The Inuit Way

The Inuit Way is a mesmerising take on polar travel by explorer and award-winning researcher Edward Cooper. 

About The Inuit Way

This is a gripping account of the author’s travels across northwest Greenland, where he spent several months living and hunting with the Inuit. From there, Cooper and teammate venture across the sea ice on to the Canadian Arctic islands. Here, Cooper’s quest is to track down a note left by David Haig-Thomas, a British Arctic explorer, nearly a hundred years previously.

Suffering from snow blindness and frostbite, fighting off hungry polar bears, surrounded by the white wolves of Ellesmere Island, Edward Cooper and his teammate, who was suffering from snow blindness and frostbite, discover a land steeped in culture and history.

Part travelogue, part adventure and part history, this is a thrilling polar travel narrative that offers insights into the people that live in the Arctic year-round.

• Meet Mikael, a young Inuit hunter who sleeps in a small tent on the sea ice, and fishes for halibut during the winter months
• Join Cooper in watching Inuit hunters coach crack teams of dogs across the ice in the year’s first dog race
• Get to know a former Danish drug smuggler turned hunter.
• Experience the realities of Arctic life – drinking water carved from icebergs by giant trucks, and the constraints imposed on sanitation by permafrost and freezing temperatures
• And journey with Cooper on a life-endangering expedition, where he falls through a crack in the ice into icy waters while watching his teammate continue onwards, oblivious to danger

Reflecting on his experience, Cooper appraises Haig-Thomas’s legacy from his time in Greenland, and considers how life has evolved for Inuit families across the following century. Above all, Cooper sensitively discusses Greenland as a litmus test for a world that is evolving geopolitically and through climate change.

The Inuit Way is a fascinating Greenland travel narrative that will be enjoyed by intrepid travellers, adventure junkies, polar enthusiasts, and armchair or real-life explorers as well as people interested in the environment, fishing or indigenous communities.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1 Lost
CHAPTER 2 Haig-Thomas and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago
CHAPTER 3 The Place of a Thousand Icebergs – Ilulissat
CHAPTER 4 The New Thule – Qaanaaq
CHAPTER 5 Star Stones – Qaanaaq
CHAPTER 6 Back to the Drawing Board – London
CHAPTER 7 Into the Cold – Qaanaaq
CHAPTER 8 The First Sunrise – Qaanaaq
CHAPTER 9 The Coldest Catch – Qaanaaq
CHAPTER 10 A New Arrival – Qaanaaq
CHAPTER 11 Freezing Cold in Qeqertarsuaq
CHAPTER 12 The Old Hunter
CHAPTER 13 Playing the Walrus
CHAPTER 14 A Final Challenge – Bowdoin Fjord
CHAPTER 15 Green for Go – Resolute Bay
CHAPTER 16 Eureka! – Ellesmere Island
CHAPTER 17 Cold – Eureka Sound
CHAPTER 18 Bears – Axel Heiberg
CHAPTER 19 Accept and Adapt – Axel Heiberg
CHAPTER 20 The Final Push – Haig-Thomas Island
CHAPTER 21 The Journey Back – London

About the author

Edward Cooper is an award-winning researcher who holds a Masters in International Relations from the University of Cambridge. After working as a paramedic in South African townships and kayaking across the North Sea, he joined Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ team on the ‘Coldest Journey’ expedition to Antarctica then led the Haig-Thomas expedition in 2015. Cooper has served as a reservist with the Honourable Artillery Company and worked as a consultant to films about remote places. He sits on the board of the Scientific Exploration Society, which supports the next generation of explorers. He has travelled and worked extensively across the world including in the Arctic, Antarctic, South America, Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He has written extensively about his travels, including several articles on the Arctic in The Telegraph. The Inuit Way is Cooper’s first book.