these houses made of snow
they asked what they were call. The Inuit replied “Igloos” and so that what we called them now. In
english the word Igloo means a dome-shaped house made of snow. However it turns out the word
Igloo in Inuit this means house, any sort of house, the house of wood, the house of snow, whatever.
How did the Inuit make these snow houses, they used knife made of bones or ivory to cut wind
packed snow into blocks. They arranged this in circle and adding smaller and smaller blocks and
arising spiral until the dome was formed and they pack the cracks between the blocks with loose
snow a skilled Igloo builder could put up a simple Igloo with a couple of hours and you know what he
could do it in a blizzard! The Igloo was the only dome-shaped traditional housing that was build
without internal support. It didnt need any interior support because, well because it was so strong.
The bitter arctic wind caused the outside of the igloo to freeze solid. Then, the interior was set with
a seal-oil lamp. What i mean is, they used these lamps to melt a little bit of snow blocks, and then
the water refroze into ice. So you had a layer of iceon the outside of the dome and one in the inside
and like i say , it was strong. In fact, it would support the weight of a man standing on top of it. Igloos
were remarkably wam inside. I mean, givven that they were made of snow, the were surprisingly
cozy. Snow is actually a good insulator, belie it or not and it keeps the intense cold out. Igloos were
usually small enough so that body heat warmed them up pretty quickly. The Inuit slept on platforms
of packed snow covered with furs. Oh, and the entrance tunnel to the Igloo was dug out so thet it
was lower than the igloo floor, and cold air got trapped in the tunnel. Seal—oil lamps were usually
used to heat igloos, so there had to be a hole at the top of the dome to let out stale air and smoke. If
igloos were to be used for a fairly long time, they, uh, they naturally tended to be more elaborate.
Sometimes cicular walls of snow were build around igloos to shield them from the wind. Sometimes
these walls were even built into a second dome arund the first one and the layer of air between the
two domes provided even more insulation. These semi-permanent igloos had windows and skylights
made of freshwater ice or translucent seal gut. And sometimes you have cluster of igloos. They were
connected by tunnels. Sometimes five or more Inuit families lived in these clusters. And, uh,
sometimes five or more Inuit built larger snow domes that could be used more or less as uh
communit center. You know, the night are long up there in the Arctic, so they needed some
entertainment. They held dances and wrestling matches and their famous singing competition in
these larger igloos. In the early 1950’s, The Inuit began living in permanent, year-round housing.
They only used igloos when they went on overnight hunting trips. Today, they dont use these
wonderful snow-domes for shelter at all, not even as temporary housing. But, uh sometimes they’ll
build igloos for special exhibits, and sometimes you’ll see litle igloos on their yards that they build as
playhouses for their children.