An account by the wife of Wally Herbert of a year living in northern Greenland and a year-old child and the Inuit.
p. 71: One person whom I felt craved some sort of intellectual outlet was Maria, although I do not think she was consciously aware of this. She visited me almost every day, even if it was for only a few minutes. Sometimes she would pore over our books. There were a few books in the schoolhouse which the locals could borrow, but she had read all these and they had not been renewed for a couple of years.
Maria told me how she loved reading. She would read aloud to the family when new books arrived, until the early hours of the morning. Everyone would fall asleep, but she could not put the book down. When there were no books she got very bored….
There was a little newspaper produced in Qanaq which provided local news and a larger paper was sent up from Godhab for those who wanted to be better informed. Otherwise the Eskimos listened for international news to the small transistors that every household possessed.
p. 175: We had not brought any reading matter with us. I thought of how long we had been away…. The worst of the journey was still to come. Descending the steep side of the glacier was a challenge at the best of times. We had no way of knowing how the ice conditions had changed.
p. 247—see plate opposite, a hut lined with old newspapers and magazines.