Thule Harpoon - Who were the Thule?

I'm working on a Thule harpoon this week. The Thule were the ancestors of the Inuit and they moved rapidly into the Eastern Arctic from the west in the 12th or 13th century AD. The culture and technology they brought with them was unlike anything before them. Bob McGhee makes some good arguments that they were drawn eastward rapidly and suddenly by the opportunity to trade with the Norse in Greenland. The Norse wanted furs and ivory which the Thule could supply in abundance in exchange for much coveted iron, copper, and bronze.

I have a personal and professional interest in the Palaeoeskimo -- the people the Inuit call "Tunit" -- who lived in the Arctic before the Thule Migration, but I love the opportunity to work on Thule reproductions as well. They moved eastward during a slightly warmer time in the Arctic and much of their technology is dedicated to open water sea mammal hunting of everything from seals and walrus all the way up to Bowhead whales. They brought marvellous new machines with them, including large and small boats (Umiaks and Kayaks), bows and arrows, snow houses, bow drills, dogs and sleds, and range of fantastically intricate harpoons for every situation.

The harpoon that I'll be working on is based on ethnographic and archaeological examples from Labrador. Similar styles were found throughout the Arctic and I do go to Baffin Island and Greenland resources to help fill in the blanks. I'll talk more about what makes these harpoons such unique and interesting machines as I work on the current reproduction. In the meantime, here's a peak at one I did in 2006 for the Gateway to Labrador Visitor Centre in L'Anse au Clair.

There is a lot of Thule and Inuit archaeology being done in Labrador these days by researchers at Memorial University of Newfoundland. You can read more about the Arctic, Thule, and Tunit in these books by Canadian Archaeologist Bob McGhee:

The Last Imaginary Place, 2005
The Ancient People of the Arctic, 1996

Photo Credits:
First-Fifth: Tim Rast
Sixth: Lori White

Photo Captions:
First: Thule House at Radstock Bay, 2008
Second: Elder Jamesie Mike explaining the house to Adventure Canada passengers.
Third: Elfshot Thule reproduction whalebone snow knife. This knife is based on Labrador examples and is in use by interpreters at The Rooms.
Fourth: Elfshot Thule reproductions, slate ulu and bone needle on permanent exhibit at the Gateway to Labrador in L'Anse au Clair.
Fifth: Elfshot Thule Harpoon reproduction. Composite photo of harpoon on permanent exhibit at the Gateway to Labrador in L'Anse au Clair.
Sixth: Photographing a house floor at Snack Cove, Labrador, 2003.

Digging Out

Its a digging out day in St. John's. We had our first big snowfall of the season with 38 cm blowing in and sticking around. That's a short cubit, if you are reading somewhere without the metric system. We've got the car to free and a path to the workshop to dig out. Compared to lots of people we don't have a big area to shovel, so I really can't complain too much, and until the winter storm season leaves in the spring we'll be defending our parking space and the workshop path against infilling.

The truth is I find the winter shovelling season kind of enjoyable. I've decided to let heavy snow shovelling days count against running days this winter. I've switched to the treadmill entirely now, but the novelty has lost lots of its shine. Shovelling seems much more like exercise than mowing the lawn and I really like the strategy of it all. Planning out the piles of snow is just the tip of the iceberg. There is the psychological warfare that goes on up and down the street as everyone with on street parking defends their territory. Establishing your parking space early and maintaining it throughout the winter is as necessary for on street parkers as scratching open a breathing hole is for seals. People looking for a parking space will tend to avoid a well cared for and maintained parking spot because its an obvious sign that someone is using that space. Its like smelling another dog's yellow snow.

But its not an entirely defensive strategy - there is plenty of room for diplomacy and a carefully executed preemptive shovelling of a neighbor's sidewalk can establish an important ally and get them on your side early in the battle. Which is especially useful later in the season when you need them to stop the surly teenager in their family from shovelling their snow into your space!

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top: Looking out the front door
Middle: Looking out the back window
Bottom: Halfway up the mother-in-law door already!

Farm Craft - Braiding

I'm back home from my trip to Alberta and Saskatchewan. I'm just trying to get back into some kind of routine again before Christmas. I have a few orders to work on and clients and potential clients to contact from my days off. I've promised to send pictures back to family from the trip and need to organize all my trip pictures while they are still fresh in my memory.

Growing up on the farm I can remember my dad working with his hands every day. Welding, fencing, carpentry, feeding the animals, working on machinery, etc. I can remember my dad in his shop taking the loose binder twine that came off the hay bales left over from feeding the cattle and braiding them into ropes. He showed me how to braid a loop in one end and how to add new strands into the braid to keep it going forever. In the end, these big ropes would go on my swingset and I would climb and swing on them for hours. Here's the most recent binder twine rope, with a tire swing for the grandkids. He taught me simple three strand braids and I'd practice on anything - horse's manes, shoe laces, twizzlers and I still use that same braid in my work when I braid a looped sinew line for a harpoon.

