The picture above depicts something called the yuktuktaak, or snow goggles. I encountered these reading Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage, a book derived from a Smithsonian Institution exhibit. They're a product of the Iñupiaq, an indigenous people from Northwestern Alaska.
Glare from snow or ice can be pretty blinding. The way most of us would deal with it now are with tinted goggles made from glass or plastic. But for most of history in Alaska these materials would be hard to come by or non-existent.
Thus the snow goggles are made out of wood, but have narrow slits to see out with. They allow enough vision but still block out ultraviolet radiation.
Definitely ingenious, and I imagine encountering a group of hunters all wearing these would be quite a sight.
2 comments:
Nice find. I remember reading an article about Inuit snow goggles a while back and how with wood being very scarce many were made using whale or antelope bone. It was certainly an ingenious solution to what would have been an impossible environment to move around in. You're right it would be an intimidating sight meeting up with a group of armed men wearing them.
Yeah, trees, having wood to build stuff with...that's all something we take for granted. I don't know how climate change is going to affect things, but the Arctic has always been an extreme and stark terrain. It's taken determination and creativity just to survive up there, much less to leave anything of value to future generations.
Intimidating, but more than a little cool.
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