page_title: Qamutiik
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Qamutiik / Design
caption_attribution_description: Plate from a publication of the first IPY (International Polar Year, 1882-1883) - see report for download: http://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.30055.d001
context_page_description: A qamutiik is a sled designed to travel on snow and ice, built using traditional Inuit design techniques. Adapted to the arctic sea ice environment, such sleds are still widely used in the 21st century for travel in Arctic regions.
context_section_description: The key feature of the qamutiik is that it is not built with nails or pins to hold the runners and cross pieces in place. Each piece is drilled and lashed to the next, providing a flexibility of movement that can endure the pounding of travel on open sea ice, frozen land, ice floes, and across the heavy ice of tidal zones.
  The cross pieces are called napooks. Each napook is notched near the ends to take a lashing which is passed through holes drilled through the runners. The first and last napooks are lashed individually to the runners, using a more secure knot using two holes in the runners. For the central napooks, there is a single hole in the runner for each napook and all of the central napooks are lashed in one continuous lashing along each side. The method of lashing forms a self-locking knot. In the early 21st century, the napooks are ideally made of hardwoods such as oak or walnut.
  Archival materials and the stories of elders show that the people in areas without access to wood for runners used frozen fish wrapped in skins as runners. Moss and ice were used on the bottom of the runner to reduce drag. In the 21st century wooden runners are universal, using usually either spruce or plywood, typically with a layer of polyurethane or nylon to reduce drag.
  British and American diaries and accounts from the 1800 and early 1900s tell how their explorers, determined to use conventional sleds, found that the pounding of the sea-ice jolted the sleds so that nails were expelled, and the sled fell to pieces within several miles of their start point. They adopted Inuit-style sleds.
caption: A qamutiik with napooks lashed directly to the runners
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