Inuit Trivia
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48 free Inuit trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Inuit trivia for anyone curious about the peoples of the Arctic, from students of Canadian history to fans of Atanarjuat and Tanya Tagaq. This quiz starts with who the Inuit are: the descendants of the Thule culture that spread east from Alaska around 1000 CE, displacing the Dorset or Tuniit, and reached Greenland by the thirteenth century. It explains what the word Inuit means, why many reject 'Eskimo', and how the Yupik and Aleut fit in. It then covers language and daily life: Inuktitut and its syllabics, the qajaq and umiak, the igloo, the qulliq seal-oil lamp, the ulu, snow goggles, the amauti and the sled dogs, along with the raw-meat diet that supplied vitamin C. Belief and art follow, from Sedna the sea woman and the angakkuq to throat-singing games, Kenojuak Ashevak's prints and the inuksuk on Nunavut's flag. It closes with modern politics: Frobisher's 1576 contact, the High Arctic relocation, the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Nunavut's creation in 1999 and Iqaluit. Questions range from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. If you enjoy this quiz, try our Canada, Arctic and Indigenous peoples quizzes next.
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Q 01What does the word 'Inuit' mean?
The people
The people: one person is an Inuk and two are Inuuk, so a phrase like 'the Inuit people' quietly says 'people' twice.
Q 02Nanuq, familiar to English speakers as Nanook, is the Inuit word for which animal?
Polar bear
Polar bear: in Inuit tradition Nanuq was also the master of bears, the spirit who decided whether a hunter deserved success in finding and killing one.
Q 03Inuit descend from which culture that spread east from Alaska across Arctic Canada to Greenland?
Thule
Thule is a borrowed name: archaeologists took it from a trading post in north-west Greenland near their first finds, and the post had taken it from the ancient Greeks' word for the farthest north.
Q 04Inuit legends remember the Tuniit, who lived in the Arctic before them, as what?
Shy giants
Shy giants, in the usual telling: taller and stronger than Inuit yet easily put to flight. Many archaeologists identify them with the Dorset culture, which faded within a few centuries of the newcomers' arrival.
Q 05Inuit oral history helped searchers in 2014 find a sunken ship from which lost Arctic expedition?
John Franklin's
John Franklin's: HMS Erebus lay in the bay where Inuit accounts said one abandoned ship had drifted, and HMS Terror turned up two years later. Canada said the wrecks would be co-owned with local Inuit.
Q 06Long said to mean 'eater of raw meat', the word 'Eskimo' may instead come from an Innu term for lacing what?
Snowshoes
Snowshoes: one leading theory traces the word to an Innu term for 'one who laces snowshoes', first used of a neighbouring people. Dictionaries still call the origin unsettled, and many Inuit reject the name either way.
Q 07Greenlandic Inuit are known by what name?
Kalaallit
Kalaallit is also in the country's own name: Greenlanders call their land Kalaallit Nunaat. The term once covered only the west coast, and the far north and the east still use names of their own.
Q 08Inuit Nunangat is the name for what?
The Inuit homeland in Canada
The Inuit homeland in Canada spans four regions and about 40 per cent of the country's land. In 2009 Inuit leaders swapped the older 'Nunaat' for 'Nunangat' so that the name would take in water and ice too.
Q 09In 1999 Nunavut was carved out of the eastern part of which Canadian jurisdiction?
Northwest Territories
Northwest Territories: Inuit leaders first proposed a territory of their own in 1976, sealed it in a 1993 land-claim agreement, and on 1 April 1999 saw Canada's map redrawn for the first time in fifty years.
Q 10What is the capital of Nunavut?
Iqaluit
Iqaluit won the job in a 1995 vote, beating Rankin Inlet. It is still the territory's only city, with fewer than 8,000 people.
Q 11Nunavut's capital is unusual among Canadian capitals in having no what?
Road link to the south
Road link to the south: there is no railway either, so the city lives on daily flights and, in the short ice-free summer, the yearly sealift of heavy goods.
Q 12Nunavut is home to Alert, which holds what distinction?
The world's northernmost permanent settlement
The world's northernmost permanent settlement is a military and weather station about 800 km from the North Pole. It is staffed all year, yet nobody lives there for good: crews rotate through on postings.
Q 13In 2003 Jordin Tootoo of Rankin Inlet became the first Inuk to play in which professional league?
Q 21The amauti, a woman's parka, has what special feature?
