A lady from the far North

Lovely "Spring" day here today. Sadly, I couldn't get out to enjoy it having pulled a calf muscle whilst falling over the cat on the stairs. The cat is unscathed, you'll be pleased to know. Anyway, as a result today's blip is, yet again, an indoors one.

The north-east of Scotland has a long association with the Arctic. Back in the 1800s Aberdeen, Peterhead and Dundee were main players in the Greenland whale fishery. The blubber was boiled to make whale oil which was used for a variety of purposes including lighting, making soap, and the manufacture of jute. The baleen, or whalebone was the plastic of its age and used to make many objects, but in particular corset stays. With their help fashionable women could achieve a 14 inch waist! If you find this interesting then you might want to take a look at my whaling website.

The Scots whalers brought back many mementoes of their travels to those frozen lands, including carvings made by the Inuit people. Starting in the 1950s the Inuit of northern Canada started to produce carvings for sale to tourists and to collectors. This stone carving probably dates from the early 1950s and comes from Baffin Island.