As Sharp As Ever

An ulu is a remarkable multi-purpose tool that’s sometimes referred to as a woman’s knife. Uluit — as they are known in the plural form — are an important part of Indigenous Arctic material culture, with varieties from Russian Aleut to Alaskan Yupik, Canadian Inuit, and Kalaallit (Greenlandic Inuit) peoples.

Uluit can be used to scrape and to process skins, to chop meat, and to make clothing. There are different sizes and styles for these varying tasks, but all have a semicircular blade plus a handle made from bone, ivory, or wood.

This ulu’s cutting edge was made from slate, a type of stone that was ground to a sharp edge and drilled to affix a handle. Metal ulu blades did not appear only after the arrival of Europeans; numerous examples have been found that were made from local copper deposits or from meteoric iron from Greenland.

Today uluit are still an important part of traditional activities. But they also make great pizza cutters or general-purpose kitchen knives.