An Inuit secret defeated the terror of the seas

The Inuit people (Eskimos) of Greenland live in an area covered by ice and snow most of the year. They knew how to add life-saving vitamin C to their diet. Photo: GV-Press

Life-threatening scurvy usually appeared when the ship had been at sea for a long time. When scurvy attacked, the sailors had almost no way of defending themselves.

The word "scurvy" sounds a little like the name of an animal. Is scurvy a terrible sea monster? No, scurvy is a disease that attacks teeth, bones, cartilage and connective tissue. A person with scurvy becomes listless, tired and bleeds easily from the mouth. If the sick person does not get treatment, his teeth will loosen and he will bleed internally. In the worst case, he will die.

Vitamin C is the key

Does this sound awful? Don't worry. Today almost nobody gets scurvy because now we know what causes the disease and how we can prevent it. As long as you have enough vitamin C in your diet, you will not develop scurvy. Vitamin C is found in large quantities in fresh fruits and vegetables. Today we can buy these products all year round, but in the old days sailors mainly ate salted fish, salted meat and dried seabiscuits.

Because the ships did not have refrigeration, the sailors could not take fruits and vegetables with them. Not that they knew that they should, anyway. They thought that scurvy was caused by sea air, fog and cold temperatures.

Good, old-fashioned folk medicine

Even though people long ago did not know what caused scurvy, they used plants and berries as medicine against it, including garden angelica, rowanberry, common sorrel, goutweed and cloudberry. There is even a plant called scurvygrass. As you might guess, it contains lots of vitamin C! A variety of this plant which grows on Svalbard and Greenland is called Greenland scurvygrass, or Cochlearia groenlandica. When all the other plants have frozen, Greenland scurvygrass is still nice and fresh and bursting with Vitamin C.

Scurvygrass contains large amounts of vitamin C. Photo: SAMFOTO

Even a tree without a single green leaf can supply a little Vitamin C to the person who knows to look for it. In the Old Norse saga of King Sverre, the Icelandic poet Snorre Sturlasson told of an army of rebels who chewed on bark and drank sap on their journey through the Norwegian wilderness. Indigenous people in Canada also made scurvy medicine from fresh pine needles.

Secret of the Inuit people

The Inuit people of Greenland live in an area covered with ice and snow most of the year. Except in the summer, it is not possible to find living plants containing vitamin C. Nonetheless, the Inuit do not suffer from scurvy. They did not get scurvy a hundred years ago either when the Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen spent a winter with the Inuit on Greenland. After his experience, Nansen wrote the book Eskimo Life" in which he described the Inuit diet. They ate a lot of fish and fresh meat from seals, whales, wild game and seabirds. They ate not only the meat but the inner organs as well. One of their favourite foods was the contents of the reindeer stomach.

When they caught grouse, they ate the inner organs and sold the rest of the bird, he wrote. Nansen, himself, ate everything and liked most of it. Later he used what he had learned from the Inuit on his expeditions in the far north.

Saved by the inner organs

Fridtjof Nansen spent a winter with the Inuit people of Greenland, where he ate a lot of fish and fresh meat from seals, whales, wild game and seabirds. Here is Nansen with the other members of the Nansen expedition that crossed Greenland in 1888. Photo: SCANPIX

Do you think that you would dare to taste grouse intestines or reindeer stomach? To us it may sound disgusting, but these inner organs have saved the lives of many Inuit. The reason is that almost all animals produce vitamin C in their stomach and intestines. Only guinea pigs, humans and apes do not. So when the Inuit ate inner organs, they ingested large amounts of life-saving vitamin C that the animals had produced. Pretty smart, don?t you think?

Penguin on the menu

Fresh meat, especially from seabirds and sea mammals, also contains some vitamin C. However, in the old days sailors mostly ate dried, salted and tinned meat, and they got sick. History is full of hunters, sailors and polar explorers who died of scurvy.

Some did survive though. In 1897 a large Belgian expedition set out on the ship called Belgica to explore the Antarctic. The ship got stuck in the ice and could not reach land for half a year. Gradually the crew became seriously ill with scurvy. The only men who stayed healthy were Roald Amundsen from Norway and his mate Frederick Cook from the USA, who hunted penguins and ate the fresh meat. As you probably remember, meat from seabirds contains some vitamin C. These men did not know that, but Cook had learned that eating seabird meat was a good idea. And who do you think he learned that from? That's right. The Inuit people of Greenland.

The explorer Roald Amundsen was the first person to reach the South Pole. He stayed healthy and fit, partly because he followed the Inuit?s dietary advice. Here he is shown planting the Norwegian flag at the South Pole in December 1911. Photo: POPPERFOTO/SCANPIX

First to the South Pole

In 1911 Roald Amundsen was the first person to reach the South Pole. Arriving home healthy and fit, he was welcomed as a great hero. Ronald F. Scott of England lost the race to the pole and died on the journey home - of exhaustion and scurvy. He had tried to reach the South Pole in English fashion, riding ponies and eating tinned food. However, as Scott?s fate shows, if you want to survive in the frozen wilderness, you'd do best to eat like the Inuit people.

Translated by Connie Stultz

*Published in 'Nysgjerrigper' no. 4/07*