On the most recent trip, I brought back this riding bridle and reins that my dad made decades ago from recycled electrical wire. Its flat braided from pairs of wire in 3 strand and 4 strand braids. There were some loose ends on it when I found it hanging in the horse barn, so dad spent an hour the night before I flew home working on it, weaving the wire back in on itself and adding a missing ring. You can see some of the loose ends around the bit in the standing photo, but its very neatly finished now.

Although Dad stressed that it was only repaired for display, not for riding. Which shouldn't be a problem, I love having something that my dad crafted with his own hands on display in my home.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Caption:
First: Dad making some last minute repairs to the bridle before I fly back to Newfoundland in the morning.
Second: A tire swing with braided twine rope for the grandkids.
Third: Dad holding the bridle and reins he braided out of recycled electrical wire.
Fourth: Detail of the reins attached to the bit.
Fifth: Detail of the bridle

Notes from Alberta

Today is a travel day back from Alberta to Newfoundland. Actually, most of this trip has been travelling. Lately, when I've visited the farm that I grew up on near Vulcan, Alberta, my dad gets nostalgic for Saskatchewan. So we made a four day trip to visit his childhood home near Eatonia, Saskatchewan and then family in Regina and Weyburn. Between last Thursday and Sunday we drove 1937 km from Alberta to Saskatchewan and back again.

Dad grew up near a small town called Eatonia and I can remember visiting my grandma and grandpa Rast in their little house in town, before grandpa moved into a nursing home in Kindersley in 1985. I have some vague memories of visiting the old farm, where dad lived from 1937 until he left home at the age of 17 in 1949, but this trip was the first time I visited the farm as an adult. I was surprised by how much of farm remains, although dad was pretty disappointed by the rough shape of the house he grew up in. No one has lived there since 1965, so 45 years of abandonment has shown itself in broken windows, water damage, nesting pigeons and random vandalism. Nevertheless, I have lots of photos and some good video of dad touring through the house and the outbuildings.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top: Dad standing in a field near Eatonia , SK. At this spot, his mother and 3 small children spent their first winter in Canada (1929) living in a granary, piled with snow on the outside for insulation.
Bottom: Sunset at the Rast Farm at Eatonia, Saskatchewan. This was the family home from 1937-1965.

Harpoon and Ballistics Gel Outtakes

On the last two tests of the harpoon and gel, Lori and I took over 500 photos and videos. Many of those were action shots with 20 or 30 images making up a second or two of movement. Here's some that show things going wrong or almost working, like this mostly toggled harpoon head.

The video above is the closest we have to a showing a toggling harpoon head toggling. By this time in the experiments the gel had been stabbed 5 or 6 times and there was a pretty well defined channel running down the middle. The skin layer had also seperated and the entry hole had stretched, so the harpoon head started to back out of the hole while it was toggling. Then the camera stopped recording. In the end, the harpoon head did stay lodged, caught on one of the basal barbs and partially toggling beneath the skin.



This video illustrates two of the biggest problems with the current set-up; the wobbly target and my lousy aim. I like the size of the two litre pop bottle mold because it gives enough room for the harpoon heads to operate, but its a little too tall and skinny and is easy to knock off balance when my aim is perfectly perpendicular to the target surface. Something the size of an ice cream bucket might be more stable, but the gelatin gets opaque so fast that I think a lot of the interesting detail would be much less visible on the surface of a bigger block of gelatin. One idea to cut down on the wobble would be to find a more sturdy pop bottle sized clear container to build the model in. To help with the aiming, it might be necessary to use some sort of drill-press aparatus to guide the harpoon. That seems like less fun to me though.

Photo Credits: Lori White

Photo Captions:
Top Photo: Badly toggled harpoon head, which partially worked its way out the entry hole.
Top Video: The test strike that created the poorly toggled harpoon head in the top photo.
Bottom Video: A failed attempt with the barbed harpoon, bending and dislodging the harpoon head after breaking through the skin.

Elfshot Reproductions at the Rooms

When I dropped off the gift shop order at The Rooms on Sunday, Lori and I toured through the art gallery and museum. I snapped a couple photos of past work that is on display in the Museum.



I did these 3 Palaeoindian points to help illustrate the movement of the first people north into Newfoundland and Labrador.


This is a soapstone pot sitting on a lamp stand with a smaller soapstone lamp beneath it. I made this a few years ago for a different part of The Rooms, so it was a nice surprise to see that it had found its way into an exhibit space.

Hafted Necklaces

I'm off to Alberta to visit my dad and stepmom for a few days. I set up a few pre-scheduled posts to feed to the blog while I'm away. If I'm able to make updates while I'm at the farm, I will, but if not, I've got a few short photo based posts ready to go. Here's a look at the hafted point necklaces that I showed on the stalk last Friday. Now that I have a good recipe for a durable red ochre paint, I'm thinking about introducing hafted Beothuk style points as a new product for the wholesale season next spring. Imagine these, but done in local Newfoundland chert and stained with red ochre.

Hafted Necklaces (Obsidian, Wood, Artificial Sinew, Epoxy, leather cord) : $28.75 tax inc.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions: Hafted Obsidian Necklaces