The musk ox
An animal that has outlived the ice age, the mammoth and every attempt to move it somewhere warmer.
Older than almost everything around it
Musk oxen walked the Arctic alongside mammoths and woolly rhinoceros. The mammoths went. The musk ox stayed.
It survived because it does not fight the winter. It waits it out.
The circle
When a herd is threatened, the animals turn outward and form a ring, with the calves inside. It is an old defence, and against wolves it works.
The same instinct holds them still in a storm. They stand, backs to the wind, and let the weather pass over them.
Two coats
The outer coat is long, dark and coarse, and hangs almost to the ground. It sheds snow and breaks the wind.
Underneath is qiviut: a dense layer of very fine fibre that holds still air against the skin. It is the reason an animal can stand in an Arctic gale and lose almost no heat.
In spring the animal no longer needs it, and lets it go.
A note on the name
Musk oxen are not oxen and produce no musk. Their closest relatives are sheep and goats.
In Inuktitut the animal is called umingmak, which is usually translated as the bearded one.
Nothing about this animal is decorative. Everything it carries, it needs.