A Comparison of Historical and Contemporary Skin Clothing Used in North Greenland: An Ethnohistorical Approach

• Published in: Clothing and Textiles Research Journal
• Main Authors: Oakes, Jill, Riewe, Rick
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publications 1992
• Subjects: Polymers and Plastics; General Business, Management and Accounting; Materials Science (miscellaneous); Business, Management and Accounting (miscellaneous); Arctic; Greenland; Qaanaaq; North Greenland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0887302x9201000310; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0887302X9201000310

Seamstresses played an integral part in the success of northern hunting and gathering lifestyles by providing functional clothing. Traditional clothing provided more than protection from the harsh arctic environment. It also communicated group identity, gender, age, and status. Changing lifestyles and the availability of new materials altered the procedures used to create traditional clothing styles. The purpose of this paper is to identify environmental, cultural, religious, and political factors influencing temporal variations in skin clothing production techniques used by seamstresses in highly traditional societies. Data was collected using participant-observation and attribute analysis in Qaanaaq, Greenland Cultural, economic, religious, environmental, and political factors influencing changes in style features, construction techniques, and materials used in traditional ensembles are discussed.