The Journals of Knud Rasmussen

January 1922. With powerful forces of a new century pressing in around them, Danish explorer and scientist Knud Rasmussen visits the isolated camp of the great Iglulik shaman, Aua. For Rasmussen and his protégé, the young anthropologist Therkel Mathiassen, arriving at Aua’s family camp is like falling into Paradise, an arctic Garden of Eden with an intoxicating mix of spiritual and physical vitality, joyful intelligence and exuberant generosity.

What the Danes don’t realize is Aua’s temporary fortress of beauty and tranquility stands surrounded by the steamroller of the 20th century—the introduction of Inuit language Christian bibles, increasing dependence on foreign trade goods and the first police investigation of a murder of a white man—and that nomadic Inuit can’t stay in one place even if there’s nowhere safe to go.