I have taken liberties with my research material, transposing stories and names and words from one part of the Arctic to another, for the sake of the fiction, but I have tried to be as accurate as I can without overloading the novel with detail. I hope I have managed to respect the spirit of the Arctic and that Arctic experts will forgive a certain amount of fictional licence.
I believe that it is the right of peoples of all cultures to tell their own stories in their own way. This doesn’t mean that outsiders may not sometimes, with respect, tell other people’s stories too, but it is of course much trickier to do that well. For this reason, I have deliberately told this story of Arctic life from the point of view of an Irish narrator. And that is all this novel is meant to be: an outsider’s perspective on a rich and fascinating way of life in a place of great beauty.
I would like to acknowledge a detailed account of present-day Inupiat whaling by the Danish television journalist Adrian Redmond; several documents by the anthropologist Norman Chance; some fabulous photographs and a most interesting account of his time spent at Thule airbase in the far north of Greenland by Larry Rodrigues; and some terrific material on the official Greenland government tourism Internet site, www.greenland-guide.gl.
The story of Sedna is retold here from a version I read on the site www.cancom.net/~sedna (accessible through about.com). The polar bear story is adapted from one of Norman Chance’s articles.
I am grateful for the support of the Irish Writers’ Centre and Dublin Corporation Arts Office, where I held a joint residency during the time this book was being written, and of An Chomhairle Ealaíon/The Arts Council who part-funded the residency.