… really bad day today.

It wasn’t so bad until the afternoon, when I crashed out again somewhat, but when I went, I really went.

Although I struggled up to make a coffee at about 16:30 I still wasn’t in any fit state and it took until about 19:30 for me to properly come round. It was just like the bad old days today – it really was, and I was totally dismayed. Instead of getting better, I’m just getting worse.

I had another disturbed sleep last night, although I did manage to go off on a ramble. I was back in Shavington, at Goodall’s Corner in fact, heading south to Wybunbury on foot, and there was this woman on the far side of the road heading in the same way. At a certain moment I came to a railway bridge (not that there is one along there of course) and stopped to look down at the rails. This woman crossed half-way across towards me and then changed her mind and started to cross back. It was just at this moment that a huge grey Volvo lorry – the bonnet-nose type, came hurtling around the corner and just managed to screech to a halt, with its front bumper right in the small of this woman’s back. It was half an inch away from bowling her over.

Alone again at breakfast, and then I carried on with my reading. Tanner says that the reason for the decline in the Inuit population is that many of the Inuit girls married settler males and produced Métis offspring, which make up a good proportion of the population of the “liveyers” on the Labrador coast. He further states that

1. the Unuit girls have an extremely sensual nature
2. they are very keen to marry settlers of European descent
3. the girls are the hardest-working of all of the Inuit people, and goes on to list all of the household tasks that they are expected to do in the home

So when’s the next flight to Makkovik? I’m packing my bags.

But here’s a thing. Makkovik is an Inuit name for one of their settlements on the North Labrador coast. And it’s on an inlet deep into the interior. Now have a look at the etymology of the stem …vik… It’s a Norse stem for “cove” or “inlet”.

Of course, there are a thousand reasons why an Inuit word should look as if it has some kind of Norse etymology (not the least of which is that the first Moravian missionary there was a Scandinavian) but it’s very tempting to tie up the idea that the Inuit have absorbed some of the early Norse culture, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not the only Inuit place along the Labrador coast and the shore of the Ungava Bay that ends in … vik either.

And so I hope that I shall be feeling much better tomorrow. What with one thing or another, I’m feeling quite depressed right now. But I’ve been here before and I know that there’s a way out and in a few days I’ll be back up again as usual.

I hope.

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