ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the experience and understanding of the changing environment by High Arctic hunters for whom the sea-ice is crucial to the mode of living. The idea is to show how they deal with the rapidly changing ice conditions and seek to anticipate both the near and the more distant future by way of diagrammatic reasoning. By this I refer to a kind of modelling that operates by means of networks and images, rather than concepts and numbers. It is at base a mode of reasoning that allows for both experimentation and anticipation, which is vital in the changing North. Until recently, the hunters of Northwest Greenland, from where my case derives, could rely on a stable sea-ice for nine to ten months a year (Gilberg 1986); now it is down to four or five months, and even within this brief period, the ice is increasingly unstable. To safely navigate the reformatted ice, the hunters must be extremely attentive and stretch their skills at reading the ice to the limit.
