Baffin Island

Baffin Island lies in the eastern Canadian Arctic and is known in Inuktitut as Qikiqtaaluk, “very big island.” Ice, rock and sea define its landscape: the Arctic Cordillera rises along the northeast, while Davis Strait and Baffin Bay separate it from Greenland. Hudson Strait runs along the south and Lancaster Sound opens westward toward the other Arctic islands. Most travel historically followed sea ice, open-water leads and the short navigable season.

Pre-Dorset, Dorset and Thule peoples lived across the island and its coasts, hunting seals, caribou, whales and walrus. Norse voyagers probably knew part of the region as Helluland, “stone land,” although their contact remains difficult to reconstruct. Inuit communities established camps with seasonal movement between inland hunting grounds and the coast, making knowledge of tides, ice and sea mammals central to settlement.

Martin Frobisher reached the island in 1576 while searching for a northwest passage. His voyages brought English attention to Frobisher Bay, though the ore carried back proved worthless. William Baffin charted the neighbouring bay in 1616, and Edward Parry later extended the explorer's name to the entire island. Whaling ships and fur traders entered the surrounding waters in the following centuries, while Inuit continued to organize life around the island's icebound routes.