Eskimology or Inuitology is a complex of

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...

and sciences

studying Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, non-human animals, and some machines; there is also evidence for some kind ...

the languages, history, literature, folklore, culture, and ethnology of the speakers of

Eskimo–Aleut languages The Eskaleut ( ), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent, and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of ...

and

Inuit Inuit (singular: Inuk) are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and Subarctic regions of North America and Russia, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwe ...

, Yupik and

Aleut Aleuts ( ; (west) or (east) ) are the Indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleuts and the islands are politically divided between the US state of Alaska ...

(or Unangam), sometimes collectively known as

Eskimo ''Eskimo'' () is a controversial Endonym and exonym, exonym that refers to two closely related Indigenous peoples: Inuit (including the Alaska Native Iñupiat, the Canadian Inuit, and the Greenlandic Inuit) and the Yupik peoples, Yupik (or Sibe ...

s, in historical and comparative context. This includes ethnic groups from the

Chukchi Peninsula The Chukchi Peninsula (also Chukotka Peninsula or Chukotski Peninsula; , ''Chukotskiy poluostrov'', short form , ''Chukotka''), at about 66° N 172° W, is the easternmost peninsula of Asia. Its eastern end is at Cape Dezhnev near the village ...

on the far eastern tip of

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

, through

Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...

of the United States, Canada's

Inuit Nunangat Inuit Nunangat (; ), formerly Inuit Nunaat (), is the homeland of the Inuit in Canada. This Arctic homeland consists of four Northern Canada, northern Canadian regions called the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (, home of the Inuvialuit and th ...

, including the

Inuvialuit Settlement Region The Inuvialuit Settlement Region, abbreviated as ISR (; ), located in Canada's western Arctic, was designated in 1984 in the Inuvialuit Final Agreement by the Government of Canada for the Inuvialuit (''the real people''). It spans , including ...

Nunavut Nunavut is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' and the Nunavut Land Claims Agr ...

Nunavik Nunavik (; ; ) is an area in Canada which comprises the northern third of the province of Quebec, part of the Nord-du-Québec region and nearly coterminous with Kativik. Covering a land area of north of the 55th parallel, it is the homelan ...

and

Nunatsiavut Nunatsiavut (; ) is an autonomous area claimed by the Inuit in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The settlement area includes territory in Labrador extending to the Quebec border. In 2002, the Labrador Inuit Association submitted a proposal for ...

, through

NunatuKavut NunatuKavut () is a proposed NunatuKavummiut territory in central and southern Labrador. The region proposed by the NunatuKavut Community Council (NCC) extends from north of the community of Makkovik in Nunatsiavut to south of the community of ...

(but not the Gulf of St. Lawrence area), to

Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...

of Denmark.Søren Thuesen (2005)
Eskimology
In Mark Nuttall (editor). ''Encyclopedia of the Arctic''. Vol 1, 2 and 3. pp. 585–586 Originally, an Eskimologist or Inuitologist was primarily a

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...

who researches Eskimo or

Inuit languages The Inuit languages are a closely related group of Indigenous languages of the Americas, indigenous American languages traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and the adjacent subarctic regions as far south as Labrador. The Inuit ...

History

Eskimology traces its beginning to the pioneering work of

Hans Egede Hans Poulsen Egede (31 January 1686 – 5 November 1758) was a Denmark–Norway, Danish-Norwegian Lutheran missionary priest who launched mission efforts to Greenland, which led him to be styled the Apostle of Greenland. He established a succes ...

(1745) and David Crantz (1767) in Greenland.Fienup-Riordan, Ann. (1990).
Eskimo Essays: Yup'ik Lives and Howe We See Them
'. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Eskimology has traditionally had a particular focus on Greenland studies owing to the long-standing relationship between Denmark and Greenland established in the early 18th century, and the academic discipline of Eskimology is today centered at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen (, KU) is a public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia, after Uppsala University. ...

. The term "Eskimology" was not common until 1967, when a genuine department was established and officially named the ''Department of Eskimology''. From the late 1960s, Eskimology changed its focus toward increasingly contemporary and global political issues. In 2019, the department changed its name to Greenlandic and Arctic Studies Section (a section within the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies). The Greenlandic and Arctic Studies Section offers full BA and MA programmes. In these programmes, the study of the

Greenlandic language Greenlandic, also known by its Endonym and exonym, endonym Kalaallisut (, ), is an Inuit languages, Inuit language belonging to the Eskaleut languages#Internal classification, Eskimoan branch of the Eskaleut languages, Eskaleut language family. ...

and the socio-cultural issues of Greenland /

Arctic The Arctic (; . ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the North Pole, lying within the Arctic Circle. The Arctic region, from the IERS Reference Meridian travelling east, consists of parts of northern Norway ( ...

are central.

List of Eskimologists

* Knut Bergsland * Ann Fienup-Riordan *

Michael Fortescue Michael David Fortescue (born 8 August 1946, Thornbury) is a British-born linguist specializing in Arctic and native North American languages, including Kalaallisut, Inuktun, Chukchi and Nitinaht. Fortescue is known for his reconstructions ...

* Sven Haakanson * Erik Holtved * Steven A. Jocobson * Lawrence D. Kaplan * Michael E. Krauss * Margaret Lantis *

Jeff Leer Jeff is a masculine name, often a short form (hypocorism) of the English given name Jefferson or Jeffrey, which comes from a medieval variant of Geoffrey. Music * DJ Jazzy Jeff, American DJ/turntablist record producer Jeffrey Allen Townes * ...

* Edna Ahgeak MacLean * * Osihito Miyaoka * Wendell H. Oswalt *

Knud Rasmussen Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen (; 7 June 1879 – 21 December 1933) was a Greenlandic-Danish polar explorer and anthropologist. He has been called the "father of Eskimology" (now often known as Inuit Studies or Greenlandic and Arctic Studies) ...

"father of Eskimology" * Jørgen Rischel * Jerrold Sadock * Wolf Seiler * William Thalbitzer * James W. VanStone

References

External links

Eskimology and Arctic Studies
Eskimology Eskaleut languages Area studies {{area-studies-stub

History

List of Eskimologists

See also

References

External links