The Diomeders are known for belligerence and reckless daring and have been called "the Vikings of the Arctic Sea," " a reputation they rather cherish. One day, two boat crews were in the Alaskan mainland village of Wales and saw a film about Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde, with violence and pillage aplenty. Back on Little Diomede, they were asked by a visiting biologist how they had liked the film. One man grinned and said: "Nothing special. Just a bunch of Diomeders on horseback!" 

The walrus hunters in my boat slept soundly, oblivious to the storm. Slowly the wind abated, the sky cleared, the pack spread out, the morning was pure magic. We launched the boat and purred smoothly along dark lanes among the floes, through a fantasy-land of shimmering, wind-and-wave sculptured ice. The ice glowed in the soft opalescence of morning, in delicate lilac, rose, and cool green, and bone-white icicles hung in grottoes of the deepest blue. Thousands of murres and auklets, like dark toy birds, lay scattered upon the satin sea. 

Far in the pack we heard the walruses, drifting north upon the Aloes from the Bering to the Chukchi Sea, all 200,000 funneling through Bering Strait on their annual spring migration. We approached them slowly, cautiously. Masses of madder-brown walruses lay sound asleep in chummy heaps upon brown, dung- smeared floes. 

Tom throttled the motor back, the men readied rifles and harpoons. They spoke in whispers; excitement and tension filled the boat. We drifted close to a pan loaded with sleeping animals, and suddenly, upon a low command from Tom, the eleven hunters fired, and fired again and again, a rapid, deadly fusillade. One moment it had been very quiet and then came carnage and chaos. 

Dead walruses lay on the floe, fountains of blood spurting and bubbling from the wounds. Others, in fear and fury, poured off the floe like a brown avalanche, rallied and attacked the boat, bellowing with rage, their eyes bloodshot. The men shot onto the water, into the walruses at top speed; most walruses turned and fled. A huge bull, bleeding from many wounds, dived, then shot up and hacked into the boat, and water rushed in through the gash. The hunters were prepared. They stuffed a large piece of blubber into the hole to staunch the leak. Ice and water were red with blood. They shot and killed the wounded walruses and tried to harpoon them before they sank. 

Ten walruses were dead. The men pulled the umiak onto the floe, patched the hole, and with amazing speed and precision cut up the 2-ton (1.8-tonne) carcasses. Blood flowed everywhere; piles of steaming guts lay on the ice; men with axes cut heavy-boned skulls to remove the precious ivory tusks. Ivory and a sea of blood; it seemed the essence of the hunt. We loaded the boat to the gunwales with meat, fat, and ivory, and headed for Diomede. The weather was changing fast. Ragged storm clouds raced across the sky. Gray fog oozed over sea and ice and enwrapped us like a clammy shroud. The wind increased; the heavily laden boat pitched and lurched in the rising waves. They raised the yard-broad waistcloth, furled against the gunwales in calm seas, on paddles and poles around the boat and lashed it securely as a guard against the wind-whipped spray. 

The day dragged on toward a dark and evil night. One man stood in the bow to watch for the ice floes that surged suddenly out of the murk and spume and vanished again into the dark-gray void that surrounded us. Tommy and I sat on the food box, lolling against each other with the wildly yawing motion of the boat, shivering and chilled to the core. Toward midnight, when the storm was at its peak, flinging sheets of spray across the waistcloth, and icy water soaked us to the skin, one of the men crept toward us, from thwart to thwart like a huge dark crab, took off his great parka, wrapped it tightly around the boy, gave us an encouraging grin, and crawled back to his seat, now dressed only in shirt and pullover. 

We reached Diomede in the morning and unloaded the boat. I walked slowly up to my shack, made tea and drank it very hot, and fell exhausted on my cot, blood-spattered and reeking of blood and blubber. Two hours later, Tom banged on my shack, I put on my sea-soaked parka, and we were off again. 

Days and nights merged. We hunted in fair weather and in foul (mostly foul, Bering Strait is notorious for its storms and fogs). The great racks on Diomede were loaded with drying meat; the ancient meat holes, the deep freezers of Diomede, were crammed with walrus meat and fat. The women worked nearly as hard as the men. Mary, Tom's wife, split walrus skins to be used as umiak covers with her razor-sharp ulu. Their daughter, Eva, eighteen years old and just back from a mainland high school, cut blubber off the walrus skins, and sliced meat and hauled it to the meat holes. Her sister, Etta, a charming, round-faced three-year-old, sat on a rock and copied her mother, Mary, pretending to split a piece of walrus skin with a can lid in lieu of an ulu. 

