The Last Kings of Thule: With the Polar Eskimos, As They Face Their Destiny [Paperback]

Jean Malaurie (Author), Adrienne Foulke (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1985

After spending 1950-51 with an isolated group of Eskimos in northern Greenland, sharing their life on the very edge of survival, Jean Malaurie returned with his companions to Thule village to find a U.S. airbase under construction: 'Men who lived by the harpoon found themselves in the atomic age.' When Malaurie traveled back to the Arctic in 1972, the airbase had irreversably transformed the Eskimo (Inuit) culture.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation)

Product Details

• Paperback: 489 pages
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press (October 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226502848
• ISBN-13: 978-0226502847
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,977,216 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #48 in Books > History > Americas > Greenland

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth the effort to find it., December 30, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Kings of Thule: With the Polar Eskimos, As They Face Their Destiny (Paperback)

Insightful and introspective account of the author's extended study of the Polar Innuit of the Thule district in Greenland. The most recent edition includes the author's bittersweet reflections many years later on modern incursions that threaten the survival of this indigenous culture.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, but Qaanaaq inhabitants not so impressed., January 25, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Kings of Thule: With the Polar Eskimos, As They Face Their Destiny (Paperback)

Fantastic background to the area both from the antropological and geographical points of veiw. However, when I visited Qaanaaq in 1990 and mentioned this book I found that the local inhabitants were not impressed by their protrayal. Particularly concerning the more private aspects of their society.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Accidental ethnographer, April 11, 2002

By 

Tammy Hilburn (Memphis, TN, Sometimes Egypt, Fairbanks, Alaska Summer 2002) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Kings of Thule (Hardcover)

Although the primary objectives of Malaurie's work were cartographic and geological in nature, he became, by default, a primary voice in describing the Thule culture by recounting his personal experiences and lifestyle during the expedition. Surely, ethnography can never be a truly objective effort, but Malaurie seems to appreciate this and relates cultural information through an admitted cultural filter. Rather than stifle his own reactions in his writing, Malaurie has adequately described, with sensitivity, his personal paradigm shift as well as that of the culture he is inevitably impacting by his very presence. It is inevitable that in any ethnographic description it will be found that something is amiss, lacking, due to the inevitable loss of information that occurs whenever information is transferred across cultural and linguistic lines. This work is one of the few that I have read that treats cultural interaction and exchange with dignity on behalf of the observed and the one observing. And, after all, these lines of distinction regarding observer and the observed shift and change radically during such a period of cultural interaction. Malaurie wonderfully describes this process.