An Arctic connection

The north-east of Scotland has a long association with the Arctic. Back in the 1800s Peterhead, a fishing town 20 miles to the north of Newburgh, was a main player in the Greenland whale fishery. 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 black steatite carving of an Inuit man from my own collection is the work of Barnabus Arnasungaaq (1924- ) from Baker Lake, Nunavut Territory, Canada. As one of the eldest of the original group of carvers still working in Baker Lake, Barnabus' work has been an influence in his community and on the art of the area for five decades.