Suddenly, near the end of June, the hunt was over. The last walruses had passed to the north. The four Diomede umiaks had brought back much of the meat and all the ivory of 700 walruses ample food and relative prosperity, though much of that would be spent on liquor. The men caught auklets with long-handled nets, just as the Polar Inuit catch dovekies. I went with Albert Iyahuk to collect greens on the mountainside; he showed me the many roots, corms, and leaves Diomeders preserve in seal oil and eat with meat. 

Tom left to work on the pipeline in northern Alaska. Other men followed, some to the pipeline, some to Anchorage or to "the lower forty-eight." Most went to jobs, some went to jails, usually for brawling in bars. "I spend so much time in the Nome jail, I use it as my home address," one man joked. The Diomeders love to travel, but in fall all flock back to their lonely rock set in an icy sea. 

John lyapana was going with his umiak to the mainland and offered to take me along. Once, in a drunken rage at "whites," he had threatened to kill me. Two days later, sober, he asked me over for supper and was a delightful host, generous, amiable, with an enormous fund of stories about olden times on Diomede. Many villagers were on the beach when we pushed off. "Come back," they called, "come back and bring your family."

We sat a little while talking about the weather and the dogs. When the conversation died down a little, he expressed the thought that possibly his guests would want a bite to eat to pass the time, since he himself was so incapable of telling interesting hunting experiences or worthwhile stories.

We answered that we hadn't planned at all to eat at this particular time, but since we had been told that this was the house where the really good things were served, we wouldn't say no to anything he might offer.

Angutidluarssuk laughed and said that now he would try to forget his shame if it was possible, for he had never as yet had any luck when he tried to bring forth good-tasting food. On top of that, he protested, his miserable wife was completely lacking in all talents. But since his poor conditions surely were known to all, and he presumed that he was the topic of conversation wherever people wished to have a good laugh, he might as well go out and see if any of some poor birds he had collected were left. He would, he said, serve birds because he was incapable of catching seal or walrus or other such animals as manly hunters brought home.

He disappeared out through the entrance while the rest of us expressed our wonder at his modesty and excellent manners. Then we heard his voice calling from the outside. From the entrance tunnel he handed in one end of a long strap. At once several men jumped to their feet and began to pull on it. Outside, Angutidluarssuk was heard chasing puppy dogs away from the entrance tunnel and directing something heavy in through the narrow passage. Inside, the men hauled with exaggerated efforts.

"We can hardly manage this. It is terrible how this great hunter always owns big and heavy things. Do you suppose we ought to give it up?" etc. At last, a huge frozen seal came in through the opening. It was a giviak, the most festive food a Polar Eskimo can treat you to. Giviak means something immersed, in this case little auks that have been immersed in seal blubber and ripened through the summer into a delicacy to dream about.

Auks are birds that live by the millions in the bird cliffs along the coasts of Smith Sound. In an indirect way, they were the reason for our being there. For they are the favorite food of the foxes that the Eskimos traded to us in return for the goods we had to offer. They are small birds, no larger than starlings, but tasty to eat, either cooked or dried, and particularly so when preserved in blubber. The birds are caught in nets on long poles as they pass in flocks by the cliffs. What a wonderful time when they arrive in spring! Here it could really be said that "the sun is darkened" by birds.

When you want to make a giviak, you must first catch a seal, which then has to be flensed in a special and very difficult way. You start by cutting around the seal's mouth and let the hands feel their way down along its body inside the skin. The knife must not be too long, and it takes some practice before the hands have the right feel to avoid making holes in the skin. Around the forelimbs it can be particularly hard to find certain joints that have to be cut through. As you continue, both your arms are little by little buried in the seal. Often, big slices of blubber must be cut away and taken out through the opening at the mouth, so as to make room to operate in. When at last the knife has been all over, and the skin is entirely freed from the seal's body, there comes the most difficult part: the entire body has to be pulled out through the mouth opening. As a rule, two men have to pull with all their strength to get it done.

