Rolling purely as a self-rescue technique is like jumping off a high dive without doing any twists or flips. It has a tendency to get boring once the initial intimidation is overcome. Kayakers who master the basic rolls often have an inclination toward creating more difficult tricks. “Because I can,” is often the only rationale for rolling a kayak in ways that have little basis in real-life capsize situations. With the growing popularity in the U.S. of traditional kayaking techniques, and the continuing activity of Greenland qajaq clubs, new ideas and innovations have advanced the state of the art in much the same way as the sports of skateboarding or BMX biking have evolved.
Yet unlike other relatively modern sports, kayaking has a much longer history, most of which was generated outside the purview of modern media. You could argue that at one time or another, some seal hunter probably already executed any “new” roll recently created. Whether today’s cutting-edge techniques in rolling are genuine innovations or merely reinventions of the past, they are fun to try, and they renew our appreciation for kayaks and Arctic culture.
Rolling without Reason
In the mid-1980s, the Greenland Kayaking Association (Qaannat Kattuffiat) organized national kayaking championships and compiled a selection of 30 rolling maneuvers for competition. Much of the input on the selection came from Manesse Mathaeussen, the legendary kayaker and seal hunter who lived from 1915 to 1989 and was largely responsible for keeping interest in traditional kayaking alive. (See “Manesse,” by John Heath, SK, Spring ’90.) It is clear that the variety of competition rolls was not intended to be all-inclusive. The balance brace, one of the most basic skills and one that Mathaeussen is known to have valued, is notably absent.
Looking further back into history, one of the earliest European descriptions of specific Greenland rolls is a list of 10 maneuvers made in 1767 by David Crantz, a missionary from Moravia (the eastern part of the present-day Czech Republic). Among the 10 were rolls that can reasonably be deciphered as: the standard Greenland roll; rolling with the paddle held behind the neck; rolling using the throwing stick (norsaq); rolling with one end of the paddle held in the mouth; rolling by sculling with the paddle “held fast behind the back”; sculling up with one end of the paddle “under one of the cross-strings of the kayak”; and rolling by sculling with the paddle held under the kayak. Not all of these maneuvers are in the current competition repertoire.
And not all of the rolls Crantz lists are useful. In his description of the under-the-hull sculling roll, Crantz attempts to provide an explanation for the circumstances that might call for this difficult technique: “This is of service when they lose the oar during the oversetting, and yet see it swimming over them, to learn to manage it with both hands from below.” Although Crantz clearly had an appreciation for the skills and dangers involved in seal hunting, I am inclined to discount this particular bit of analysis as uninformed speculation. In my experience, the under-the-hull sculling roll has no realistic application other than a demonstration of advanced sculling proficiency. I think anyone who has tried it will agree that sliding the paddle to one side and doing a standard roll is a much faster and easier way to recover. The inclusion on Crantz’s list of the under-the-hull sculling roll, as well as the roll with the end of the paddle held in the mouth, proves that kayakers in Greenland have been making up fun rolls of dubious practical value for centuries.
In 2006, in response to the rising skill level of the top competitors, five new rolls were added to the competition. The new rolls include variations on the closed fist and brick rolls previously used in competition, plus one of the rolls Crantz mentions, sculling with the paddle held behind the back, now known as isserfikkut aalatsineq. Even with the list of competition rolls now at a total of 35 maneuvers, it is still far from an exhaustive collection of all the rolls that have been developed in Greenland.
Naming New Rolls
In April of this year, I had a chance to attend the Pagaia Symposium Internationale in Llança, Spain. Greenland kayakers Maligiaq Padilla and Pavia Lumholt also participated in the symposium. Pavia, a surgeon now living in Denmark, is a past club president of Qajaq Nuuk. He has attended traditional kayak symposiums in the U.S. for several years. Maligiaq’s name is familiar to anyone who has followed the recent growth of interest in traditional kayaking. In 1998, he won the annual Greenland championship at the age of 16 and has proceeded to take the title five more times. He is an impressive athlete and worthy ambassador of the sport. A very unfortunate accident and injury shortly before the 2006 championship left him out of the competition that year. He has recently said he wants to follow other athletic pursuits such as adventure racing, yet he maintains an involvement in kayaking activities and was an enthusiastic presence during his visit to Spain.
The symposium lasted a full week and gave us a chance to exchange ideas and experiment with different techniques. By the end of the event, we had thought of more than a dozen rolls that are not done in competition. They range from familiar and easy to quite difficult, if not borderline impossible. As I was keen to know the proper Greenlandic names, Maligiaq and Pavia determined what these new ones would be called in the native tongue.
Butterfly Roll—This is the easiest one, known by a number of Greenland-style paddlers as the “taa-daa” roll or one-hand roll. It can be thought of as an adaptation of the balance brace. For a reasonably flexible paddler using a kayak with a low back deck, it can be taught as the first roll. Maligiaq named it pakkaluaq, which is the Greenlandic word for “butterfly.”
Set up by holding the paddle in one hand at the center of the loom. Cross your arms in front of you with the free arm closest to your chest. Lean forward and capsize toward the paddle. When you feel yourself start to surface on the far side, draw the paddle away from the kayak, moving it along the surface while keeping your elbow straight. Simultaneously drive the kayak up with your inside knee. Continue the arm and knee action while bringing your torso from a forward leaning position to a full recline on the back deck.
For fine-tuning, make sure the paddle blades are flat to the surface when you initiate the sweep, keep your head tilted back and down as you come up, and try to drop your upper shoulder so that your chest is parallel to the sky. If there’s a secret to doing an effortlessly smooth butterfly roll, it’s the same secret for all the other rolls—a limber, supple body honed by regular stretching, yoga or rope -gymnastics.
