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Fun and Games in the Arctic

Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum & Arctic Studies Center Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum & Arctic Studies Center

Dates:

Location:

Hubbard Hall foyer
Communities all over the world love games, and the people of the Arctic, and the Arctic Museum staff, are no exceptions.

As the culmination of a summer working intensively with the museum’s collection, we challenged student interns Chapman Odlum ’22 and Alex Spear ’24 with developing an exhibit focusing on the playful side of life in the North. Fun and Games in the Arctic is their look at the ancient and modern games enjoyed by Inuit children and adults.

In the Arctic, games often incorporate skills such as strength, agility, endurance, and dexterity used by people who make a living from the land and sea. Other games are just plain fun! Today, Inuit play traditional games as well as some brought to the Arctic by Western explorers, whalers, missionaries, and traders, including card games, cribbage, and ice hockey.

Selected Works

Inuit men playing rugby.

Donald B. MacMillan, Rugby at Umanak, NW Greenland, 1913-1917. Digital print from gelatin silver glass lantern slide. Gift of Donald and Miriam MacMillan.

Hands holding string playing string games.
Donald B. MacMillan, Cat’s Cradle - Whale, Etah, NW Greenland, June 1916. Digital print from gelatin silver glass lantern slide. Gift of Donald and Miriam MacMillan.
Engraved cribbage board.

Unidentified Iñupiat artist, Engraved Cribbage Board, Alaska, early 20th century. Walrus ivory and pigment. Gift of Barbara Lipton.

Inuit doll in skin parka.

Unidentified Inuit artist, Doll, Woman in Skin Parka, Brewster Point, Nunavut, before 1937. Wood, sealskin, and glass beads. Gift of John H. Halford.