A pouch below the hood for carrying a baby
A pouch below the hood for carrying a baby: the child rides against the mother's back until about two, and can be swung round to the front to nurse without ever meeting the cold.
Q 22Traditional Inuit snow goggles work by what means?
Narrow slits carved through bone or wood
Narrow slits carved through bone or wood cut the glare that causes snow blindness and, like a pinhole, sharpen the wearer's sight as well.
Q 23Muktuk, eaten raw and prized as a source of vitamin C, is the skin and blubber of which animal?
The NHL
The NHL: Tootoo learned the game on natural ice in an unheated rink, broke in with the Nashville Predators and stayed for 13 seasons.
Q 14Inuit syllabics in Canada were adapted from a script that a missionary devised in the 1840s for which language?
Cree
Cree: James Evans, a missionary in Manitoba, created the symbols. Later missionaries and Inuit themselves carried an adapted set across the eastern Arctic.
Q 15In the Inuit one-foot high kick, an athlete kicks a hanging target and must then do what?
Land on the same foot
Land on the same foot that kicked, and keep balance. The move is said to come from whaling villages, where a messenger running home would leap and kick in the air to signal a catch from far off.
Q 16Inuit kayak hunters sealed their jackets to the cockpit rim so that, after capsizing in icy water, they could do what?
Roll the boat upright
Roll the boat upright: jacket and kayak formed one watertight unit, so a flick of the hips and paddle brought the hunter back up without taking on water.
Q 17Though English keeps it for a snow dome alone, the Inuit word iglu means what?
Any kind of house
Any kind of house: the word covers homes of every material. The snow kind was only for winter and travel, and in warmer months the same families lived in skin tents.
Q 18What did Inuit builders set into the wall of an igloo to serve as a window?
Lake ice or seal gut
Lake ice or seal gut let the daylight in. Warmth inside did the dome no harm: the wall's inner face thawed, froze again and grew stronger.
Q 19The qulliq at the heart of a traditional Inuit home burned what for heat and light?
Seal oil
Seal oil, or raw blubber: the qulliq is a stone lamp, its flame tended along a wick of moss or Arctic cotton grass, and the one lamp lit the home, warmed it and cooked the food.
Q 20The ulu, an all-purpose knife with a semicircular blade, is traditionally associated with whom?
Women
Women: ulu means 'woman's knife', and a woman might keep the same one all her adult life for cutting meat and preparing skins. Men carried other blades for the hunt.
Whale
Whale: usually narwhal, bowhead or beluga. Because muktuk is eaten raw, its vitamin C survives, which is how a diet with almost no plants could still keep scurvy away.
Q 24Akutaq, 'Alaskan ice cream', is made of what?
Berries mixed with fat
Berries mixed with fat, whipped until light: caribou tallow or another animal fat stands in for the cream. Some versions stir in dried fish as well.
Q 25In Inuit tradition, who is the sea woman whose severed fingers became the seals and other sea animals?
Sedna
Sedna keeps the sea animals and has no fingers to tidy her own hair. When hunting failed, a shaman was said to travel down in spirit to smooth out its tangles and coax her into releasing the game.
Q 26In traditional Inuit communities, what was an angakkuq?
A shaman and healer
A shaman and healer: when sickness or misfortune struck, the angakkuq was said to journey in spirit, in trance or in dreams, to find the cause.
Q 27Inuit throat singing, or katajjaq, is traditionally performed by whom?
Two women facing each other
Two women facing each other trade breathy sounds in a game of stamina, and the first to laugh or run out of breath loses. Missionaries once banned it; a revival began in the 1980s.
Q 28What does the word 'inuksuk' mean?
That which acts in the capacity of a human
That which acts in the capacity of a human: the stone markers stand in for a person, pointing travellers to routes, food caches and good hunting when nobody is there to do it.
Q 29The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics logo was based on what?
An inunnguaq stone figure
An inunnguaq stone figure: the emblem, named Ilanaaq, 'friendship', has a head, arms and legs. One Inuit leader objected that true inuksuit are never built with any of those, and that such figures go by this other name.
Q 30Kenojuak Ashevak, perhaps the best-known Inuit artist, made her name with which 1960 print, later a Canadian stamp?
The Enchanted Owl
The Enchanted Owl, its feathers fanning out like rays, went onto a Canadian postage stamp in the 1970s. Ashevak was urged to keep making art by James Houston, the man who brought printmaking to Cape Dorset.