Thule Migration: Ancestors of the Inuit Cross the Arctic

The Thule migration was one of the fastest and longest movements of people in pre-modern history. In the 1200s the Thule, whale-hunting ancestors of the Inuit, travelled from northern Alaska more than 4,000 kilometres east across Arctic Canada to Greenland, settling the entire region within a few generations. On the way they replaced the older Dorset culture and met the Norse farmers of Greenland, the first sustained contact between peoples of the Americas and Europe.

Origins in the Bering Strait

The Thule way of life developed around the Bering Strait, on the coasts of Alaska and Chukotka, out of earlier maritime cultures that archaeologists call Old Bering Sea, Punuk and Birnirk. These peoples were skilled sea-mammal hunters who lived in coastal villages, and by the end of the first millennium AD they had developed a highly effective toolkit for hunting the bowhead whale, an animal that could weigh more than 50 tonnes.

The name “Thule” comes from the Thule district of northwest Greenland, a base for Danish Arctic expeditions. The Danish archaeologist Therkel Mathiassen defined the culture after excavating sites such as Naujan, near Repulse Bay, during Knud Rasmussen’s Fifth Thule Expedition of 1921–1924.

Technology that made the journey possible

The Thule carried a remarkable set of tools. They hunted from the kayak, a light one-person skin boat, and the umiak, a large open skin boat that could carry a whaling crew or a whole family and its belongings. Toggling harpoon heads, which turn sideways inside the animal, were attached to lines and inflated sealskin floats that tired a struck whale and kept it from sinking.

On land and sea ice they used dog sleds, which allowed fast long-distance travel. They also had the bow and arrow, sinew-backed bows, snow knives and snow goggles. In winter they lived in semi-subterranean houses built of stone, turf and whale bones, heated and lit by lamps burning sea-mammal oil, and when travelling they could build snow houses.

A rapid move east

For much of the 20th century archaeologists believed the Thule began moving east around AD 1000. Radiocarbon dates from the early sites were affected by the “marine reservoir effect”, which makes samples from sea-mammal bone and fat appear older than they are. In 2008 T. Max Friesen and Charles Arnold published new dates from short-lived materials in the western Canadian Arctic showing that the Thule arrived there in the 13th century.

That revision makes the migration remarkably fast. Thule people appear across the central Canadian Arctic and reach northwest Greenland at roughly the same time, around 1250–1300, suggesting that the move took perhaps one or two generations rather than several centuries. They then spread down both coasts of Greenland and south into Labrador.

Why they moved

Several reasons have been proposed, and they may have worked together:

• Whales. Warmer conditions during the Medieval Climate Anomaly may have reduced summer sea ice, opening routes for bowhead whales and the hunters who followed them.
• Iron. The Thule valued iron for blades and tools. In northwest Greenland lay the Cape York meteorites, a source of meteoritic iron, and further east were the Norse with their iron goods. Some archaeologists think the desire for iron drew the Thule east.
• Pressure at home. Conflict and competition in the crowded Bering Strait region, where warfare is well documented, may have pushed groups to look for new land.

The Dorset and the Tuniit

When the Thule arrived, the eastern Arctic was already home to the Dorset people, part of a much older Paleo-Inuit tradition that had lived there for some 4,000 years. The Dorset lacked dogs for pulling sleds, the bow and arrow and large skin boats, but were skilled carvers in ivory and wood.

Within roughly a century or two of the Thule arrival, the Dorset culture vanished. A major genetic study published in 2014 found little or no sign of interbreeding between the two groups. How the Dorset disappeared, whether through competition for resources, conflict or disease, is uncertain. Inuit oral history remembers them as the Tuniit, a strong but shy people who once lived in the land and built some of the stone structures still visible there.

Meeting the Norse

The Norse had settled southwest Greenland from around 985 under Erik the Red, and they also travelled north to hunt walrus. They called the native peoples they met “Skrælings”, the same word used in the sagas about Norse voyages to Vinland.

Norse objects at Thule sites show that contact happened. On Ellesmere Island and in northwest Greenland, archaeologists have found fragments of chain mail, iron ship rivets, pieces of woollen cloth and cut fragments of copper and bronze. Some items may have been traded, others salvaged from wrecks or abandoned camps. A small wooden figure from a Thule-period site on southern Baffin Island, wearing what appears to be a long robe with a cross on its chest, is often interpreted as a carving of a European.

Relations were not always peaceful. Icelandic annals record that in 1379 Skrælings attacked the Greenlanders, killing 18 men and carrying off two boys. The Norse Western Settlement was abandoned by around the mid-1300s and the Eastern Settlement during the 1400s, for reasons that are still debated but probably included climate cooling, falling trade with Europe and isolation. The Thule, and the Inuit who followed, remained.

Becoming the Inuit

Later centuries brought colder conditions, often called the Little Ice Age. Bowhead whaling became harder in many areas, and Thule groups adapted by relying more on seals, caribou and fish, by living in smaller and more mobile communities and by using snow houses more widely. Archaeologists use the name “Thule” for the period up to roughly 1600, and “Inuit” for the historical cultures that developed from it.

The speed of the migration is still visible in language. Inuit dialects from Alaska to Greenland form a single chain of closely related forms of one language, which would not be the case if the peoples had separated thousands of years ago.

Archaeology tells the same story. Thule house forms, harpoon heads, combs and figurines found in Greenland closely resemble those from northern Alaska, with only small regional differences. Modern Inuit communities, from the Inuvialuit of the western Canadian Arctic to the Kalaallit of Greenland and the Inuit of Labrador, all trace their descent to these 13th-century travellers, and Inuit oral history keeps memories of the journeys and of the earlier inhabitants they met.

Timeline

• c. 600–1000: Birnirk and related cultures develop sea-mammal hunting around the Bering Strait.
• c. 985: Norse settlers led by Erik the Red arrive in southwest Greenland.
• c. 1200–1250: Thule groups move east from Alaska into the western Canadian Arctic.
• c. 1250–1300: Thule settlements appear in the High Arctic and northwest Greenland.
• c. 1300–1400: The Dorset culture disappears from the eastern Arctic.
• c. 1350: The Norse Western Settlement in Greenland is found deserted.
• 1379: Icelandic annals record a Skræling attack on the Norse Greenlanders.
• 1921–1924: The Fifth Thule Expedition; Therkel Mathiassen defines the Thule culture.

Why it matters

The Thule migration created the Inuit world that stretches today from Alaska to Greenland. It shows how a group with the right technology could settle one of the harshest environments on Earth in a very short time, and it produced the first lasting encounter between Indigenous Americans and Europeans, centuries before Columbus.