Scarecrow Roll—The Greenlandic name is tunusummillugu tallit illuttut siaarlugit (touching one’s neck with the paddle with both arms stretched out). This can be thought of as an adapted behind-the-neck roll. The paddle is held across the shoulders with a blade equally extended on both sides. Set up by twisting sharply from the waist and turning the paddle parallel to the kayak. Capsize face-first. Only one blade actively contributes to the righting action. The hardest part is being able to twist far enough for the setup. That’s where flexibility training pays off.
Alternate Storm Roll—Maligiaq and Pavia decided to call this siukkut pallortillugu killormut—which translates roughly as “storm roll the wrong way.” The regular storm roll is a forward-ending move in which the paddle sweeps from bow to stern while head and shoulders turn downward, finally coming to rest facedown over the front deck. In this alternate version, the paddle goes from stern to bow, and you must cross your forearms to finish the motion.
Set up with the paddle held at the gunwale, extended rearward with the aft hand reversed so the thumb points toward the stern. Rather than extend the paddle all the way, leave a little exposed past your forward hand. Capsize toward the paddle and recover by prying the extra bit of paddle against the gunwale and ending leaning forward as per the usual storm roll. Note that the competition roll known as the reverse sweep also begins with the paddle extended toward the stern and ends facedown on the front deck, but you would capsize onto your back to initiate it. In this killormut roll, you capsize face-first.
Sculling Rolls
Several of the new rolls we came up with in Spain are sculling rolls, a category that is often neglected by intermediate rollers. The most common cause of failure of any sculling roll is trying to right the kayak all at once with a bracing action and neglecting to keep the arc traveled by the paddle blade wide enough. For an effective technique, initiate the sculling movement first with no hip/knee pressure so as to concentrate only on a wide smooth scull. While keeping the stroke wide, ensure that the wrists are angling the paddle so lift is generated in both directions. Drive the kayak upright using the hips and inside knee, not as one forceful burst but with steady and continuous pressure. Most importantly, don’t struggle and rush the sculling motion—this only leads to shorter, inefficient strokes and sets up a vicious cycle of increased muscle tension and decreased flexibility.
Reclining Sculling Roll—Although all the competition sculling rolls are forward-ending moves, there are several layback sculling rolls. Nerfallaallugu aalatsineq involves lying flat on the back deck with the paddle across the chest and sculling completely around. Using the full length of the paddle helps when first attempting the roll, but the technique can also be done without extending the paddle. Twist the blades 90 degrees for a smooth capsize, then flatten them to begin the scull. Stay relaxed, and keep the stroke nice and wide. Practice until the paddle loom remains roughly parallel to the deck throughout the roll.
Reclining Behind-the-Neck Sculling Roll—Performing the previous roll but with the paddle behind the neck is called nerfallaallugu qungatsip tunuatigut aalatsineq. Hands grip the paddle palm-up and a few inches from each ear. You will need a clear unobstructed deck area so as not to get the shaft hung up in midstroke. Good technique is essential because the paddle can’t easily be angled up to cheat with a hard brace followed by a few phony sculls for appearance. Incidentally, if you’re having difficulty doing a layback all the way onto the stern deck, you can lift yourself out of the seat a few inches as long as your knees and thighs remain anchored securely enough to control the kayak.
Reclining Crossed-Arm Sculling Roll—Whereas sculling in general is a tricky motion to learn, doing it with your arms crossed is very disorienting. It’s like having a dyslexic paddle. To minimize confusion, think of one arm as completely passive and the other as doing all the work. Focus on the hand that submerges last. With a little trial and error, the roll will start to come together.
Having never hunted seals myself, any conjecture I could offer on the practical application of a reclining crossed-arm sculling roll puts me in the same league as Crantz. Nevertheless, let’s say the harpoon line gets tangled around both forearms and pulled toward the stern, pinning the hunter to the back deck and pulling him under. If that sounds too farfetched, then we should just consider this roll—assaat paarlatsillugit kingukkut aalatsineq—another sculling proficiency feat.
Forward-Ending Behind-the-Neck Sculling Roll—Holding the paddle on the front deck and sculling around is already a competition roll. But it can also be done with the paddle behind the neck for siukkut tunusummillugu aalatsineq. I find this to be a good test of proper form because if you try to forcefully brace instead of scull, your shoulder is terribly vulnerable to dislocation. Yet if the righting action is applied incrementally with sculling strokes kept wide and driven by a flexible torso, there’s minimal risk of injury. Practice the regular competition forward-ending sculling roll masikkut aalatsineq until you can keep the paddle flat to the deck throughout the roll, bearing in mind the advice on sculling I mentioned earlier. Then, and only then, apply the same technique with the paddle behind your head.
Crossed-Arm Forward-Ending Sculling Roll—Maligiaq thought of an additional variation of a sculling roll, masikkut paarllatsillugit aalatsineq. I had previously tried this one at length and could never get it to work unless I braced hard at the end, which more or less turns it into a crossed-arm roll, one already done in competition.
Like all forward-ending rolls, the closer you can get your head to the gunwale as you come up, the better. But in this case, the crossed forearms are in the way, and additionally there is limited mobility to maintain a wide, efficient scull. None of us could do this roll. Maybe someone with the right combination of kayak and flexibility can succeed, but it’ll be a real challenge to do it without any bracing—that is, without pushing down forcefully on the paddle instead of sweeping it from side to side.
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.