Listening Script

Listen to a lecture in an anthropology class.

Okay, class, we’ve been talking about traditional types of shelters about the style
of houses used by traditional people. And today, today I’d like to talk a bit about
the home of the inuit people, the Eskimos, the people who lived in the far north in
the Artic region of North America. Now, all the inuit used to have two types 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tupic, and they were originally made of animal skins and later, canvas.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 winter houses, though. The inuit who lived in northern Alaska
where there was plenty of ....., built their winter houses from wood they found on
the shore. The inuit who lived in Labrador, that’s in Northeastern Canada, now
they built their winter houses from stone and earth and supported them with
whalebones. It was only in the north central part of Canada and in one place in
Greenland that the inuit built their winter houses from snow. Oh, and by the way,
the inuit who lived up in Greenland in a place called ........ they were some of the
most isolated people in the world. Until sometime in the 19th century, in fact they
thought they were the only people in the world. Imagine how surprised they were
when the first met outsiders. Anyway, when the first Canadian of European decide
arrived in northern Canada, and they saw these houses made of snow, they asked
what they were called. The inuit replied, eglus, and so that’s what we call them
now. In English, the word eglus means a dome-shaped house made of snow.
However, it turns out the word eglu in inuit just means house, any sort of house, a
house of wood, a house of snow, whatever. How did the inuit make these snow
houses? They used knives made of bone or ..... to cut wind-packed snow into
blocks. They arranged these in a circle and then ...... smaller and smaller blocks in
a rising spiral until a dome was formed. Then they pack the cracks between the
blocks with loose snow. A skill eglus builder could .....a simple eglus ....... in a
couple of hours, and you know what? They could do it in a blizzard. The eglu was
the only dome-shaped traditional housing that was built without internal support.
It didn’t need any interior support because, well, because it was so strong. The .....
Artic wind caused the outside of the eglu to freeze solid. Then, the interoir was set
with a seal oil lamp. What I mean is, they used these lamps to melt a little bit of
the snow blocks, and then the water refroze into ice. So you had a layer of ice on
the outside of the dome and one on the inside, and like I say it was strong. In fact,
it would support the way of a man standing on top of it. Eglus were remarkably
warm inside. I mean, given that they were made of snow, they were surprisingly
cozy. Snow is actually a good insulator, believe it or not and it keeps the intense
cold out. Eglus were usually small ...... heat warmed them up pretty quickly. The
inuit slept on paltforms of packed snow covered with ... Oh and the entrance
tunnel to the eglus was .... out so that it was lower than the eglus floor and cold air
got trapped in the tunnel. Seal oil lamp were usually used to heat eglus so
there ....... at the top of the dome ....... smoke. If eglus were to be used for a fairly
long time, they, u, they naturally tended to be more elaborate. Sometimes circular
walls of snow were built around eglus to shield them from the wind. Sometimes
these walls were even built into a second dome around the first one and the layer
of air between two domes provided even more insulation. These semi-permanent
eglus had windows and skylights made of freshwater ice or ..... And sometimes
you’d have clusters of eglus. They were connected by tunnels. Sometimes five or
more inuit families lived in these clusters. And, u, sometimes the inuit built larger
snow domes that could be used more or less as, u, community centers. You know,
the night are long up there in the Artic, so they needed some entertaintment. They
held dance and wrestling macthes and their famous singing competition in these
larger eglus. In the early 1950’s the inuit began living in permanent year round
housing. They only used eglus when they went on overnight hunting trips. Today,
they don’t use these wonderful snow-domes for shelter at all, not even as
temporary housing. But, u, sometimes they’ll build eglus for special exhibits and
sometime you’ll see little eglus in their yard that they build as playhouses for their
children.s