It’s long forgotten, and alot of people just don’t know why polar bears are afraid to go near igloos!
Well igloos,where designed many thousands of years ogo!
To resemble, a sleeping gaint polar bear,with its huge belly !
If you actually look at the igloo,now,you will immediately see,the resemblance!
And any roaming polar bear can hear people inside the fake polar bear,believing they have been consumed by the gaint bear!
This resemblance ,puts the fear of the polar bear god !into any polar bear ,who comes near a igloo!
And obviously keeps the dwellers inside safe!
They can.
However, in general, Inuit preferred to not spend the nights on sea ice in the winter, and that’s where the bears are. It’s rare to see a bear when you are travelling inland.
In modern times, you never bring your gun inside an igloo, but you leave it outside right by the head of where you will sleep, and you bring your paanaa (snowknife) inside. If a bear attacks, you cut the wall and get the gun.
There have been a bunch of questions in the comments about leaving the gun outside.
Yes, in the Arctic, you leave your gun outside in the winter, pretty well all the time. The reason for this is that when it’s -40 and you bring something made of metal from the outside to the inside, it will immediately form condensation. Not just in visible locations, but on every piece of metal, including the trigger mechanism and inside the bore.
It can take several days for that water to eventually evaporate. This is not good for the gun, because it causes rust.
But that’s not the worst. The worst is that if you take the gun back outside while there is still condensation inside, it can freeze and jam the gun.
As a consequence of this, yes, you leave your gun outside in the winter if you expect to use it. Where I lived, guns were typically left in the porch.
Update to add: A friend of mine who lived with us up north just sent a picture of our camp. This was taken in late March 1978, the day our annual resupply plane came in. If you look carefully on roof of the building, you will see my dad’s .308 Savage. It stayed there all winter, ready for use. The big mound of snow is actually an igloo porch over the front door.
