Gísli Pálsson, "Hot Bodies in Cold Zones: Arctic Exploration"
(page 6 of 7)

"Accelerated Metabolism"

An early article by Stefansson—"Temperature Factor in Determining the Age of Maturity Among the Eskimos" (1920), a "bizarre" article, in Vanast's view (2007: 109, N.13)—may provide important clues about his troubled relation to intimacy. While Stefansson's article has the appearance of a scientific discussion of the factors affecting maturity and the problems of evidence, there may be a personal undertone relating to his own involvement with the Inuit. It is worth citing Stefansson at some length.

For one thing, Stefansson observes that "it is seldom possible to get a reliable estimate of how old a person is unless his birth can be checked up by comparison with some known visit of an explorer or whaling vessel or some event of that sort" (1920: 669). The Inuit themselves, he suggests, do not take any interest in their own age and, as a result, the only reliable records are those assembled by missionaries. He adds, though, that he himself has "had a chance to observe a considerable number of Eskimos through a period of ten years, and in many cases . . . it has been possible to check up the age correctly . . ." (1920: 669).

Having outlined the problems of ascertaining age, Stefansson goes on to explore women's reproduction: it is "not rare among Eskimo women that they have their first child at the age of 12; and children born before the mothers were 11 have been recorded in places where the age of the mother can be in no doubt, because of the fact that her birth had been recorded by a resident missionary" (1920: 669). To Stefansson this is surprising given current assumptions about the correlation between environmental conditions and maturity: "If it be supposed that early maturity in such a country as Sicily is due to the direct effect of heat upon the body, in some such way as when heat brings early maturity to flies cultivated under experimental conditions, then we see that on this theory the Eskimo has every reason to mature about as early as the Sicilian" (1920: 669-670). Why, then, would Inuit girls growing up in the cold and barren arctic mature at the speed of Italian women and experimental flies exposed to extreme heat?

The answer to the apparent puzzle is relatively simple. On the one hand, Inuit clothing provides solid insulation, much like, perhaps, the outfits of astronauts traveling in outer space: "When an Eskimo is well dressed, his two layers of fur clothing imprison the body heat so effectively that the air in actual contact with his skin is always at the temperature of a tropical summer" (1920: 669). On the other hand, Inuit dwellings provide conditions comparable to southern contexts: ". . . to all intents and purposes the typical Eskimo in the country known to me lives under tropical or subtropical conditions. During the winter of 1906-1907 I recorded the estimate that the average temperature within doors of the Eskimo house in which I lived at the mouth of the Mackenzie River was a good deal above 80 F., and frequently rose to 90 F." (Stefansson 1920: 669). Sometimes, Stefansson goes on, Inuit dwellings are too hot for clothing: "When an Eskimo comes into such a house as the one in which I lived in 1906-1907, he strips off all clothing immediately on entering, except his knee breeches, and sits naked from the waist up and from knee down" (1920: 670). Stefansson suggests there is a gender difference in terms of maturity: "The effect of the overheated houses is more direct among the Eskimos on the women than on the men, for they remain indoors a larger part of the winter" (1920: 670).

Stefansson thus concludes that Inuit contexts produce "locally within doors the same conditions that may be supposed to accelerate the metabolism of a dweller under the tropical sun" (1920: 670). Drawing, again, upon the parallel of laboratory experiments, he continues: "When flies are being experimented on in an incubator, the same results would presumably be arrived at in Africa and Norway if the temperature within both incubators is kept between 80 and 90 F. . . . Why may not the same apply to human beings, the incubators in the case of the flies being replaced by the houses and cold-proof clothes in the case of the Eskimo?" (1920: 670). In sum, Stefansson's subtext seems to be that, given the conditions of the "friendly Arctic" he liked to talk about (1921), Inuit girls were by nature sexually available from an early age, much earlier than normally proclaimed in the contemporary West. Assuming that Vanast's reading of the circumstantial evidence he amasses to underline Stefansson's intimate involvement with the young Nogasak is a valid one, Stefansson's developmental speculations, while "scientific" in tone, may have helped to suppress his own guilt.

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