You now have a bag formed of the sealskin and lined with blubber. And you are ready to proceed with the next task: the bird catch. A wall of stones is put up to hide behind. The little auks do not nest on the steep cliffs, they make themselves comfortable under the big stones in the scree, and often they crawl into deep holes under these stones. When they then fly out, they amuse themselves by swarming in clouds along the cliff quite low over the ground. Then is the time to let the net dart up and catch it full of birds. The pole has to be turned quickly so as to close the net and prevent the birds from flying out again. The birds are taken out of the net and killed by guiding a thumb up under the breastbone to the heart, which is "displaced," and the bird dies at once. After the wings have been braided together on the back of the bird, it is then put down in the blubber bag. A diligent birdcatcher—the women as a rule—can fill a sealskin in two days. But Angutidluarssuk had filled two sealskins between two sleeps. It must be said, though, that he was famous for sleeping infrequently in good hunting weather.

When the bag is full, it must immediately be put in a secure place and covered with stones. The sun must never shine on it, since the blubber would then turn rancid. The comparative warmth of the summer air makes the blubber seep into the birds and cure their meat. Nothing is quite so delicious, especially the lump of blood collected around the damaged heart, which is almost heavenly to eat.

Now it was winter, and Angutidluarssuk's giviak was frozen. He took his axe and started chopping up the icy stuff Pink feathers and bird meat flew to all sides, while we watched in pious silence. At last the floor was completely covered with pieces of meat and blubber. Angutidluarssuk picked up a bite, tasted it, and threw it contemptuously away.

"Alas, as I told you: this is inedible! Possibly I have, through an oversight, filled the skin with dogs' dung. Possibly it is only my absolute ignorance about how to make a giviak that has caused this mistake! If you would show me a kindness, you would leave me now so that I could be alone with my shame!"

Upon this invitation, we started in. It tasted good the moment I got it in my mouth. But I had to be taught how to eat this remarkable dish. As long as it is frozen, you just chew away. You get feathers and bones in your mouth, of course, but you just spit them out. Frozen meat always has an enticing taste, and as it dissolves in the mouth, you get the full aroma of the raw fermented bird. It is incredible how much you can down, unbelievable how hard it is to stop. If you happen to come across a fully developed egg inside a bird, it tastes like a dream. Or the liver, which is like green cheese. Breast and drumsticks are cooling and refreshing. It was late before we were full, and there was then about half of the giviak left. This was put up on one of the bunks to thaw for later use.

When we had had some sleep, we started the second part of the feast. The giviak was now so much thawed that the little auks tasted entirely different, and it was possible to eat them in a new way. Whole birds could now be pried loose from the compressed mass, and when that is the case, great elegance can be demonstrated while enjoying them. A man with savoir-vivre holds the bird by the legs with his teeth. Then he strokes it with both hands, thus brushing off the feathers that have already been loosened by the fermentation. He brushes his hands together to remove all feathers, whereupon he turns the bird and bites the skin loose around the beak. This can then be turned inside out and pulled free of the bird without letting go of its legs. The eater then sucks the whole skin into his mouth and pulls it out again, pressing his teeth slightly together. In this manner, he gets all the delicious fat sitting inside the skin. Taste is, as we know, an individual matter, but this one—I dare guarantee—can become a passion.

When the skin is free of fat, you bite it free around the bird's legs and swallow it in one piece. The breast is eaten by biting down on each side of the bone, and the bone can then be thrown away. This bares the innards, and you can enjoy the various parts one by one. The blood clot around the heart has coagulated and glues the teeth together, the liver and the gall bladder have a spicy taste, while the bitter aroma of the intestines reminds one of lager beer. When these parts are consumed, the rest—wing, backbone, and pelvis—is taken into the mouth and thoroughly chewed.

Such delicacies were always served in Angutidluarssuk's house. His meat caches were always filled, and whenever I needed a good feed for my dogs, I went to visit him. He was always my friend. In the spring, he came home with as many seals as he could load on his sled. But he didn't sleep as long as the weather was nice and the seals were basking in the sun on the ice. He just unloaded and went out again to get more. Neighbors and friends had only to take what they wanted. Angutidluarssuk himself was silent and modest and smiled shyly when somebody spoke to him.