Kiviak

Kiviak is an Arctic delicacy of whole little auk seabirds that have been softened and darkened through fermentation. It has a commanding, pungent aroma, but the meat tastes incredibly savory and gamey, much like an extra-mature blue cheese or strong parmesan with fruity notes.

How It's Made

Hunters tightly pack 300 to 500 whole, unplucked little auks into a hollowed-out seal skin, greasing the sewn seams with fat to create a perfectly airtight environment. Buried under a heavy cairn of rocks to press out oxygen, the birds undergo anaerobic fermentation for three to eighteen months. The seal fat acts as a tenderizer while the birds' natural enzymes slowly transform them in the cold dark.

The Story

Kiviak is an ancient masterpiece of Indigenous survival engineering created by the Inughuit people of northwest Greenland. Living in one of the most extreme climates on Earth, early hunters faced a massive problem: how to secure enough food to survive the brutal, dark winter when fresh hunting is nearly impossible. They invented a brilliant method of packing summer's abundance of migrating birds into nature's perfect Tupperware—a thick, fat-lined seal skin. By safely fermenting the catch beneath freezing rocks, the community could thrive through the hardest months of the year. Today, when prepared by highly experienced Inuit elders who know the exact traditional methods to keep it safe, this ingenious food remains a life-sustaining link to their ancestors.