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Opposite Arm Rolls This category of rolls does have a plausible real-world application. They are done without using the last arm to surface. In other words, if you are rolling up on your right side, you must use only the left arm. The combat scenario is a dropped paddle in a strong beam wind blowing against a dislocated shoulder. Admittedly this would be an awfully bad day, but it could happen. In such a situation, a normal hand roll with the good arm is being opposed by the wind. So the way out of the dilemma is to recover on the upwind side with the “opposite arm.” Using a norsaq makes the roll easier. With the kayak overturned, swing the good arm across your body and make a wide windmill motion going from the knees, across your chest, and up around your head as you drive the kayak up with your hips and do a layback on the rear deck. When you near the completion of the roll, the arm is flung over to the high side of the kayak in the counterweight orientation, as it would be if you were using the disabled arm for a normal roll. Maligiaq and Pavia didn’t settle on a final name for these rolls, but norsamik nerfallallugu killormut for the throwing stick version and assamik nerfallallugu killormut for the hand version will suffice. Another way to do these is by ending on the front deck—masikkut—rather than ending on the aft deck—nerfallallugu. They are considerably more difficult and I have yet to see anyone succeed at the hand variation. Throwing Stick Spine Roll—The regular spine roll is a competition maneuver that also appears to be one that Crantz lists, although his description could be interpreted differently. Norsamik aariammillugu is an amusing variation that may take the honors for most useless but entertaining roll. It consists of holding the norsaq instead of the paddle along the spine and rolling without letting either hand go. Like other advanced layback rolls, this requires a Greenland-style kayak with a very low back deck. The technique is similar to the competition elbow roll wherein one hand is held against the back of the neck leaving only an elbow in lieu of a paddle. However a norsaq held along the spine can be shifted diagonally during the recovery to give the upper elbow a little more reach.
Wrong-Way Spine Roll—Another spine variation is called aariamillugu killormut. This came about when Cheri Perry, a renowned traditional paddler from Connecticut, and I attended Greenland’s 2004 National Open Kayaking Championship in the southern town of Qaqortoq. We were practicing in the harbor a few days before the start of the event and had an opportunity to watch the head of the local qajaq club assist his 16-year-old daughter as she worked on rolls she knew and some she had not yet mastered. I noticed he had her set up for the spine roll and capsize toward the upper hand, which alarmed me, as Cheri and I had always done it by capsizing toward the lower hand. We had both spent the better part of a year honing our competition routines to judging standards we thought we had confirmed. For the next two days, I practiced until I could do a spine roll high hand first, although it was much more difficult. When the rolling competition began, I saw, to my relief, that everyone was doing it low hand first, the easy way. To do aariamillugu killormut, the extended blade ends up on the wrong side of the kayak. It doesn’t feel like a regular spine roll. The action is mostly like a straitjacket roll with the extended blade only functioning as a slight -counterweight.
Elbow Crook Roll with a Throwing Stick—Another fairly pointless but intriguing roll is to use a norsaq instead of the paddle held in the crook of your elbow. The regular elbow crook roll comes near the beginning of the competition routine and is not too difficult. Doing it with only a norsaq, however, is much harder. Set up twisted to one side with an end of the norsaq tucked into your inside elbow. The other hand holds the opposite end. There is no official norsaq length—I have seen some as short as 15 inches—but for this roll, a 19- to 20-inch length is recommended. The norsaq has to stay in place for the duration of the roll.
Air Scull—Rolling by sculling with the paddle in the air is called silaannarmi aalatsineq. I have been doing this stunt at symposium demonstrations for some time. It is pure showmanship and gives the appearance that the paddle is getting sufficient purchase on the air alone to drive the kayak upright. What’s really driving the kayak up is the perfectly timed hip and knee pressure, unseen by the audience, happening inside the kayak. When I showed it to him, Maligiaq was able to do an air scull without much trouble in the skin-on-frame kayak he used in Spain. Like all other advanced layback rolls, it’s essential to finish by draping your head and shoulders over the gunwale and sliding your torso up onto the back deck. If your PFD or your head gets caught against any deck rigging, day hatch edges or objects stowed on the deck, that’s good—you’ve got the right technique. Eliminate the obstructions and fine-tune the timing until you achieve success.
A Living History Without the noble efforts of Crantz, Mathaeussen, Edi Pawlata, John Heath and others, the technique of rolling a kayak could well have become an obscure and poorly understood legend. In an alternate reality, we would be pondering the logic of designing a watercraft that capsizes so easily. Fortunately the use of the Greenland skin-on-frame kayak never died out completely, and living kayakers steeped in tradition can tell us what museum artifacts cannot. I can’t say whether or not any of the rolls described here will ever find their way into the official Greenland competition, but there’s no doubt that the well of new ideas is hardly dry. In recent times, a few serious devotees of kayaking have attempted to catalog every known roll, including whitewater and canoe moves. The task is challenging in that many rolls are variations of or alternate names for the same thing. Yet judging by how often these cataloging efforts must be updated, it’s clear that creative minds are at work constantly reinventing and rediscovering more rolls, and that the effect of outside interest in Greenland kayaking has raised skill levels throughout the traditional paddling world. Dubside lives in the Seattle, Washington, area and has twice competed in the Greenland National Kayaking Championships. He has two instructional videos: Greenland Rolling with Dubside and Qajaasaarneq—Greenland Rope Gymnastics to his credit and appears often at paddling symposiums across the country. His website is: http://www.dubside.net The original 1767 work by David Crantz is a two-volume set titled The History of Greenland: Containing a Description of the Country and Its Inhabitants and Particularly a Relation of the Mission, London: Brethren’s Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel. The relevant text is quoted at length in Eastern Arctic Kayaks, John D. Heath and E. Arima, University of Alaska Press, 2004. Further information about the Greenland championships and the 35 competition rolling maneuvers can be found at: http://www.qajaqusa.org. For an inventory of more than a hundred rolls, visit: http://www.greatlakeskayaker.ca |
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