All you need for hunting seals

A cold, dark, damp day here Up North has put me in mind of even colder, darker places. I bring you, some Inuit hunting weaponry from the Arctic.

The three objects at the top are blades made by rubbing slate to produce a sharp edge. The one to the left is a broken blade for a lance and would have been used to kill a seal, walrus or small whale once it had been harpooned. The other two are harpoon end blades for a slotted toggle harpoon head. All three pieces are from the Punuk Eskimo period, 500-1200 AD, and were excavated at Ivetok on St Lawrence Island. Alaska.

At the bottom is the head of a toggle harpoon made from Walrus ivory and fitted with an iron blade. When it was made the Inuit would have had no contact with outsiders and the iron is either from a meteorite or from Disco Bay in Greenland, the only known, major deposit of native iron metal in the world.