Beyond the Igloo – Inuit Winter Houses
Igloo are the most famous of the Inuit designs, but they weren’t the universal winter house. Most winter houses were quite sturdy, and less melty when the summer came. Winter houses were framed with wood, whale bones, or any reasonable material they could find, and insulated with sod. In an Arctic winter, it is vital to keep the living space warm. Inuit builders were expert at this. The main entrance wasn’t a basic door, it was a tunnel. Entry points would be far away from the living space to keep the coldest air out. It meant that people might have to crawl through the tunnel, but that was preferable to letting subzero temps creep inside. There were compromises to the “keep the cold out” philosophy, though. Winter houses had ventilation holes, because even the little bit of cold seeping in was preferable to dying of smoke inhalation.