Followed a seal and Eskimos with a scene of an icebreaker ship

Two Eskimo families travel across the wide sea ice. Before night falls they build small igloos and we see the construction in detail. The next day a polar bear is seen basking in the warming sun. A woman lights her seal oil lamp, carefully forming the wick from moss. The man repairs his snow goggles. Another man arrives dragging a polar bear skin. The boy has made a bear-shaped figure from snow and practices throwing his spear. Then he tries his bow. Now, with her teeth, the woman crimps the sole of a sealskin boot she is making. The men are hunting seal through the sea-ice in the bleak windy weather. The wind disturbs the "tell-tales," made of eider down or a hair loop on a bone, that signal when a seal rises to breathe. A hunter strikes, kills and drags his catch up and away. At the igloo the woman scrapes at a polar bear skin and a man repairs a sled. In the warming weather the igloo is topped with furs and a snow shelter is built to hide the sled from the sun.

Ocean, ice and bitter cold in a seemingly untouched corner of the world. A crew who can only trust each other in the kingdom of polar bears and sudden storms. Until now this has been an annual ritual for the obstinate, ageing skipper Bjørne and his first mate Espen. In the beginning of the 20th century, more than 200 Norwegian sealing vessels were active, now there’s only one ship left. Massive international condemnation and the EU ban on all imports of seal products has almost wiped out the industry. But the skipper and his first mate refuse to give in. With a motley crew of greenhorns and old-timers, they set out on the dangerous journey into the polar ice. They are the last seal hunters of Norway. Sealers is a chilling feelgood roadtrip story of blood, sweat and frosted cream cakes.

In late winter when the cold is severe, the people and dogs are glad to stop their trek and make camp. In the blue dusk the men probe the snow and then cut building blocks while the women shovel a site. Soon all are under cover, and in the wavering light of the stone lamp they sleep, their breath rising coldly. In the light of day the men test and refurbish their spears, harness dogs to the sled and strike out on the sea ice. Each man, with a dog or two, explores the white waste, seeking scent of a seal's breathing hole. When a dog noses the snow, the man probes for the hole and, when he finds it, suspends a single looped hair to signal when the seal rises to breathe. Then he waits, motionless, to make his strike. He kills, and the others gather to taste the warm liver of his catch. Then, as night comes, the vigil goes on.

The family is on the shore of Pelly Bay in May-June. A seal basks beside its hole under a warming sun. The hunter stalks the seal, kills it and drags it to the family camp on shore. Man and wife skin the seal, cutting the hide into rings that girdle the body. Stripped of blubber, the rings are then cut spirally into long thongs. The boy plays on the shingle imitating the circling gulls, while the man stretches his thongs between rocks and scrapes away the fur. The woman dresses the seal, wasting nothing, braiding the intestines.

Inuit seal hunting.

Late June, and much of the land is bare. There are sounds of running water, and melt ponds shine everywhere. The woman carries heather and moss to camp and the man makes a whirling bullroarer for the boy. Another child pretends to drive a dog sled. A woman is working sinews into bowstrings, while another is busy with a seal skin. A woman prepares to cook a meal and a man makes a bow from bone and sinews. It is a demanding task to combine such materials into a strong supple weapon; the result is pleasing to the man. The next day the men move out on the sea ice with a dog to look for seal pups.

48 Seals entering the water. 49 "White People, etc." contains scenes of a man and woman picking flowers, a truck driving along a wooden track or road, people posing at a house and boarding a ship, men with cameras filming fur fox. 50 "Seals," and contains images of large groups of fur seals on rocks. 51 Scenes of rocky shorelines, birds including murres and puffins nesting on rocky cliffs, eggs in a basket, men in small boat. 52 "Our Friends," contains scenes of Pribilof fur seals. "Pribilof Bird Life" are scenes of puffins and auklets and people gathering eggs. "Blue Foxes," are scenes of fur foxes in summer and winter. Reindeer in winter, and in corral. Men working to row a boat away from a rocky shoreline and toward a larger vessel. "Winter - Snow and ice scenes in March.” "Native Church service” is a procession, then an unidentified church building. "St. Paul Island sunset on Big Lake," and "A Bering Sea sunset."

Walrus as well as whales are hunted by the Eskimos of Gambell on St. Lawrence Island. As the film opens, an old man tells of the dangers of moving ice, how people used to drift on such ice and never return. A cluster of men stand on a snowy rooftop, scanning the sea ice for walrus, when one spots a skin boat in distress far out on the ice. The crew had not come home the night before, and now were drifting toward Siberia. Long ago, there was nothing that could have been done to save them. Today, the men call the Coast Guard. The next day, preparations for another walrus hunt are made. The hunters load the boat and travel fifty miles out to sea, where they spot two walrus sunning themselves on an ice floe. "Don't move," one hunter tells the camera. The walrus are shot, admired, butchered on the ice, and loaded onto the boat. Back in the village, the meat is cut again and hung to dry.

The first of two coproductions by the British Broadcasting Corporation and the National Film Board of Canada, People of the Seal, Part 1: Eskimo Summer is compiled from some of the most vivid footage ever filmed of the life of the Netsilik Inuit in the Kugaaruk region (formerly Pelly Bay) of the Canadian Arctic. The original films of the Netsilik series attempted to recreate the traditional lifestyle of Netsilingmiut living there. They show the incredible resourcefulness of the Netsilik (People of the Seal) who have adapted to one of the world's harshest environments. Part 1: Eskimo Summer shows how Inuit families prepare for winter by hunting seal, birds and caribou and by fishing for Arctic Char during the extended hours of daylight.

In Barrow, Alaska, teenagers Qalli and Aivaaq find their bond tested when a seal-hunting trip goes wrong.