Tag Archives: moravian mission

Friday 20th January 2017 – I’VE HAD A …

… 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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Monday 16th January 2017 – WHAT A BEAUTIFUL …

… tea that was!

First of all, I sliced up a large carrot and potato and put them on to boil. And while they were doing, I sliced up an onion and some garlic and fried them in vegan margarine with some cumin and turmeric.

Once they were fried to perfection, I added a tin of mushrooms and a small tin of macedoine vegetables, and then tipped in the potato and carrot. Once they were simmering away, I cooked a pan of rice in turmeric.

There’s enough curry for four days, so three helpings went in the fridge and I had the fourth with the rice. And just for a change, I had it on a plate instead of eating out of my saucepan. Completely delicious. And there’s more to come over the next three days, when the spices have had more of an opportunity to percolate into the food.

A job well done, my curry!

I slept right through until the alarm went off, with only one distraction and no nocturnal rambling either. Alone again at breakfast and I might well be alone in the building too, because I’ve not heard a thing from anyone else for a good few hours.

That gave me plenty of opportunity to crack on with some other stuff today. I did some stuff on the 3D program that I use, using the design function and I actually managed to create something. Or, rather, modify an existing prop. It wasn’t difficult but it’s a step forward all the same.

As well as that, I’ve been doing some more research with my Labrador project and the Finnish espeditions. Interestingly, they make reference to a Priest, the Reverend Paul Hettasch, who was a Moravian priest from Germany who ran one of the Moravian missions on the coast, at Makkovik. The author of the report, Vaino Tanner, talks at length about all of the weather reports that Hettasch was keeping – how precise, complete and thorough they were. And a further search about Hettasch on the internet revealed that according to the Canadian Police, Hettasch was a Nazi sympathiser who sent all of his weather notes back to Germany and these formed the basis of the weather predictions that aided the German bombers of the Luftwaffe in their attacks over the UK in the early days of World War II.

It’s amazing what you can uncover these days in all of these research projects.

But while I was looking over the Labrador censuses during the inter-war period I came across some interesting notes taken by the census-recorder at Davis Inlet while he was asking about the Innu settlement at Voisey’s Bay in 1935. His notes were extremely brief, with just the most basic details recorded, and he explained that the “… information was furnished by a Davis Inlet Indian and it was impossible to get further details. Their life is a nomadic one and it would be futile to go look for them.”

But it was difficult this afternoon. I kept on dozing off here and there, and when I was awake, it was difficult to concentrate. I need to do what I can to recover my fighting spirit and get back to work properly.

I can’t go on like this!

And you may well have noticed – I’ve not set a single foot outside the building today.

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Thursday 12th January 2017 – I’M STILL STRUGGLING …

… with these perishing sleep issues.

An early night, a film on the laptop and there I was, gone. Only to wake up a short while later and take an absolute age to go back to sleep again.

But I was on my travels too during the night. My niece Rachel was in Canada trying to work out some connections with associated companies and was phoning around. She asked me to help out too, and one of them that I called was a taxi company in … errr … Detroit, about 1,000 miles away. And when I did phone them up, the girl who answered the ‘phone had the air of being totally gormless, and I couldn’t understand why Rachel would – firstly – want to associate her business with a business so far away and – secondly – why she would want her business to be associated with a firm that was so clueless.

Alone again at breakfast, and then back down here to carry on with my research. I’ve been wading through this report from these Finnish geologists and found some more exciting stuff that might change a few of my – and other peoples’ – perceptions.

And that is that the Moravian missionaries in the north of Labrador kept very detailed records of day-to-day life in their mission stations for a period of more than 150 years. And you’ll see where this is leading.

In my writings, I’ve commented on several occasions about how certain places, such as the Norse landing sites, don’t look like the kind of places that I would choose for landing. But my opinions might have to change.

Labrador and Newfoundland were, in the Ice Age, covered with ice to a depth of at least 4,000 feet and that has an enormous weight. Since the end of the Ice Age and the melting of a lot of the ice, the land has slowly been rising. Obviously the weight of the ice had compressed the earth, the soil and the rock, and now the pressure is off the land, it’s springing slowly back into shape.

The Moravians kept records for this at some of their stations, and a change of level of a rise of 15 feet was recorded at one station “in one generation”. Extrapolate that out over 1,000 years and you are going to have a totally different shape of coastline, and the raised beaches that you see all along the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland give ample testimony for that.

Looking at the coastline today may give you a totally different idea of what the land might have been like in recent history.

At lunchtime I went out for my baguette and then at some point in the proceedings I crashed out for half an hour or so. A brief exchange of pleasantries with my djervushka and then the second half of my mega-meal which was just as delicious as last night.

I’ll try again to have a decent sleep and tomorrow I have work to do. I need to go to Caliburn for the washing soap, and then to the launderette to wash my clothes. I’m running out.

But winter is on its way. Snow is forecast for the next few days and the temperature is threatening to drop.

Minus 9°C might not be cold in Canadian, or even Auvergnat terms, but it’s cold enough for here.

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